That was over 30 years ago.

Recently, I went with my family, including my son, Jackson, who is almost two years old, to OMSI.  The atmosphere and feel has changed a lot since I was there as a child.  A new location and building, a huge array of interactive exhibits, halls, science labs, a theater, a play room for the small ones, and various halls for learning about human life to dinosaur fossils.

Upon entering the new OMSI, I was greeted with a movie theater-like ticketing area and foyer, and glimpses of exhibit halls.  Once past the entry gate, we experienced the playroom which is complete with wet and dry play areas, science exhibits for touching and crawling, and overall a much more entertaining experience that when I was there as a child.  I saw many parents intermittently watching their kids from the corner of their eye, so many of them sitting on the sidelines, or on their blackberries and i-phones, texting and e-mailing as their kids splashed plastic crabs, fish, and boats in the water table, played with a pipe and ball system, and ran around to the various exhibits.  Not all of the parents were like this.  A few of us, I think the ones who had nothing like the modern extravaganza of OMSI as kids, played with their own kids.  Jackson went straight for the sand play area and the trucks and dinosaurs.  I knelt over the half-wall to play with him.  Who knew a dinosaur could drive a truck with only its head stuck in the cab?!  Jackson wasn’t so sure that  my driver choice was good, so we picked up a plastic cow/water buffalo and set it by the truck.  Having a bunch of sand around to act as food and roadway for the bio mechanical wonder didn’t hurt either.

Jackson in the OMSI sand play area

Next we went to the water table.  I saw a gathering of parents outside the zone designated wet zone watching the kids, dressed in plastic smocks and crocs, splashing with toys and pushing levers and wheels to make water spout and spray from a network of spouts. Jackson was throwing boats to the top of the stepped water table to watch them flow down a few levels to the base pool of water where a whirlpool of sharks, fish, trucks, and boats converged in a water fondue.  I followed his lead and threw boats back to the top level for him to corral through the waterfall-like channels.  I didn’t care about not having a smock or getting water all over–this was good fun with my son in command of the fleet.  I showed a few other kids how a lever and a spout could propel a plastic crab if its rear was placed over the spout for a water-filled liftoff.  It’s nice being too old to get in trouble for that kind of thing I’m finding.  Heck–they do that stuff on Myth Busters, don’t they?

Jackson at the OMSI water table

The T-Rex fossil display was fairly amazing as I don’t recall ever seeing any dinosaur fossils up close.  My son stood on the low wall surrounding the T-Rex and looked up in awe.  Perhaps in the same way I did when I stared at the old taxedermied great white.  He pumped his feet up and down, and made “raaaaaar” sounds when asked about the sound a dinosaur makes.  I was content at staring at the fossils and holding Jackson while mom watched this song and dance with a smile.

We went on to more exhibits and science experiment labs before we left.  One of my favorites being the earthquake house for simulating quakes.  We all took that ride four or five times before getting off.  I thought back to actually being in the 6.8 Nisqually quake in 2001, and assessed that aside from feeling about the same, the quake house was a lot of fun.

While OMSI will continue to be a great place for children to learn and explore, it will be a place I encourage adults to experience too.  Kids or no, you will enjoy something there–I know it.  Get messy and dirty and crawl around a bit–it’s good for you, and you will learn something you never knew before.  The technology, cool gadgets, and science are all there ( in a much bigger and better way than in 1980), so put away your cell phone and do it.

As for Jackson, his mom and me–we have found our new great white shark in an old-T-Rex named Samson.

Get ready for TBA!

Women in Animation Evening with Kohel Haver: join local IP lawyer Kohel Haver on 2nd Thursday, Sept. 9th at the beatific Touche bar (on NW 13th and NW Glisan) for a QA session! We’ll be camping out from 5 – 7:30!

Brainwaves: this is the last weekend for Brainwaves Improv at the Shoebox Theater. $10 tix at the door, cash or check only, reservations@brainwavesimprov.com, 503-520-8928

Powells Events: William Gibson at Powells, Sept 8^th. Guillermo Del Toro at the Bagdad, September 29^th.

Finally, Wonder Woman Day is October 24th, and benefits survivors of domestic violence! More info on how to participate available here.

QUESTION: Your expertise is in digital out of home media – how do you define that media and what is the current state of the industry?

