CBC Television: Zed Website
Zed, the program which aired every weeknight on CBC, played original music, short films, animation, performance, visual art and spoken word pieces from around the world. Many of witch were user generated content uploaded through the website. Zed was basically a free outlet for all kinds of creative talent, to share their work with the world. Zed was conceived from an idea of creating a 'web+TV' hybrid platform, a launch pad, and a network for creative talent in Canada. Utilizing the website as an integral part of the show, not just as a promotional vehicle, which most TV show websites still are. Throughout the 4 seasons, more than 40,000 users had uploaded more than 50,000 pieces of content. Most part of the site was created, and run by users and it's communities. User's involvement was very important. Once a user uploaded a piece of content, the number of views and ratings by other registered users influenced what would eventually get on TV.
With it's young; maybe a bit mischievous editorial voice, and a selection of edgy content, Zed brought younger audiences to the late night timeslot for the CBC. Quite ahead of it's time, Zed directly inspired and influenced many other sites to follow such as current.tv.
There were many design, usability, and technological challenges to overcome for the website. User friendliness was an important goal, in order to navigate through the massive number of content. Working in conjunction with the TV show also introduced extra challenges since the TV had many priorities that sometimes conflicted with the goal of the website. However these challenges were never seen as obstacles but rather as our chance to explore exciting innovation.
Version 1 of Zed's website introduced dynamic flash embedded fonts to generate custom headers. Very much like a manual version of sIFR way before it was introduced, however the idea was the same. Using this method we were able to produce custom designed font treatments to all the headers throughout the site very efficiently. Another feature of the site was an intuitive calendar interface that let you browse through the episodes. This episode browser talked to the database to look up episode information, and was a prominent feature of the home page.
In Version 2, and 3, a crazy concept was realized. "Why stick with one design when we can create a new skin for the homepage every week?" Thus the skin-able website was born. After 2 seasons of skin making we ended up with over a dozen skins that the users could choose from their preferences. Above shows a couple of examples that were very popular. In addition to the weekly skin design, an interactive top banner was designed to emphasize the weekly theme, and to give more interest to the site.
Many of Zeds original formats and concepts went through a huge reshaping on the 4th season. The website was designed to reflect this change. Most importantly a new brand, and image was created for both web and TV platforms.
CBC Television: Zed Flash Banners
Zed's flash banners that was placed above every page. were an important component of the weekly skin created for the site versions 2 and 3. Banners ranged from simple image banners, to sophisticated interactive games programmed in action script. These banners were conceived, designed, produced, and programmed by myself for the promotional skins. Usually working together with the theme of the TV show that week.
Animal farm, was inspired by an ancient puzzle game, you can play the artificial intelligence to see if you can beat the red snake. All you have to do is avoid eating the red poisonous frog. But it isn't as simple as it sounds.
Bad Santa: This year Santa hasn't been so nice, and found himself on the naughty list. Play a bit of virtual mole hunting game and see how many points you can score. I think the High score posted on Zed was around 320.
The Game banner was created to pay tribute to the early days of video games, and what could be more classic than the good-old game of pong. Play with a friend, or play with the computer and hit CBC around for a bit.
Live off the floor was built to promote the Zed produced CD "Live off the floor" with 17 great songs recorded right in our studios. You can actually click on the "Bang and Olufsen 17 CD changer" to sample all the songs on the CD.
A creepy crawly Halloween banner. Enjoy watching real spiders, and maggots crawl around the screen. Click here and Launch a new window - then click anywhere to see how we planned to open the website on the week of Halloween.Mazi Media: Digital Magazine
Mazi Media - digital magazineThis is a prototype for a digital magazine promoting Korean tourism. This seasonal magazine was planned to be distributed to major Korean airline passengers visiting Korea.
A simple click navigation transitions you through the pages of this digital magazine, as if flipping through a stack of photos. You can also jump right to the page you want using the table of contents navigation.
In order to maximize the visual impact large full screen photos were used to drive the overall look and feel of the magazine. Several photographers were commissioned to capture beautiful images of Korea so that it could generate more excitement, and give ideas of what visitors could do while they are staying in Korea.
Tangerine Photographics: Website
Tangerine Photographics: websiteMaximizing the visual presentation of the photographs was the first priority for this flash based portfolio site for this pack shot photography studio. The size of the photographs have been set by the client, so that it is big enough to sample their work, yet not to big to have unwanted usage of their photos.
Minimal user interface design brings focus to the photos. Simple and clear navigation to allows fluent browsing of the photographs. User interface literally gets out of the way once in presentation mode.
Technical considerations for the client had to be made, so that when photos were updated on the server, the website would automatically add, update the new photos to the flash application. Another feature that the users would first encounter is the random splash photo on the homepage. This feature is also automatically updated by simply adding or replacing photos on the server. These auto update features help keep the site up to date and fresh. Consideration for the client section has been made so they can enter a code to enter a private section where they can review their photos
Elastic Entertainment: Website
Elastic Entertainment is a young company that focuses on new and innovative experiences on the web and mobile platform. A complete identity package had to be designed from the logo, to promotional swag, print advertisement and website.
Young, energetic, creative, friendly, clean and simple were keywords that had to be conveyed from this website.
Version 1 had a simple design, and straight forward blog like layout, in order to give a simple web 2.0 feel to the company.
For version 2 carefully chosen photos were used to bring the right emotions and feeling for every page. Composition, layout, and colors were very important since every page with a different photo brought different design.