Dot

“Manifesto”, the Brutal Reality of Texting and Driving.

One of my biggest pet peeves are people who text and drive. I don’t care if you are rolling or stopped, if you are on your phone behind the wheel, you’re probably a menace. You’re the person weaving across lanes, not paying attention when the light turns green, stopping a length and a half behind the car in front of you, etc. Banning texting and driving is hard to enforce, just like banning talking on your phone without a hands free kit. Because it’s a hard to enforce law, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has launched grisly new ads combatting distracted drivers with the slogan “U Drive. U Text. U Pay.” There are two versions of the TV spot below. Both have the same brutal reality and outcome. 

The NHTSA released a report this April estimating that 3,328 people were killed and 421,000 were injured in crashes caused by distracted driving in 2012. It also states that federally funded enforcement programs combined with PSAs like these, reduced the dangerous practice of texting and driving from 4.1 percent to 2.7 percent in California and from 4.5 percent to 3.0 percent in Delaware alone. April is National Distracted Driving Awareness Month. To further ram this message home, the Department of Transportation is coordinating with law enforcement for a national crackdown on cell phone use while behind the wheel from April 10-15. I hope it works.

Advertisement

It’s Not Technology. It’s What You Do With It.

This entire film by Aardman Studios was shot using a Nokia N8, and a microscope adapter. The main character is 9 millimeters tall. yes 9 Millimeters.

In the opening title frame for the short film “The Making of Dot”, the director sets up a very important statement. “It’s not technology. It’s what you do with it.” This statement is so true, and it is often a concept that gets forgotten by designers as they get seduced by the tools or technologies they work with. I spend 8 to 10 hours a day working at a computer using most if not all of the Adobe CS5 creative suite. I know just how easy it is to let the technology take over. I think that is one of the reasons that I am so impressed with “Dot”. The crew that produced this stop motion film, used some very advanced technology to create a really wonderful little short film. They used the technology as a challenge to develop the look of the film, but didn’t allow it to take over the film, and that can be a very hard thing to do.

Watch both clips. The short is great, and the making of video is really pretty amazing, especially when you see just how small this actually is.