Digital out-of-home media is made up of LCD screens that have been placed in premium consumer viewing positions inside venues from doctor’s offices to taxi cabs and pharmacies. The screen is controlled by a software system that plays a closed-loop of content. The content on the screen is intended to provide information and/or entertainment that is relevant to the viewers inside the environment. As a medium used for advertising, the opportunity exists to have a highly effective, direct communication with consumers.

There are three main segments of digital out-of-home media which, include:

 Place Based

Screens of varying sizes (avg. 32”-42”) within environments ranging from transit stations, restaurants / bars, office buildings, doctors offices and more.

 Retail

Screens positioned in key locations inside retail environments from grocery store aisles to convenience store check-outs and pharmacies.

Outdoor

Much the same as traditional outdoor billboards; however, are made of medium- to large-format LED screens.

QUESTION: How does a digital out of home media aggregator work? Why would that role be needed?

Aggregation is not a new concept. Newspaper, television and internet advertising have evolved through similar models of aggregation due to the balance of market demand and focused solutions to effectively utilize the media for customized brand initiatives. DOOH is not entirely different except that there are a significant amount of variables that need to be managed professionally with a profound level of knowledge to meet the unique campaign needs. At ADCENTRICITY, we pride ourselves on the ability to deliver effective advertising campaigns to over 100 network partners offering over 200,000 screens and proving 375 million monthly audience in 70 venue types such as, universities, transit, sports arenas, convenience stores, restaurants / bars, gas stations, office buildings, ATMs, grocery stores and more,

QUESTION: How do you describe strategy driven aggregation for DOOH?

Aggregation is ideal for targeting and increasing efficiencies in understanding if DOOH will help accomplish your plan goals. More importantly, the holistic knowledge of aggregators can bring experience and insight across the entire landscape of your media needs as opposed to those of a single venue type. Aggregation can streamline and consolidate three weeks of work into 30 minutes for an initial plan.

The aggregation model allows plan and strategy revisions to occur in seconds, decreasing media waste and staff time, reducing creative, distribution and billing requirements and ultimately creating a more efficient end-to-end ecosystem. An aggregator can ensure that you only plan and buy what you need and want, focusing on the maximum audience that will drive results, which also saves advertisers money – the more targeted you can get, faster, the more impact you get for less. In assessing a 12-network plan and buy, aggregation increases the efficiencies of the process by over 800%, which increases exponentially each time another network is included.

QUESTION: How is digital storytelling different for DOOH than say, broadcast TV or web? How can you make your stories and experience more effective?

Done right, DOOH can have a massive impact in targeting, stopping power, media awareness, consumer influence, recall, sales lift, reach, and relevance. But getting the advertising spots right requires a lot of insight into the many unique characteristics and challenges of this fast-emerging new medium.

So how do we effectively tell a story? With powerful, well-conceived creative that is essential to this medium’s continued growth.

ADCENTRICITY, recently pulled together and released a multimedia reference guide that tapped industry experts, who’ve built up bodies of work and insight, for their thoughts and advice on designing and developing the best solutions for DOOH advertising. What we found is that in many respects, the challenges DOOH presents mirror those of online, going back a decade and more. Just like there were few standards and guidelines for ad banner shapes and formats, causing endless production headaches, DOOH networks are just starting to establish guidelines on ad and screen shapes, resolutions, and file formats.

When it comes to planning the experience, we offer marketers and agencies the following advice:

-          Know your audience. There are 4 key market maker, “audience segments” that I identify and profile – what makes them jump and what keeps them up at night? Initiate independent efforts for each segment.

-          Remember, visuals are the new language. There is little time to drill down into finite descriptions (until it’s required) so make it visual. It’s hard to sell a car with only a picture of the engine – I want to see myself driving that puppy! Paint the picture that can be described by your target audience to their boss during a chance ride down the elevator together, especially with an evolving product offering.

-          Consider how vital communications channels are. Provide engaging content, provoke thought with no bullshit – especially as a 5% contributor to a overall marketing mix.

-          Connect the dots.  “Present what your preach” – the agency and client proposal or pitch must bring forward solution meeting the campaign needs that have an overall concept envelope to support the “hard facts” or “sell”. It also must play double duty that supports your core competencies.

You are collecting a lot of market data and insights on DOOH – how are you doing that and what have you discovered?

