Pissing on flies and kicking-in nonses

Last night's Digital Futures talk was superb. Really inspiring stuff and if by some fluke Jane Fielder from Red Bee or Nicolas Roope from Poke are reading this, many thanks for making the effort and coming to Belfast!

Red Bee used to be the BBC's graphics department, now an independant company working internationally for loads of different broadcasters. When it was part of the Beeb, Jane was involved in title sequences and ident's for things like Top of the Pops, Blackadder and lots of other stuff including those brilliant BBC2 ident's (not sure if they did them all). She showed us her old show reel, modestly playing it down but I thought it stood up well - it was very "analogue" while more recent work has become digital-orientated, although by no means exclusively so.

Jane explained how the nature of her work has changed from domestically-focused, intuitively-driven work for one broadcaster to research-based, brand-experience work for an international clientele and how the nature of programming and channel identity has shifted. She descibed how it used to be all about craft, now programmes and channels are recognised as valuable commercial assets.

Two examples stood out: the totally brilliant work that surrounded Life on Mars, like this...

...and Dave.

A channel, "for blokes that like to go down the pub but can't because they've got a family", the idea behind Dave was to make a channel that felt like your mate, so the actors involved in the fillers and idents are from a small select and so eventually, familiar cast. Interesting and importantly, the channel was going to be called TVGT before the idea was formulated and "Dave" was proposed.

The simple and important conclusion from Jane's talk, for me at least, was that "the big idea" was still the most important thing and that, like John Grant's "think genre not application" idea, the best concepts are platform independent.

Looking like some kind great design viking (revealing his Norwegian roots) Poke's Nicolas Roope was up next and talked about the tension between making something look good and making it work. As well as Poke, Nicolas is one of the guys behind Hulger, the people responsible for that beautiful and energy efficient Plumen bulb...

...he explained his interest in surprising solutions that have effective results like the fly-in-the-urinal (not by them) that you'll find in Schiphol Airport, Amsterdam which reduced unfortunate spillages by around 80%, cutting cleaning costs significantly.

Poke are the people that did all that Orange Balloonacy stuff and created the first never ending website for Orange Unlimited...

Nicolas talked about how crucial the scroll bar was for that, how it had to be part of the Flash but that it needed to recognize your browser and appear in its style to be totally convincing. Apparently, people would test its neverendingness by leaving a book on their scroll key and go home for the night only to get in the next morning to find it still scrolling. It's an amazing piece of work and created a real buzz around the brand, which tied in nicely with what Jane was talking about earlier.

A really great night. You should have been there.

Comments

[Mike Reed]

Sounds great, Richard. But the last bit about the scrolling reinforces my curmudgeonly sense that Good Things Never End was essentially an exercise in technology, not really a great communication idea.

The 'buzz' that I heard, as with the balloons, fell largely into the category of 'Isn't it amazing what they can do nowadays?', rather than unlocking any especially interesting ideas about the brand.

I can well believe the story about people testing the scroll, but is that really what it should all have been about?

Sorry. I'll dismount from the hobby horse. (Love the bulb.)

[Richard]

Oh Mike! You had to go and spoil it didn't you.

Damn it, it was a room full of digital designers, they love all that stuff. Funnily enough though, one of the best questions from the floor highlighted how bad the Orange brand experience can be. I can't comment on how successful the site was, I don't know (should have asked). I do think Pokes work is kind of "out there" and it would be easy to question whether that "tension between making something look good and making it work" was weighted in the right way. You see, I can be curmudgeonly as well. Also, the impression I got was that provoking "isn't it amazing what they can do nowadays" was actually one of the objectives of the piece. Whether that works for Orange, again, I don't know.

Anyway, Nicolas was a very nice chat. And he liked my idea of Segway Jousting.

[Mike Reed]

I'm afraid my experience as an Orange customer may have coloured my view of their communications. It's only fair to admit that.

But even if I part the red mist that descends every time I think about my phone turning itself off all the time, I can't help feeling that much of this stuff is so much digital wallpaper, albeit with some freebies thrown in. This is not, by the way, a general poke at Poke. It's specific to Orange. I also loathe their sickly, sanctimonious, self-important - and ultimately vapid - 'I am who I am because of everyone' ad campaign. (Oh dear, there I go again.)

Anyway, my iPhone arrives on Monday, thank the Lord. So I will finally escape my Orange contract for good, into the Promised Land that is O2 and Apple. If you thought Obama's victory was exciting, you've clearly never freed yourself from the shackles of an 18-month contract with Orange.

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