Author: Delphine Hirasuna

Technology

Augmented Reality Comes of Age

By Delphine Hirasuna |

Augmented reality, or AR. If you don’t know of it, you should. If you haven’t used it yet, you will. What used to dwell in the realm of science fiction and extreme geekdom is finding practical application in all kinds of areas, including marketing, packaging, exhibits, sales demonstrations, technical training, maps, architecture and entertainment. The possibilities are just beginning to be recognized. Augmented reality lets the user see the world around him with superimposed computer graphics that appear in 3-D animation, visible from every angle and following the sight-path of the viewer. In its simplest version, the user can print out a high-contrast black-and-white pattern of squares and point it at a computer webcam. The webcam reads it like a laser bar code and sends a fully formed image back that appears to come alive right on the paper in the user’s hand.



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Advertising

Man, Cars, Nature in “Harmony”

By Delphine Hirasuna |

Man, nature and machine have been brought together in the new “Harmony” advertising campaign for the third-generation Prius hybrid. Your eyes are not deceiving you if you think the landscape is alive with people. It is. Two hundred costumed extras were filmed and then computer cloned to create a surreal landscape made to look like over a million people. Evocative of photographer Ann Geddes’s pictures of babies fancifully dressed like fairies, flowers and bunnies, the Prius cast was costumed to represent blades of grass, puffy clouds, flowers and leaves. Conceived by Saatchi & Saatchi, Los Angeles, with Mike McKay as executive creative director, the Prius commercial was filmed in New Zealand. Hideaki Hosono –better known as Mr. Hide (pronounced hee-day) — represented by The Sweet Shop production company, directed the human sequences. Nine different nature costumes were designed for the shoot, with 150 people forming the grass and water, 22 people for the tree trunks, 20 for the stones, 30 for the leaves, 20 for the clouds, 10 for the sun, 8 for the flowers, 8 for the butterflies and 23 for the autumn leaves.

Information Graphics

Walt Disney’s Creative Organization Chart

By Delphine Hirasuna |

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In 1943, five years after it was founded and during the height of World War II, Walt Disney Studios put out an organization chart to explain how the company functioned. What’s fascinating is how it differs from org charts issued by most corporations. Typically, corporate org charts are hierarchical, with each operating division isolated into “silos” showing job titles according to reporting chain of command and ultimate authority. The CEO and SVPs get the higher positions and bigger boxes; the little boxes represent the expendable worker “bees.”

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Design Quizzes

Quiz: Know Your Brand Alphabet

By Delphine Hirasuna |

About 12 years ago, we presented a quiz titled “Alphabet Soup,” (Vol. 3, No. 2) to see if our readers could identify a company simply by the first logotype letter in its name. Since then, new companies, and whole new industries, have risen to the forefront. Some of the brands featured in that quiz don’t exist anymore. So, we have created a new alphabet quiz out of logotypes from some of today’s best-known companies. Keep in mind that the most recognizable letter is sometimes in the middle of the name. If you’re stumped, take a peek at the answers.

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Packaging

UnChain Me: Brooklyn Fare
Competes on Its Own Home Ground

By Delphine Hirasuna |

How do you beat the national retail giants at their own game? By being what they’re not – from the neighborhood. Challenged by Brooklyn native, Moe Issa, to design a store brand that evoked memories of the friendly grocer down the block, but in a contemporary, upscale way, Mucca Design focused on keeping Brooklyn Fare’s identity simple and personable. As Mucca says in its newsletter, “A unique strategy + one typeface + four colors + a lot of copy.”

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