As a company, we have perfected the art of data collection because it is our job to make the complex world of digital out-of-home simple, saving marketers enormous amount of time and effort in understanding this entire landscape. A part of our responsibility is to ensure we have accurate and current data across the varied landscape of the media touch points. This means that we also act as an aggregator of data and research.

In addition, through our core product, ADVenue, we’ve essentially aggregated all the necessary information one needs when planning a campaign, from demographics to integrated census information, we make in-depth media understandable down to a granular level.

One of the ways we’ve established ourselves as an authority in the space is with our quarterly market reports.  Essentially, the reports are a collection of assessments based on data and activity we’ve come across by working so closely with research companies, advertisers, agencies and networks. We are also engage frequently in open discussions about the entire media and advertising landscape and where DOOH may intersect with strategies or products. I find this keeps us constantly considering possibilities.

I’m often asked – “what are the three key elements that innovative marketers need to execute a campaign?”

My advice has never waivered.

-          The ability to truly understand by region and venue type, which geographies and venues are a perfect fit for campaign and business objectives, supported by census, association and third party data. 

-          The ability to set priorities for a plan, such as defining tighter targeting on a desired audience or larger reach, including the ability to automatically assign priorities based on a defined budget across tens of thousands of venues.

-          The ability to plan local and buy national. Marketers can now build national plans and buys, DMA by DMA, allowing for different plans in markets, under the same consolidated annual or campaign plan.

Do you have a favorite digital story or project you’ve worked on? Why is it your favorite?

One of the campaigns we did recently was with the Heart & Stroke Foundation on an anti-smoking initiative. Working with Agency 59 here in Toronto, various convenience store locations throughout Ontario (Barrie, Kitchener, London, Ottawa, Sudbury, Thunder Bay, Toronto and Windsor) were chosen to target smokers at the point of purchase. The ad emphasized the harmful effects of smoking. To further enhance the effectiveness of the campaign, POS triggers were used to prompt the ad on the POS screen as cigarettes are purchased – guaranteeing the person purchasing the cigarettes has an opportunity to view the ad during their transaction.

As one of the first trigger ad campaigns we conducted, we were really pleased with the success of it and have already started to see more companies interested in using them.

We also worked with Evian recently on an interesting campaign…

Evian, Danone’s bottled water brand is the latest marketer to join in on an emerging trend of optimizing the digital out-of-home merchandising platform within the in-store environment. Using brilliant digital creative, Evian has broken ground extending the digital reach of this creative right into the consumer’s point-of-purchase. The tagline for the campaign is “Live Young” and the new global creative developed by France’s BETC Euro RSCG is intended to virally reach cosmopolitan 25- to 49-year-olds making $75,000 plus leveraging bloggers, YouTube and Facebook.

Only days after being in the public domain the creative spots have spread like wildfire, with viewings reaching over 2 million.  ADCENTRICITY was enlisted to execute the only additional advertising vehicle being activated, a national initiative to feature the creative on in-store digital out-of-home screens in convenience stores and grocery chains.  Michael Thouin senior brand manager for Danone Waters North America said “It really allows us to get our creative in a place where consumers are making their purchase decisions. This is the first time we’ve done this and we’re really excited about it.”

Breaking News:

Just this past month ADCENTRICITY released the Q2 Digital Out Of Home Market Review, a compilation of market data and insight for agencies and marketers seeking a better understanding of the DOOH advertising sector. Our report showed that financial services dominated the media spend in the sector, followed by automotive and telecom and further showcased that the DOOH sector is still growing, and there are many positive signs for balance of 2010 and beyond. While a torrent of activity in Q1 that suggested 2010 would be a breakthrough year for the still nascent DOOH sector, our report found that activity slowed dramatically and that campaigns that were supposed to start in April got pushed to June, and June campaigns got new start schedules for August. It was a sobering few months for people in all aspects of the sector, and it became clear the only thing that could be predicted with some accuracy beyond a few weeks was volatility. However, DOOH is still growing while many other mediums are contracting. There were (and are) significant bright spots and activity occurring that drive the whole DOOH market. In fact, ADCENTRICITY had its single largest booking quarter on record and both Q3 and Q4 look strong. You can access our full report here:  http://www.adcentricity.com/RESOURCES/q2-digital-ooh-market-review/

This site is a great source for design tips, networking/jobs, tutorials, latest-and-greatest-in-the-industry info, inspiration, free resources galore, and so on…Dig in, dig deep.

youthedesigner.com=Christmas for creatives. Free Photoshop brushes, fonts, and textures…Whoever came up with this is pure, unadulterated brilliant.

