Having recently been commissioned to carry out a study of the digital publishing platforms1 currently available, one aspect has become abundantly clear: everyone is chasing the dream.
The dream, depicted as a kind of candy wrapper in posters on the walls of so many publishing exhibition booths, is of a mechanism by which source content is input (one side of the candy wrapper), some magic happens (the candy itself) resulting in packaged experiences available seamlessly across desktop browsers, tablets and mobile phones (the other side of the candy wrapper).
Aspiration?
Sure, platforms exist that cater well for specific devices, and some that cater well for multiple devices, but none by using the same original, designed content, played in a form that works cross-device. Maybe this is an unrealistic expectation. The tablet user interface for instance, inherently differs from the desktop interface. Swiping makes no sense on the desktop, whilst mouse-over makes no sense on a tablet. Purely from a design perspective then, surely it is impractical to cater for both? And what about differences in format? A page/window/panel/screen (delete as inappropriate) on one device will have a different aspect ratio on another.
In design resource alone, brands looking to publish across as wide a gamut of devices as possible are faced with an expensive undertaking. Cost pressure alone is driving demand.
It may be that initial releases require compromise in design. Alternatively, compromise may be in functionality. Either way, platforms will exist because demand dictates. And whoever caters for the demand, and does so well, is likely to do very nicely.
1Where ‘platform’ is used to describe a mechanism by which source content is input, edited, transformed and published to multiple devices in a format sympathetic to the high design value of a glossy magazine and capable of harnessing the interactivity of digital media.
Create an impact with a viral marketing method first used in 1919
This afternoon above the steets of Manhattan, I witnessed a light aircraft ‘write’ a number of short phrases in the sky. Today was a particularly warm and cloudless day so the streets and parks were thronged with people, most of whom gazed skyward as the apparently unrelated phrases painted their way slowly and somewhat errily above Manhattan’s west side.
Cue a Twitter frenzy. What did these prases mean? Who was behind them? And why, of all the phrases was ‘LAST CHANCE’ one of them? Unsurprisingly, every phrase instantly warranted its own hashtag, as did ‘skywriting’ of course.
Written in the sky over Manhattan. But is it art?
Reactions varied from the near hysterical (one Tweet, from a man in Brooklyn said he and his family had begun packing their car to flee the city) to the downright dismissive. Either way, a conversation was suddenly under way, and on a darned large scale. The consensus was that this was clearly a marketing stunt and we would discover the meaning in due course.
Turns out, the messages were not marketing related at all (at least not unless you’re really cynical). No, the messages were in fact, public art. Now I’m no art critic but for the 30 minutes or so it took to complete and subsequently lose the artwork on the wind, I was as transfixed as much of New York City. Powerful stuff. Stuff which was apparently first performed in 1919.
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Posted in Advertising, General Comment, Uncategorized
Tagged art, high line, kim beck, linkedin, nyc, skywriting