1. What’s all the buzz about - Pay per click?
2. Thoughts about the advancement of technology

1.What’s all the buzz about - Pay per click?

I am just going to talk about what the first guest lecturer shared with us in lecture. Pay Per Click. TO make things easier, lets call it PPC for short.

It may sound very technical and well, lets say it isn’t the most creative term. But the whole pay per click and it’s market represents something very significant and could very well be the start of a paradigm shift.

I like how he explained to us what the whole concept and use of the PPC. How it works, like you really only pay per click, how much budget you can set for yourself and how to use it generally. My favorite part has to be how he gave us a rough explanation on how google’s PPC works. I roughly knew how they work, but never did I realise so much effort and so many factors went into deciding which PPC would be at the top of the list. Initially I had thought just the amount they paid plus the relevance was all that mattered. Then he opened my eyes to the click percentages, bids for PPC using the keywords and such.

Some images of where google’s PPC ads are.

Besides google, other sites like facebook and yahoo have their own PPC rates and services.

It’s changing the way websites are being made, it’s changing how companies and businesses position themselves and where the money for advertising and publicity is going. As discussed in class, does this take away certain job scopes of marketeers and advertisers? Maybe, maybe not…

2.Thoughts about the advancement of technology

After Kenneth’s and Daniel’s presentation on search engines, I was alittle spooked out. Not about the search engines alone, but by the corporations behind. They have alot of our information, where we live, our contacts, personal details. Then the imagine of Arnold as the terminator and how skynet has taken over the world came to mind. Technology is doing alot more and the pace just gets faster and faster. Minority Report and the technology coming to life as mentioned in my previous post is a clear example of what I mean.

I would personally want…technological advances to slow down. To allow humanity to grow and bask in , well humanity, nature real human interactions. Technology makes life easier, makes life better, but at what cost?

A 2002 film staring couch jumping Tom Cruise!

Here’s some interesting technology we’ve seen in the movie.

1. ‘Hands On’ Technology

Here is Tom screening through the ‘visions’ of the pre-cogs, he’s able to fast forward, cut zoom in, playback, rearrange and I’m sure do alot more with this piece of technology.

Well abit of googling brought some very interesting news, what was actually thought of being something of a very far future 8 years ago has actually become a reality of today.

It is called the ‘g-speak’ system. In this video below, John Underkoffler [ the science and technology advisor for the film] demonstrates the use of the system.

2. E-News paper

A newspaper with articles in video format, like a news channel on what seems like a piece of paper. It also updates with the latest news or in Cruises’s case, breaking news of his arrest warrant.

It would be pretty cool, to just have to buy 1 newspaper for the rest of your life [ though that might put publication companies out of business]. In the years after the movie, we’ve been treated to services very similar to that showed in the movie. Yes it is no video on the newspaper, but we’ve got tablets like the iPad, coupled with services like twitter or rss feeds or live video and text updates for news sites, it’s as good[or even better] than the E-Newspaper in the movie.

3. Iris Recognition

A real hassle for Tom throughout the movie was getting past the iris scanners throughout the city, he got pass it by getting his eyes changed somewhere midway of the movie. The technology isn’t used widely in the commercial market, nor do they look as nice as those in the movies, but iris scanners have been employed all over the world for quite some time now. Used for security and identification purposes by governments and their military.

The movie’s version was just cosmetically better looking.

“the iris scanner model 2100-wikipedia images”

4. Pre-Cogs

The number 1 or most advanced piece of technology, would have to be the pre-cogs. Although I’m not sure they can actually be classified as technology. The entire system of using the pre-cogs to view into the future itself has to be the most advance piece of technology in the film, taking into account that it’s only used in Washington D.C in the film’s universe.

An excerpt from a short article found on the Engadget.com -

“The Guardian is now reporting that a team of neuroscientists have brought pre-crime technology to a new, even creepier level, developing a brain scan that can purportedly read people’s intentions before they act on them” -”http://www.engadget.com/2007/02/09/neuroscientists-read-peoples-intentions-with-brain-scan/“

Though it’s still a long time form active service it just goes to show how technology is advancing.

Alot of the technology from a film set 50years in the future is already coming to pass. It really goes to show how rapidly our technological advancement is growing. I personally wonder if there will come a point where we’ve reached the pinnacle of technology, and if there would ever come a point where by there’s nothing new to invent. From the looks of it, that time seems impossible. But one thing’s for sure, I wouldn’t want to live a world with pre-cogs.