Enjoy :)

So many good things were shown — so much discussion to be had that is really educated opinions in this space– that I’m going to list out what some highlights were to me.:

• Much of the conversation would turn to talking about monetization, of course.  During the “Augmented Reality Meets TV” session, Chetan Damini, Director at acrossair said “Engagement with brands is a permanent engagement.  There is a huge ROI all due to the one time investment.”
• During the “Re-Inventing the TV Experience through IP and The Cloud” we heard “You’ll never do broad monetization here, it’s all about how many eyeballs you can get.”
• Concerns about bandwith was brought up, when Steve Reynolds, the SVP of Premises Technology at Comcast said “A trivia poll sort of experience pulls 150kbps, while something like sports scores is upwards of 400kbps. There has to be an allocation allowance.”
• EBIF was a HOT topic — Canoe Ventures is a major force behind it.
• Personally, I’m always enamored with input devices, and during the “Apps Stores and Widgets” session, Rachelle Zoffer, Director of Interactive TV and International Programming at Verizon FiOS TV talked about the Android app which allows the phone to be used as a TV remote and thereby allowing the use of the qwerty keyboard. NDS also has a smart phone remote.

There were a few sessions that approached talking about the ubiquity of media and displays and allowed for the definition of all these devices to become blurred; we’re going to be fading away the restrictiveness of content being confined to the device you originate a viewing of a tv show on.  And I do believe that the creation of engaging and yes, 3D interfaces, are going to assist in the intuitiveness of the experience, hand-in-hand with augmented reality.

The AFI program where so many of us met each other many moons ago does not exist anymore for a few reasons, but one big reason is that iptv and ETV is becoming a reality, slowly but surely.  That being said, I do hope you can make it to “Tracy’s thing” in 2011.

My musings on The Cable Show will be my next journal post.

But if you look at TV as a way to turn your brain off after it’s been spinning at a high rate all day, or you actually make the effort to find the things on TV that do have substance — and they really are out there (I’m speaking to you folks who make those blanket statements that there is nothing on those 200+ channels) — then TV can be one of the most beautiful things to look forward to.  Yes, I look forward to my time on the couch.

Over the past 10 years, there has been much talk, excitement and demos at seminars and conferences of what Interactive Television (aka Enhanced TV, aka iptv) could be in the USA.  In Europe and Asia, enhanced tv has existed in different forms for many years.  The execution of it here has been stymied by many things, mainly the massive yet fractured telecommunications infrastructure in our country (or as I overheard someone say at a conference recently “iptv has a checkered past with a bad credit history.”)  But there are a group of folks who I initially met through the American Film Institute Enhanced TV workshop who are now prominent players within large t-com companies and I believe that we are now at the threshold of this becoming a reality in the states.

ADi had the opportunity to participate in those AFI workshops, creating 3D roller coasters for demos of a Discovery Channel program, working with the Children’s Television Workshop on Sesame Street interactivity, and creating golf balls and clubs for an interactive direct response show for Callaway products.  We continue to participate with new clients in developing 3D UI’s; as the back end technology is developed to support 3D in all our monitors — be it TVs or desktop monitors or whatever – the benefit of having that z-depth will allow the user to elegantly search, gather and store more data for their viewing pleasure.

This year I’ve attended two significant shows that have highlighted interactive TV – The TV of Tomorrow Conference (also known among the attendees as ‘Tracy’s thing’ – more on that later), and the massive yearly broadcast industry conference The Cable Show (aka The National Cable and Telecommunications Association…err… show).  My experience, as someone in the niche category of UI content developer, was significantly different at each of the shows.

At the TV of Tomorrow show back in March of this year, session titles were so specific — things like “The iVideo Revolution: What can The TV Industry Learn from Interactive Broadband Video Deployments” and “Re-Inventing the TV Experience through IP and The Cloud” and “Apps Stores and Widgets”.   They reached out to acknowledge that television in the future is going to include technology that many don’t necessarily associate with TV now, stuff like Augmented Reality, or using your smart phone as a remote for your television.  And it was all so very ‘matter-of-fact’, like “this is what is coming, no doubt, and here as an industry we can be working together now to be able to participate in all that the technology that is being developed will offer us in the near future”.

