I typically think awards are lame and prove nothing (it’s about the numbers more than the awards) but there is still some great design work in this article, and it’s not all interactive work.
I find searching for different types of creative innovation helps inspire me. Much like taking a walk clears your head.
Check it out: Innovation By Design | Co.Design: business + innovation + design.
There is a specific section for Interactive work also.
Great “confessions” article. I thought this was an interesting take on things:
Do traditional agencies fake it with digital?
Yeah, definitely. We find that there’s a major name, and they’ve got an outpost in a major city. They say, meet the head of our digital team. It’s one person scared shitless that if they get a lot of digital work he’s got no team. He’s got to pretend he’s got a team, and if he wins it he’s got to use a vendor behind the scenes to get it done and build a transition plan to migrate the work to his team if he builds it.
Why still?
It’s hard. When it comes to digital work, you’ve got some serious competition when it comes to hiring those people. It can be tough to find the right people, the people who can do the strategic thinking, deal with clients and constantly shift their focus among different brands — that’s not an easy mindset. Digital is far more complicated. We have to deal with the messaging, creativity, interaction, platforms. A big part of the job is just keeping up with technology.
An ongoing theme/struggle that I find in my day to day work life is the notion that traditional creatives can do interactive creative with the flip of a switch or by watching a few presentations. Obviously from some of my previous posts I do not agree with this “idea” and from my experience none of my colleagues in this field do either.
I found an article this morning that, yet again, argues this point. I will admit from time to time I need to read what others are going through because it makes me feel like this issue is everywhere and not just in my little world. It seems that every day the gap between the two disciplines widens. Case in point, this article we can start to think about yet another complexity about interactive creative that traditional creatives just don’t seem to be able to get there heads around. Adaptivity and responsiveness.
Here is an excerpt from the post:
With traditional designers, the focus is generally about the visual qualities of a design. All too often, traditional designers forget the underlying objective of the website: to convert sales and generate leads. A responsive website consists of clean design that directs users to do something. Websites are merely a company’s marketing “real estate.” They account for a substantial component of lead generation, sales and the cultivation of new business opportunities.
Success in designing sites for adaptability comes from understanding how the user behaves. In my opinion, a design that can be adapted or changed due to user behaviors is the best approach. It is how I approach every site design. User behavior involves meaningful activity; it necessarily involves interpretation and awareness. In most cases when people land on a site, they’re arriving with a specific task in mind. This means they already have tunnel vision on and they won’t look at all the other pretty things your site has to offer. The user will be clicking deeper into the site in no time. All the effort spent crafting your homepage is lost. People just want to get their task done. This is just natural behavior and we cannot change it no matter how much we try. Take this behavior into account when designing a website: you must ensure that the site’s purpose and content are clear on all pages. If the purpose is not immediately apparent, many people will either give up or look elsewhere (there are plenty more sites in the sea). The same goes for highly clever brand experience sites that have no direction but high quality videos playing in the background.
This all goes back to my mantra: “Traditional creative is consumed, absorbed and looked at. Interactive creative is more like a product, that is actually used and interacted with and is fluid. The differences between the two are simply complex.”
Later in the article the author does say something though that I also believe:
“There is room for both traditional and interactive designers. Each can learn from the other if both can keep an open mind. But, and I say this with a big but, I have found that most interactive designers just want to do interactive and not cross over into traditional. With that said, I have a hard time with the idea of a traditional designer doing the job of an interactive designer. I myself find it hard to embrace this trend, but the traditionalists are children in the interactive space.”
I’ll keep beating this drum till I’m blue in the face, or on the street 🙂