So here it is, I’m back. Hi Mr Andrew ! Minority Report’s report will be on the next post =)

Design & Illustration Elective

Is the best elective in comparison to the other 2 free electives for DMC year 2 Students.
UCCD & TVSM students complain about theirs, dream about doing our work.
This elective, has sort of made me relive the times when I was younger. All the sketching, arts and crafts, playing around with colours and drawing. Bringing it all up to a higher level, seeing how our ideas can be developed. Working on a digital platform. The final piece of work I did was my sketchbook, a pity I forgot to take a picture of it before submission. It really brought me back when we used to cut and paste random pictures to form a collage.

One thing all our electives had, were field trips. UCCD had to go to a place of worship, TVSM had trips to a golf tourney, the indoor stadium. While we got to visit a real agency, the Singapore Design Festival exhibitions and the last one, the Singapore History Museum. All of which were totally fun and interesting, at least to me, I like to look at stuff, the way things are done, colours and texture.

Which I have never been to until that day. I thought I had been there before, turns out that was the Art’s Museum haha.

We had a terrific  guide, who told us alot of facts of the structure and design of the museum at the start. Then as she progressed the significance of the building, certain designs like the coat of arms, why there were 50 window panel and that pineapples were a sign of wealth. Ms Nga pointed out that she told it to us in a sort of story like manner, which after looking back was kinda of true. It didn’t seem boring hearing all the facts because there was an underlying story beneath it all.
The winding staircase – leads up to extra storage area.

This is the balustrades, no idea how to pronounce it. There are only 2 like this in the world, this one and the one in London’s Royal Albert Hall.

The front of the Museum, contains alot of different architectural influence. I can’t fully remember all but the guide did mention that even though it had certain influence, the design was adapted to the climate. In sunny Singapore, the heat.
Just a random door which I like, very long and tall.
Swinging chandeliers, red in colour. There are 6 different swinging patterns in total, each lasting 6 minutes. Sadly I didn’t get a chance to see the ‘dragon’ one, which the guide mentioned really moved like one.

Yaohan bag – from the bags exhibition, pretty fascinating, the bags over the years. How they have changed from paper to plastic now.  I was still very young when Yaohan was still around! so this bag was very nostalgic. 
Ice shaver There was this wall, which had sort of  like an LCD screen. It was supposed to tell the story of the building.The Rotunda Dome – has 50 glass panels to represent the jubilee year of the Queen. From the new building, the black and grey colours were meant to show the excavation of the hill, along with the texture. Shows the ‘cutting’ into fort caning hill.

I guess this is the end for Design and Illustration. A great way to to end it of. No regrets taking it.

- http://www.threadless.com/

Here’s a teaser ! - Can’t really see? Check inside for the full version!

All good things(or tiring ones) must come to an end. The final piece of work we had to do, was to come up with a design and submit it to the well-known Threadless Tees Website.

The Concept: Fish-Cake
Why? : I looked through the current catalog and noticed that alot of the designs are literal visual interpretations of some saying or something. I thought along that line and along the line of things I like. Food popped into my mind first, then the fish cake. So I thought, why not?

Ms Nga did suggest that I could think of other such words for continuity, should my design(i really hope so) gets voted in. Which i’v already thought off hehe, it would be cool to have like my own Tee-Shirt line.

Without further a due  - presenting the “Fish-cake”

I love the final outcome- I have my mother to thank, for being the first critique I had to pass and her giving me so many pointers to touch up to help the design stand out more. =) Thanks Mummy!

Do Vote for me – http://www.threadless.com/submission/254739/Fish_cake_Literally

It would mean alot to know if it’s liked. Alot more if it got printed!

For Ms Nga – Here’s the proof you  needed haha.

And Thanks Amanda! I accidentally used her account to submit my design because I was too excited =.=. So in the end we had to swap accounts haha.

No design is 100% perfect. There’s no real definite marking scheme for designs, that’s what I feel. It really is alot on opinions and perceptions, which can be influenced by culture, background, context and a ton of other stuff.

With that came the first major submission.

Submission 1: CA2 NanYang Optical print ad

Having started in the holidays, but as usual not being completed till the 11th hour, it was the transformation of the Nanyang Optical Ad.