The Cable Show in May had a very different focus where the future of television and how interactivity will be integrated was treated more like the science fiction that might happen but, really, did we all believe in it and hey, omg, how are we going to monetize all of this?  Valid thoughts for sure but it was a much smaller and tentative atmosphere of discussing iptv — more like “did you hear this will be possible” as opposed to, at TV of Tomorrow, of “this is what I am working on that will be integrated into this system within 12-18mths, and this is how it will work”.

More details next week of the people I met and the technologies I saw these past few months …

Portland, Oregon – June 11, 2010 – Animation Dynamics Inc. (ADi) announced today that McDonald’s selected the company to help create a visual representation of McDonald’s  history and vision of the future which was presented to more than 12,000 of its executives, suppliers, and franchise owners from around the world at its recent Worldwide Owner/Operator Convention held in Orlando, Florida.

The goal of the project was to inspire franchisees with McDonald’s vision of the future with a continued reputation for quality, innovation and great customer experiences on a worldwide scale.  ADi used a form of digital signage to display a large-scale animation which communicated the story and set the tone for the overall experience of the participants.

“Today’s marketing and branding have evolved far beyond the simple focus on product attributes to an increased effort in communicating the consumer experience,” said Kate Ertmann, president and CEO of ADi. “Fortune 500 companies now spend an incredible amount of resources on research to understand their customers’ lifestyles, way of thinking and more. The big challenge now that we know the consumer better is to create meaningful content to create a user experience that matters. By expanding the definition of storytelling and adding an authentic, emotional component, the message becomes more memorable and effective.”

ADi’s animation for McDonald’s introduced the “Future’s Exhibit” — a showcase of 18 separate categories covering food, restaurant design, and customer experience innovations as well as business process improvements. Attendees walked through an entrance hallway featuring a screen 3 feet high by 24 feet long with a digital display playing an animation to set the scene for the showcase they were about to visit. ADi created this look by designing the animation to run seamlessly on a media player that divided the visual across a bank of five screens that appeared to be one long display.

Digital Signage: An Innovative Growth Area for Advertising, Marketing and Motion Graphics

Digital signage encompasses a wide range of applications from the intimate experience to the broad consumer audience around the world. Technology has become sophisticated enough that we are no longer limited to one-way communication. As an example, applications for Smart Phones can interact with signs or shopper kiosks to provide specific ad content or promotions for a targeted demographic. On the other hand, large, digital signage networks can be updated dynamically to broadcast content around the world based on time-of-day or triggers in the environment. This application might be used on digital menu boards in a restaurant chain where pricing can be universally updated to promote a specific item such as a cup of coffee for breakfast or dessert with dinner. And, finally, large-scale displays made up of multiple screens acting as one can be used for a high impact form of communication.

Sophisticated advances in technology, displays and content have evolved to allow for high-quality content that can impact consumer behavior more effectively than coupons, discounts and other incentives. Typically, a successful retail program might result in a 2 or 3 point sales lift, however, when done correctly, a digital signage display can create as much as a double-digit sales lift. Like broadcast TV, digital displays match the message to a particular audience, but the unique advantage is that the consumer is in the store as close to the final purchasing point as possible.

“There are so many new media opportunities that are changing the way we communicate,” Ertmann continued. “Digital Signage is one area where we can expect to see some of the most excitement in the near future. We are moving from static content, to content in motion and it is important for companies to understand that it is not enough to just repurpose TV content for use on a large scale format. There are both technical and content issues that need to be addressed for success.”

About ADi

Founded in 1996, Animation Dynamics Inc. (ADi) excels in visual communication for business-to-business marketing, consumer advertising, direct response television, education and entertainment. Clients range from Fortune 500 high-tech firms to independent film producers. The Portland-based company has the unique advantage of having expertise across a wide range of animation techniques all under one roof, and in particular is a leader in the new 3D user interface design.  In addition, the company is also recognized for its skill in rendering digital prototypes for pre-production marketing efforts. Examples of the company’s work may be viewed at www.animationdynamics.com.

QUESTION: So Dave, can you tell us briefly what is Augmented Reality?
Augmented reality, or AR, blends computer generated imagery with the physical real-world environment.  We work primarily with mobile AR, meaning that we place digital information on the camera view of the mobile device to ‘augment’ the world around us.

