Tablet

Art, Copy & Code. Nike’s “Phenomenal Shot” campaign.

The business of advertising is a tricky game. You need to keep one step ahead of the competition, constantly create memorable and unique advertisements, develop those ideas across an ever expanding horizon of channels, and constantly create something new for your client. One agency that seems to do this with ease on a regular basis is W+K and when they team up with Grow and Google they produce something really unique that shows just how the world of advertising is changing in clever new ways.

In a campaign for Nike, W+K and Grow created a series of Real-Time ads that were designed to let fans celebrate, remix, and share customized posters, and images within 10 seconds of a sporting event happening live. “Phenomenal Shot” uses a Nike sponsored player rendered in 3D along with a series of prewritten headlines, phrases, stickers, and filters, that allow fans to remix that moment and share with friends across a variety of digital networks.

The Real-Time Ads are rendered with a 3D-Engine and then distributed via the Google Ad Network across all devices creating an immersive experience powered by HTML5, CSS, and java script. Using the gyroscope that is built in to smartphones and tablets fans can spin the Nike athlete in 3D space to create the perfect shot before embellishing with ad-ons. Since the entire experience is rendered with WebGL the experience happens within the browser and there is no need for plugins or a dedicated app. Pretty damn slick, and a great way to promote your brand without being overly pushy or doing a hard sell. For more info on #ArtCopyCode click here.

What if Wacom Built a Tablet Computer? They Are.

If you are a designer or artist working with digital tools like Photoshop or Illustrator, you might have had a chance to work with the Wacom Cintiq. If you are unfamiliar with the Cintiq, it is Wacom’s monitor/input tablet combined. It allows you to draw and paint right on the surface, mimicking an actual physical work surface.

If you are an iPad or other tablet user, you have probably installed a few creative apps like Procreate, or ArtRage and use your tablet for sketching, drawing, photo-retouching, etc. with some kind of input stylus. And while your stylus does a pretty good job, in many ways it is not a substitute for your Wacom tablet or Cintiq. The fact is most styluses, have larger input tips, and almost all of them don’t offer pressure sensitivity like the Wacom. So, why hasn’t Wacom jumped into the tablet fray? Well they have.

The Wacom Cintiq Companion, and Comanion Hybrid are two new tablets from Wacom. The Companion runs a full blown version of Windows 8 and allows you full access to all of your desktop creative tools. The Companion Hybrid runs Android and give you access to all of your favorite Android creative apps, like Procreate, Sketch, and ArtRage.

Both tablets offer an immersive on-screen creative experience and take full advantage of Wacom’s pressure sensitive stylus on a high resolution portable screen. The Companion running Windows 8 is essentially a mobile workstation with multi-touch control, pressure sensitive input and cloud based connectivity allowing you to create and share you r work from anywhere. Frankly I find this to be very exciting, because it take what I do on my iPad and extends it allowing me to be more creative from anywhere.

The overall specs for both tablets looks pretty impressive, especially for a first effort. Screen resolution is 1920 by 1080, Intel® CORE™ i-7 processor, 2048 levels pen pressure, 256 or 512 GB solid state drive, 16.7 million color display, 8 gig of RAM… I hope that Wacom is successful with this, because competition is a good thing, and hopefully it means Apple, and stylus manufacturers will step up their game resulting in better products for everyone.

There is no word on pricing and or availability as of yet, but you can sign up for email announcements about the tablets as they get closer to a launch date and release pricing info.

Condé Nast – Editorialist

Condé Nast is probably one of the best publishers of magazines for digital devices like your tablet or phone. They have embraced the technology and taken full advantage of extensive interactive components that make their publications more immersive. Like any other publisher of content in todays world they are not free from the effects of a public trained to gather all their content for free online.

At Future Lions 2013 competition in Cannes this year, one of the winners was an idea presented for Condé Nast to keep the publisher relevant in an ever changing digital content world. The winner for Condé Nast’s magazine portfolio was actually something rather simple, and quite compelling. Part Flipboard, part Utne reader. It is a Condé Nast app that allows readers to select their favorite articles from any Condé Nast magazine, and then build your own monthly publication that brings all of your favorites together in one space for a monthly fee. This is something that publishers should latch on to.

The Never Ending Growing Impact of Social Media.

Most of the information in the image below isn’t really new, or ground breaking. If you don’t know the impact that social media has had on the internet/mobile world in the last 8 years you must have been living on a deserted island. None the less, since an image is worth a thousand words, feast your eyes upon this infographic and behold Americans’ increasing obsession with social media. One interesting little nugget is the increasing use of tablet based internet usage while watching TV.