This was the ad we got -

We all had to agree, that it was already quite good. It was eye catching, gets the message across and well, contains all the fine prints that you won’t want to bother reading.

And that my friends, was a challenge.

So this is my final product!

It’s rather simple and plays around with the tagline. Arranged and re-sized to match  one of the boards used during eye-check ups. The star adds the second meaning for  the arrangement as it makes it look a little like a tree. The whole thing was originally  green, but my awesome classmates (sharon, clarissa and amanda) told me I should  change it to red, if not it would have looked like a Hari Raya poster.

And this is the original idea, see the difference? Hehe, I like the difference alot. Thanks guys!

Here it is on the black mounting board, that was quite easy to cut but horribly troublesome to measure out the center portion for the print ad. Overall the class had very nice concepts and execution, I’d have to agree with Ms Nga that we’ve come a long way from when we started out just sketching our animals haha.

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Submission 2: CA3 Mascot Development

A development of a mascot, again. This time for the product that we did on for our Advertising Management’s 4-week campaign.

My group did on Sobe, so the mascot had to be done around Sobe.
The original inspiration I got was from a small wooden Japanese doll key chain that my sister had. But after consultation with Ms Nga, it didn’t quite relate to the intended target audience. So it had to take a more local twist and with that I present to you -

The Final Mascot – The bean head is quite noticeable right?
Round 2 of submission was more manageable, after getting the hang of it. I’m very pleased with this one, because I got to step out of my comfort zone and try using illustrator for the drawing. =)

]]> http://whitepaperclip.wordpress.com/2010/02/10/submissions-submissions-submissions/feed/ 3 kx213 DI CA2 Nanyang Optical Ad CA2 CA2_3_1_2010 DSC00055_2 CA3_poster http://whitepaperclip.wordpress.com/2010/01/20/378/ http://whitepaperclip.wordpress.com/2010/01/20/378/#comments Tue, 19 Jan 2010 18:33:31 +0000 Joel http://whitepaperclip.wordpress.com/?p=378 ]]>

Sketches in sketch books, used to seem to be just for practice. To get the feel, to scribble, to kill some time drawing. But when faced with a task, it kind of acts like a canvas for your ideas. Your brain’s imagination materialized and refined.

I can imagine lots of beautiful scenes or characters, but they never seem to be able to be transfered onto paper. After reading the short article about the sketchbooks, or process books with sketches used in them, it has gave me more insight that what we have been doing, is really more of a process book with sketches. Rather than just a plain sketch book.

Given a task, with desired outcomes and objectives there’s always a need to be able to pen or sketch out ideas, that can be referred to. Then developed into or towards the end product.

“The destination is important, but so is the journey.”

Just some thoughts about the sketch book. I realized mine is still very,  dull. I guess because it’s just an elective and with  a very packed schedule and lots of schoolwork it’s hard to keep stuff clippings or things with nice designs in it.

A truly unique and rather eye-opening festival, even if all I went to was a few exhibits at the Old Court House.

The CCC Character Festival [www.HexaProject.com]

was the first out of 3 compulsory exhibits that we needed to visit and so Mada, Clarissa and myself strayed from the rest of the class and went to it first.

The warm greeting of an almost symmetrical character as you enter.

The room was rather small but it was packed with lots of illustrations beautifully drawn/printed [ looks drawn yet printed] in black. Each piece stood alone but sort of told a story. Now let me allow these photos to tell them.

Kind of looks like very old paper that the chinese used to use. With very vivid and compelling drawings. These 2 are my favorite. It’s pretty amazing what people can do with lets say a black pen and paper. The thought and imagination process in their minds and transferring that onto paper is amazing.

These are some other characters exhibited under the CCC Character Festival

The Planet Planter

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Typography

Now this exhibit was rather unique, in the sense that the room was pitch black. As such pictures taken do not represent
The actual feel of the room. There were several posters hung up with small torch lights with it, the trick was to shine at the poster and the shadow produced would spell out the words on the posters. Hard to imagine, even harder to capture on camera. So you have to use your imagination, it’s kind of like making shadows with your torchlights.

What you see is what you get, the atmosphere was quite scary if you was inside there alone. The use of light was a great way to further bring the emphasis on the typography on a deeper level. It forces the views to focus in order to read the messages embedded in the design pieces .