Examples of mobile augmented reality in the consumer space are almost limitless from retail to real estate, travel, and gaming.  Consider applications that allow you to hold up your device and see: a restaurant review hovering over the location of the restaurant; educational information about your location in history; virtual notes that your friend has left for you at a particular location; mobile coupons for discounts on products at area shops. 
Augmented reality in the enterprise is also coming.  Consider mobile augmented reality ‘tours’ to guide new employees around a corporate campus or displaying the outputs of sensors in the workplace on the camera view of the mobile so that employees can ‘see’ desired  information about tagged people or items in real time.
Yes, this sounds a little like science fiction.  But each of these applications is available today.

QUESTION: As you think about designing new virtual experiences, how important are the “stories” you create to convey the innovation of the new ideas to internal (or investor) and external audiences? How do stories help make new things “real” for people?
The most effective way to describe something new is to analogize to something well understood.  And when you analogize, you invariably get into storytelling. When we developed Tagwhat, our new social augmented reality network, our immediate concern was explaining to people why the technology was important, even critical.  What is the value of having the web geo-located and available to users via augmented reality?   You rely on stories and analogies to help people, who aren’t as in love with the technology as you are, understand why they should be!

Check out this video demo of Tagwhat Tagwhat Demo

Take mobile augmented reality at a football game.  Say you’re at the game and you want to cheer a particular play.  You could scream and shout.  But with mobile augmented reality you could also drop a virtual note for the people around you to see in their own mobile devices.  Using Tagwhat they could even comment on your note and drop their own notes with photos of the play, as they sit in the bleachers. 
Say you’re looking for a restaurant in a new city.  Walking down the street you could draw on the power of mobile augmented reality by holding up your device and looking for restaurant reviews for the places in your vicinity.  You might even find a tag (or digital crumb) left by another tourist who was in the same position you were with their input on where to go or not to go. Neither of these two examples could exist without mobile augmented reality.  And the applications become apparent and compelling only through stories. 
QUESTION: Do you create characters or personas to help describe the innovations/usages and why someone would want them? Do you use analogies? Please give examples. 
Yes!  This is essential.   It’s part of the reason why I often feel like my explanations of the technology as someone who is not developer — I’m a lawyer by training — can be more effective.  I’m talking non-tech. Let me give you an example: Suppose you are the field technician in charge or servicing office machines for a large corporation. You get an alert to go and service a machine that is down. You arrive at the office, but it’s a cube farm and all the office machines and hallways look alike. But, what if that office machine was tagged with a sensor? You pull out your smart phone and use the camera on the mobile to look around and see the floating ‘red’ tag over the machine that needs attention.  You might even use the mobile to navigate in the office space.  We could even implement the solution so that you could download the correct repair manual instructions to your mobile. You quickly complete the service call and everyone is happy.
Question: How do you think stories help humans learn and retain information when it comes to making choices in this new media age?
With new innovations, we often ask ‘Why do I need that?’  A story can help answer the question and offer more scenarios for using the innovation. There is so much information out there – so much noise – that applying a narrative can help us make sense of the world.
Want to hear more from Dave? He will be speaking in Portland, OR on June 16th at the Software Association of Oregon’s EDGE Forum Event at Kell’s . Check the SAO web site for more details at www.sao.org.

It might seem obvious when you think about it; design’s all around us, it improves our lives in every conceivable way. But it’s also easy to take good design for granted. So it’s important to, every once in a while, really take notice of the stuff around us: furniture, buildings, TV shows (and the TVs themselves), video games. Notice the ones that really stand out as attractive. Why are they good designs? How can we use the same kind of values in our own design, whether it be for physical objects or media and virtual spaces?

In my mind, the first step is to see how good design makes everyday objects — like, say, sofas — better. And, at the same time, figure out why good designers can charge a premium for something that basically holds your butt off the floor.

Compare these examples:

It’s a sofa. What’s it saying to you? “You can sit here.” That’s about it. There’s design involved, certainly, but it’s not what I would call “good”.

This one’s better. It’s got good lines, it’s got some style. It’s functional and not un-attractive. If you came into a room and saw this couch, you might say, “Hey, nice couch!” and flop yourself down on it. Good design?

Now, compare it with this:

This is different. This isn’t a “Hey, nice couch!” This is an “Awesome sofa!” Of course, tastes vary, and chances are this isn’t as comfy as the previous example, so you might never consider this for your own home. You have to admit, though, that this one makes a statement. What IS the statement? I don’t know, but it’s definitely there. Something about birds?

