We Feel Fine

So Mario, James, and I went to Breather this weekend. There were two very good presentations, but the one from Tali Krakowsky at Imaginary Forces REALLY stood out. Not only was she the most engaging speaker, she had the best content. It was about media in the future and highlighted a lot of innovators in the field, including her company. It reminded me of the kind of stuff Paige was showing us at the beginning of the semester about gathering data, like that name frequency chart. She showed us many projects on ambient storytelling and experience design: ads that streamed across thousands of LEDs on the side of a building that actually interact with the passerbys and art installations that changed based on peoples' proximity so that no two experiences would ever be the same. This really blew my mind.

In the virtual world there are no limits on what can be done. Architecture and the way we display data are never going to be the same. Three of her main points for this futuristic media were as follows, basically if you can exploit one of these points, you can think outside the box -- 1)re-imagining rich-media content; 2)re-imagining media delivery; 3) re-imagining the environment. The billboard will soon be replaced by interactive holograms and massive hot-air balloons playing streaming video. All unique. All based on the person standing there or the data being collected.

I think that if any of us as designers can think like this, we will have a bright future indeed. Here is a site called We Feel Fine, it collects data from blogs and gives you a visible, interactive catalog of how people are feeling, or at least what they're writing about. I think that this is just the beginning of things to come.

http://www.wefeelfine.org/

Next is a link to New City, an experience design project from Imaginary Forces. I am definitely going to be following what this company does from now on. This is a video describing the project and its potential.

http://www.imaginaryforces.com/featured/3/435

Stop Music

Some people were saying they couldn't find out how to stop the music when restarting their e greeting.

Here's my action script for the play again button:

stop();

playagain.addEventListener(MouseEvent.MOUSE_DOWN, playplay);

function playplay (event:MouseEvent):void {
flash.media.SoundMixer.stopAll();
gotoAndPlay ( 1, "Scene 1" );
}


The script highlighted in red is what I wrote to stop the music when replaying the flash movie.

Halftone effects in Illustrator

I just came across a great tutorial on how to make vector halftone effects in Illustrator... I've been wondering how to do stuff like this for a while..

http://vectips.com/tutorials/creating-halftone-effects/

now you can make stuff like this...

More Design Inspiration

This site is called FreelanceSwitch -- I think it could be very valuable for doing freelance work while still in school. There are many forums and lots of ways explained to make money, like some things I haven't really thought about, one of them being passive income. This is basically like stock photography, except that there's a stock version of everything nowadays: stock vectors, stock backgrounds, stock templates, stock flash animations. I'm not sure how realistic it is to make a lot money of money, but it's something to look into, as you get income each time someone downloads your stuff. So you do a little bit of work, then sit back and hope people buy it. Browse the site to find the pages about passive income. There's also a blog with many relevant topics like winning clients and setting up a studio, what to charge clients, etc.

This specific link I'm including here is all about inspiration. There are many sites that focus on current design trends. I know that not everyone is 'into' what's current, but at the very least, it's good to know what's out there.

http://freelanceswitch.com/designer/33-new-places-to-get-design-inspiration/#more-1093

Ted

I found this site for design inspiration -- there are ideas for any and all fields, but there are areas for design/art/&entertainment.



http://www.ted.com/

It's more of an 'idea' site than a straight-up graphic design thing, but I found it extremely interesting. Always looking at the big picture.

Import MP3 files to Flash

Easy way to import mp3 that even foreigners can understand.

http://www.royaltyfreemusic.com/tutorials/import-flash-audio.htm

Sounds

If you are having trouble finding sounds, this website has both wav and mp3 for free. It is a little bit better organized than any of the other sound sites I've looked at. Hope it helps!