Advertising

Nike+ FuelBand Fuels An Interactive Music Video

This video is not an ad for Nike+ FuelBand, but it is an offshoot project that fuses technology, human movement and music. The “Field” video is based on HTML technology and requires Google Chrome to let viewers control the experience through the use of a keyboard and mouse to change colors and dot patterns. Nike created it in collaboration with Dazed Digital Magazine and Nosaj Thing, the Los Angeles-based music producer, and FAIR, LA, the design/technology collective led by Julia Tsao. It was produced with Swedish interactive studio, DinahMoe.

Engaging users is also key to the Nike+FuelBand, a matte black rubber-coated wristband that tracks the wearer’s activity through a sport-tested accelerometer that translates every move into NikeFuel – a point system to measure progress against a pre-set goal. The wristband notes every movement – walking, running, jumping – and the amount of calories consumed. Each day users set the goal they wish to attain, and the LED display indicates how well they are doing by changing color from red to yellow to green. Users can upload the data onto their computer or send it via Bluetooth to their smartphone. The FuelBand changes users from passive to active participants in setting and meeting their fitness goals. It becomes a one-person sport challenging users to exceed their personal best.

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Motion Graphics

Pentagram Turns 40

Pentagram, the international design consultancy, celebrated its 40th anniversary this year with a stop-motion video, narrated by a voice that sounds somewhat like the Dos Equis “most interesting man in the world.”

“The Forty Story” is a tale of a boy born on the day that Pentagram opened its doors in London, and shows how his life has been impacted by 40 years of Pentagram design. To chronologically (more or less) knit together a small sampling of Pentagram’s amazingly diverse body of work, the storyline veers wildly, starting out by claiming the boy was born in a BP petrol station, walking in Clarks shoes by age 1, shaving with a disposable razor by age 3, publishing poems about Pirelli tires with a Parker Pen by age 6, and acclaimed by Reuters as a lad before being panned by Italy’s 24 Ore and resorting to antidepressants. The story goes on until he finds love and contentment, with Pentagram’s portfolio of projects flashing across the screen.

The script was written by Naresh Ramchandani and Tom Edmonds, directed by Christian Carlsson, with titles by John Rushworth.

Congratulations on your first 40 years, Pentagram! May your next 40 years be just as stellar.

Viral Marketing

Drama in a Belgian Square

This video was produced to promote the launch of the TV channel TNT in Belgium. We’d tell you more but don’t want to spoil the tagline. The viral stunt was produced by the Duval Guillame Modem agency, with Geoffrey Hantson as creative director and Koen Mortier as director.

Design Education

What Nobody Tells Beginners

Ira Glass, the host and producer of the Public Radio International storytelling program, “This American Life,” expounded on what nobody tells to beginners. Singapore-based filmmaker, David Shiyang Liu, took Glass’s comments and turned them into a video. Glass’s words are insightful and reassuring in themselves, but displayed as kinetic type, we pay rapt attention with both our ears and our eyes, which makes Glass’s observations all the more meaningful.

Humor

Royal Navy’s Christmas Wish

The crew of the Royal Navy’s HMS Ocean came up with a creative way to announce their Christmas homecoming after seven long months at sea. In a series of giddy antics, they lipsynced their way through Mariah Carey’s rendition of “All I Want for Christmas.”

Last April the HMS Ocean was sent out for what was supposed to be a seven-week training exercise, but suddenly got diverted to Libya instead to support the UN air mission during the uprising against Moammar Gaddafi. When the crew finally got word that they’d be back in their home port of Plymouth for Christmas, they celebrated by making their own video during an unusually quiet two-day period. A morale booster for the crew, the video is silly, funny and a “feel-good” way to usher in the holidays. Welcome home.