Here’s another example:

This is a bit more practical than the long orange one. But it still has more to say than the first couple. There’s something about the line of the armrest, as it curves and flares upward, that sings to your eye.

Okay, so what do those last two designs have in common? In my mind, it’s simplicity. The designers start with the basic premise, “A sofa is an upholstered bench.” Then they build on that, adding armrests, a little extra cushion here and there. But then they STOP. They say, “Okay, that’s just enough.” Then they tweak. Perhaps they see a straight line and they flare it just a little. Perhaps they see an unnecessary curve and they straighten it. Maybe they look at a flat cushion and round it out. And that’s it.

Or maybe they go the other way. They start with an existing design. Then they look at it with a critical eye, thinking, “What doesn’t need to be here?” They carve out that end panel. They trim the cushion, maybe firm it up a bit. They make sure this line follows that line and they come together in a satisfying way.

It seems simple. And, really, good design IS simple — but it’s not easy. If something’s not quite right with our design, we might be tempted to keep adding and adding extra stuff; eventually the basic design gets lost in the padding. It’s time consuming and brain-draining to really examine what you have with a critical eye, so sometimes it’s easier to throw a cushion on there and call it good.

Okay, that’s all well and good, but in real life day-to-day work it’s not practical to keep going back again and again, second-guessing your original decisions, trimming and tweaking. This is especially the case when you’re working with a limited budget and schedule. How can we  provide good design quickly and cheaply? I think the secret might be the mindset in which we design. If we keep the goals of simplicity and elegance, we find it easier to restrain our selves from adding that extraneous flourish or unnecessarily long scene.

This doesn’t mean we have to give up our voice and style, by any means! But once we’ve got the basic framework in place, we have the opportunity to carefully, craftily add a bit here, bend a bit there, maybe color that corner red. With judicious use of our resources and a critical eye, we can achieve that “Awesome sofa!” even with limited budget and scope.

Speaking of budget, keep reminding yourself that good design is worth more. That last sofa was selling for ten times the price of the first one. And you know what? It’s totally worth it.

Make your stuff worth it.

On the other side, as a producer, I often get inquiries from potential freelancers or collaborators, and it’s often a red flag for me when they offer to work for free.

Here’s what’s wrong with giving your work away:

• If you offer to work for free, you’re immediately telling me that I won’t find your work worth paying for.
• When no money is changing hands, all the other formalities of an agreement are disregarded. When you’re working for free, I know I won’t be able to hold you to any expectations about time frame, schedule, deliverables, and all the other clauses that would exist in a work agreement.
• You’re telling me that you’re not a professional. So I can’t expect from you any of the other qualities of a professional, such as the ability to take feedback, adjust expectations, or communicate clearly and appropriately.

“But Rebekah”, I hear you saying, “how do I get involved in projects that I know can’t afford me?” Rest assured, it can be done, and here’s how:

If you’re a professional, and there’s a project going on that you find really interesting and want to be a part of it, so much so that you’d be willing to work for free, don’t start off by saying that. Contact someone and say that you’d love to meet with them to talk about the project because you think it’s really cool and interesting. Chances are, if you’re really excited about it as an outsider, someone on the inside is really excited about it too and would love to talk with you about it. Approach the compensation issue as a collaboration- you’d like to find a way to support them in the project, and you’d be willing to work at a steep discount, but with all the normal expectations of a working relationship.

If you’re a student/aspirant looking for experience, use the phrase “internship”. That suggests that you’re open to do anything, and work for free, but makes it clear that you’re not suggesting that you be put actively into production and entrusted with responsibilities and deadlines.

Finally, if you’re responding to one of those ads on craigslist, and are going to go ahead and work for free, sit down with your client and write out the terms of the work just as if you were going to get paid for it. Specify exactly what you’ll be doing, what the time frames are, how many reviews there will be, and what services aren’t included in the agreement. Explain the point at which your work stops being free (is it the fifth revision? The tenth? Is it a month from the start of the project, or six months, or five years?)  Also, document what your rate would normally be for these services, so that the client knows what they are getting for free. You’ll be doing yourself, and the industry, a huge favor.

Speaking of “the Industry”, on May 1st ASIFA will be hosting Portland’s first unconference for independent and freelance animators. Check out www.BeTweenpdx.com for more info!