Eyefodder:Projects

The Godfather

2005-10-24T02:43:36Z

I'll write about this in a bit - but its all a bit hectic just now...

FHM

2005-03-12T03:06:35Z

Quick! There's time to be wasted!

FHM.com is the biggest men's lifestyle website in Europe, with over 2 million viewers a month. Despite this, their old site had become somewhat chaotic in organisation, and a wee bit dated. Working in conjunction with the in-house team at FHM, we developed a new design and navigation style for the site, creating a series of channels, each with their own interactive magazine cover pushing key parts of the content.

Advertisors have the opportunity to sponsor individual channels, with custom designed interstitial animations and co-branded channel buttons.go to the site

Knife and Packer

2004-10-24T03:34:01Z

Knife and Packer, cartoonists who regularly contribute to Private Eye, the Guardian, and The Sunday Times, contacted me about developing a small site for them online. We hashed out a few ideas, and decided to develop an interactive street scene that would have shops for each of the areas they worked in.

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The site is navigated by steering Jez & Quin - Knife & Packer's two Islingtonites from their Private Eye strip - around town on their moped, dropping in to various boutiques along the way.

I really enjoyed putting the site together, as the design process was a real partnership between me and the cartoonists. I think their own unique sense of humour shows through the site with lots of hidden bits and pieces as well as the requisite portfolio of work.

Eurosport

2004-10-24T03:32:14Z

Eurosport were looking for an online version of their media pack which would provide media buyers and potential advertisers with a good first point of contact with the company. The site has all the necessary audience and reach figures as well as some natty animations extolling the Eurosport proposition. There's a simple content management system allowing updates, but I have to admit my favourite bit to the site is the subtle colour changes between sections...

Select Models

2004-09-24T03:11:30Z

After seeing the site we had built for Ellison Lee, Select approached box to develop their web presence for them. With over 500 models on their books, this was a much larger scale job, so we developed a natty system for browsing models by name or vital statistics - need a red-haired woman who is 6 feet tall, and has green eyes?...

I think the end result is again a really neat, clean and simple site, which lets busy casting agents and fashion professionals quickly find the right model for the job. BIMA thought so to, and highly commended the site in their 2003 awards

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When visitors browse through the range of people on Select's books, they can shortlist models they are interested in. The shortlisted models can be compared side by side to see how they sit next to each other. When the client has made a selection, they can send this to Select, who will contact them about their requirements.

We took the work we had done with Ellison Lee bespoke portfolio tool, and developed it into a much more robust system. Bookers at the agency can quickly put together a portfolio of models, each with a customised run of images tailored to the job in hand. The system also tells bookers when their clients have opened a portfolio, so they know the right time to call their client and seal the deal

The real smart stuff with Select goes on behind the scenes. I designed and built a robust, but easy to use, content management system. Booker's can manage every aspect of the website very quickly, from changing the model's vital statistics to adding and removing models.

Ellison Lee

2004-02-24T03:20:02Z

Ellison Lee, a leading photographic agency, approached us asking for complete reworking of the site box had produced for them a few years previously. I created a site that responded to the way they do business. Potential bookers need to browse through artist's work quickly and with a minimum of fuss, so the site had to be clean and simple with and emphasis on the beauty of the photography. A quiet interface that lets the images speak for themselves...

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The real meat of the site goes on behind the scenes. Given the ebb and flow of fashion, it was very important that the images on the site were kept up to date. The thing is, the guys at Ellison Lee are great at what they do, but they are anything but technically minded. I designed a very easy to use drag and drop interface for managing the site. They can add images to an artist's library and manage the images viewable on the website. There was also a facility for creating bespoke portfolios (click button 3 above for more on these).

With Clients all over the world, Ellison Lee often has to courier artist's portfolios globally overnight to potential bookers. This is an expensive business, and so we came up with a solution to provide a first point of contact with the agency. Using the bespoke folio tool, Ellison Lee can quickly create a customised page of images tailored to the individual client's needs.

Heineken

2003-05-24T03:38:43Z

A few years ago, 1999 to be precise, Heineken ran a competition to design a new beer brand. It was a pretty open brief - design what you like, as long as it"s beer. I came up with a design for a brand of beer that was aimed at the young early adopters of our generation. The project was highly commended in the competition which attracted over 1400 entries worldwide.

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Stijl is the new drink for the young, early adopters of our generation. They are keenly aware and appreciative of creative ideas, and are willing to reward them with their custom as long as the design has expert approval. Their jobs require frequent travel, and as such have a much greater cultural vocabulary than previous generations of young achievers. These are the "Urban Nomads"

The urban nomad drinks beer rarely, and if so, expensive brands in bottles. He/She disdains the "lager lout" culture associated with current brands. What they desire is a drink with a sense of occasion, rather like a brandy or fine red wine. Stijl is unlike other lagers in that it is almost serenely still: the taste of a premium lager with the creamy texture and refreshing quality of British "bitter" or stout served ice cold. Without excessive gas, Stijl moves away from cheap, fizzy lager and becomes a pleasant way to relax; a fine drink to consume in volume, without lager"s attendant gaseous drawbacks.

The name, Stijl works on many levels. Pronounced in English it is the descriptive "still" in reference to the tranquil state of the liquid inside. It also has connotations with distilleries where fine spirits are produced. In Dutch, "Stijl" refers to the drink that is the quintessence of style and taste in our modern society. It also refers to the beginnings of the modern movement in the arts "De Stijl", whose members believed in paring down objects and forms to their essential geometric nature, discarding the unnecessary cultural baggage of ornament.

In addition, as with the successful Czech beer Staropramen, or the Vodka Stolichnaya, Stijl allows customers to boast of their "correct pronunciation" of the brand forming an important bond with the product for an image-concious target audience.

The packaging and branding of Stijl has been simplified further than any previous generation of beer. The Font, "Futura Display" was designed in the mid twenties in an attempt to simplify type for machine production. Bold and without ornament it remains one of the strongest and most eye catching fonts available. Simple and to the point, it exemplifies the ethos of Stijl.

The can is beautifully machined aluminium. Beers with image usually come in a bottle, but by highlighting the integral beauty of machine made products, we have elevated the usually lowly status of the "tin can". It holds less than a standard beer can, 250ml, ensuring that the product doesnt have a chance to warm up. Rather than the usual "tall and thin" format format for smaller volume cans, we have used the standard diameter of beer cans and created a package that is squat, chunky and feels substantial - no other can looks or handles like it.

Stijl has a unique two-hole lid. This ensures that the beer always flows from the can with no spillage. This also highlights the fact that the beer is not intended to be consumed directly from the can, setting it apart from any suggestion of "loutishness". Its design ensures that Stijl is enjoyed in a glass.

The "ring pull" takes the form of a red tab of metal to set off the minimal nature of the can. All brand naming and advertising is restricted to thetab. Open the can and the brandingis superficially lost. The consumer is left with the ultimate in clean lines-a completely silver can unobstructed in its form by words. To a consumer keenly aware of image, the idea of drinking something without a recogniseable brand will appeal. The design thus achieves the paradox of being heavily branded and at the same time anonymous.

The "ring pull" is as important to the brand as the can itself, as identifiable and unique as the grolsch bottle top. Upon opening, a piece of curved metal is left in the hand - an attractive, easily recognisable piece of detritus signifying the shedding of consumerism in a heavily consuming society.