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POST: Taiwan design in pop culture

This was my favorite of all the exhibits, it featured various professionals in the design related scene. From post production to print to clothing design. The way they presented the portfolios of the professionals was simple yet it drew you to carry on reading.

Simple yet it drew me in – I wouldn’t mind something like that for myself at home.

This video was ran on loop on the projector, I must have re-watched it at least 3 times. Love the way it was done, the transitions between the frames especially towards the end when they introduce the various professionals.

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As a whole, even though I only managed to visit some exhibits at the Old court, I found the trip really educational, but more importantly it was fun to see what people can do and it sure was an eye-opener. Here are somemore random pictures taken from other exhibits.

These were hand sewn together, the tabs from cans.

From the “V is for Vase” Exhibit A Super old school umbrella “locker”, not part of the exhibition but left me feeling rather intrigued.

Why Not?

Part I
They are nice to look at, nice to admire and nice to wonder. But when the task is at hand, it sure isn’t easy to produce.

Especially not if the topic is “Image and type” for “Unity and Clarity”
We were tasked to come up with a print ad for a designer’s journal.

“Practice safe design, always use a concept.” – This is the headline we had to use.

Lo and behold -> My print ad!

The time spent doing this actually took less than 15mins. But the trial and error and coming up with other different concepts to illustrate the headline took days. Every lecture[when I'm not sleeping] I would be thinking about it. It really is quite hard given that we only had 1 week.

So the question is, did it grab your Attention?

I think it was Gina who made the comment that because it was a cross, people might think it’s from some church and skip it.  Well it was constructive criticism, but I would expect designers who read the design journal to be more open minded, after all when it comes to design, there’s no end to it.

I’v made one small change, changed the Cross to an X as suggested. Kinda  looks like the mac snow leopard os’s X ads, just alittle.

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I will share a site in the next post for Print Ads Part II =)

Week 5′s Critic Lesson For our Ads

It was quite dry, though it’s kind of amazing how, something at times may look so right to us. But it can look and be interpreted so differently by different people and how some people really have some great ideas. But the lesson was honestly quite constructive I guess for most people in the class. It’s these little comments that we would take away and can be applied into the different areas of our life…

And to start of what I’v felt after reading up on Ads being on target and strategy, 2 Bud-light Ads.

Budlight ability to fly

Budlight ability to breathe fire

Well the two ads were aired during the Super Bowl 2008, 42.

“The Super Bowl is the championship game of the National Football League, the premier association of professional American football. In most years, the Super Bowl is the most-watched American television broadcast. Many popular singers and musicians have performed during the event’s pre-game and halftime ceremonies. The day on which the Super Bowl is played is now considered to be a de facto American national holiday,^[1][2][3] called Super Bowl Sunday. Super Bowl Sunday is the second-largest U.S. food consumption day, after Thanksgiving Day” – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Bowl

“This means that on average, 80 to 90 million Americans are tuned into the Super Bowl at any given moment. It is also estimated that 130-140 million tune into some part of the game”- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Bowl

One common thing that Americans do during the Super Bowl is to eat and drink. What do they drink? Beer! Ok not everyone drinks it, but there is a large amount of people who do.

Budweiser’s ads emphasizes and uses the element of humour to bring their ads across. They have a large presence in motorsports and superbowls. People tend to want to sit down with a group of friends, watch some motosports or in this case, the Super Bowl and drink beer. It’s relaxing and everyone enjoys a good laugh.

Budweiser has positioned themselves very well and their messages of enjoyment and refreshment hits you and invokes the feeling of wanting to drink it. The humorous starts to the commercials draws in the audience and captures their attention.

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It’s highly essential that we know what our ads are trying to convey, through 2 simple ads and some short background information, it’s easy to see why Budweiser did what they did. And the method which they delivered it to their respective target audience was spot on and it was all on their target and strategy.

This is the understanding I got from reading up on the notes Ms Nga gave to us, there’s alot of content but this is the gist from my point of view.

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Time to share again!

Ok, the site for this week is  a designer’s site, kind of like what smashing magazine is. The site is run by a guy called, Johnson Koh and guess what, he’s from Singapore!

Came across it while surfing from designer blogs and websites. It’s an interesting website to go to, has different areas for like tutorials, inspirations and especially on ads, designs and concepts, print and even billboard ads.

So this website is particularly good and interesting for people in the DI module.

Cheers!

Joel