isn’t this crossing the line?

ABC told media buyers it is considering inserting commercials directly into its online programming. For instance, commercials would pop out of televisions, cell phones and print ads appearing within episodes of shows such as Ugly Betty and According to Jim, then expand to run in full-screen mode.

I’m not sure I’m ready for this. What do you think?

paul mccartney and starbucks

Paul McCartney’s next album will be released, not through a record label, but through Starbucks. Actually a joint venture between Starbucks Entertainment and Concord Music. Click here for the full press release. What do you think about this? Weird? Way of the future? Typical?

lucifer

RG Entertainment has tapped Radar Creative to create a website, DVD and movie poster for Lucifer, a movie being produced & directed by Ray Griggs of RG Entertainment. Some of Hollywood’s top “A List” players collaborated on the movie trailer including cinematographer Russell Carpenter, a well-known film scoring orchestra, Cafe FX and ADI. Griggs plans on shopping the DVD trailer around town in order to raise the necessary financing needed to film the feature length movie. Click here to view the website (a work in progress) or visit www.luciferthemovie.com. Don’t forget to sign the guestbook.

visual trends: “zoom-to-reveal” (by matthew warren)

“Zoom-to-reveal” design (or ZTR as I’ll refer to it in this blog) is becoming more and more of a trend in the design world.

A few years ago, websites like Mapquest and Google maps introduced us to an old concept: zooming in to reveal more. You might be familiar with the work of Charles Eams and his Orders of Magnitude, but this concept of zooming in to reveal more information as it relates to the Information Age and not the Scientific World, is a newer concept. Let me explain.

With Google Maps, we can choose what information we want to see and on what level. You can choose Earth, continent, country, state, county, city, highway, road, sidewalk, ant… you get the idea. Stay at a higher elevation if you’re wanting to know where a person’s home is in relationship to the freeway; zoom in closer if you want to see where a person’s home is in relationship to the street (ie: end of the cul-de-sac, before the right turn, etc…).

So now companies are using this mentality with designing their sites. Stay at a higher elevation if you’re wanting to know where this company is in relationship to the industry (how do they compare with the other guys?); zoom in closer if you want to see where this company is in relationship to its clients (who are they working with?); zoom in even closer if you want to see where this company is in relationship to specific projects it’s producing (why are they different/better/smarter?).

The best example of this is Leo Burnett’s website: a creative ad agency in Canada. As you’ll see (after you’ve spent three hours of your life playing with their website), they apply this technique to their world quite brilliantly.

Another example I can’t cut & paste here is what TBS (a TV network in the U.S.) is doing with their graphics packages. Drew Lucas found this website (browsegoods.com) and sent it to me — again, a perfect example of how ZTR is being used effectively in the design world.

What do you think? Is this just a fad or a new way of communicating in a visual world?

radar field trip

Click here to view pictures from Radar’s latest field trip.

fsi wins four more awards

FSI has won four Telly Awards for training, writing (Mary Harris), editing (Corey Yaktus) and cinematography (Darren Rydstrom). More info to come.