Fire | Advertising Agency in Belfast, Northern Ireland

Internet more important than TV

Research groups Arbitron and Edison Research have discovered that Internet access is the "most essential" media type to consumers than access to a television.

The research, conducted in the US surveyed the habits of 1 749 Americans in distributed age groups. Edison Research discovered that the Internet is "most essential" to their lives when given a choice along with television, radio, and newspapers; 42 percent chose the Internet as "most essential," with 37 percent selecting television, 14 percent choosing radio, and 5 percent said newspapers.

While television still leads among those over the age of 45, Internet dominates among younger persons age 12 to 44.

When first asked the question in 2001, 72% of respondents said they would do without the internet, while only 26% said they would eliminate television. In the demographic of persons younger than the age of 45, the gap between the two forms of media is more profound, with more people choosing to live without TV.

Source: Edison Research

FIFA World Cup - Through The Ages

The 2010 FIFA World Cup is only a week away, with 32 countries taking part. It will be the 19th World Cup held since 1930, when Uruguay first held the competition. Since then, the World Cup has become a global phenomenon in television viewing, advertising opportunities and more laterally, in design.

Webexpedition18.com have handily compiled all the posters, logos and mascots throughout all 19 World Cups, showing the change in style and design trends at the decades have passed. Some of our favourites are posted to the right.

Grain Edit - Blogging 50's-70's Design Trends

Grain Edit is a popular blog focused on classic design work from the 1950s-1970s era. They showcase the work of designs who have drawn inspiration from that time period. The blogs content includes interviews, articles, designers’ libraries and other features. It's pretty in depth and provides a lot of inspiration from the era. The blog has been running since 2007. Click here to visit GrainEdit.com - it's definitely worth your time.

HTML 5 Video Demo: Explosions and 3D Manipulation

Craftymind.com has published a demonstration of the power available to web developers in the HTML 5 spec. The specification is currently in draft form – actively developed by the W3C. HTML 5 is becoming widely supported by all modern browsers (including Internet Explorer 9). HTML 5 will bring with it the ability to embed video and audio files in web pages without the need for third party plug-ins such as Flash or Silverlight.

The two demos showcase the effect of using JavaScript, canvas and video elements.

In the first demonstration, the user can explode the video simply by clicking the video. After a few seconds, the video will piece itself back together again. While all this is going on, the video continues to play smoothly (on modern browsers and computers).

In the second demonstration, the video rotates around the y-axis smoothly, while the video continues to play.

It won’t be before long before web developers can exploit this technology to make movies a little bit more of a novelty on the web.

You will need to be running Mozilla Firefox 3.6, Google Chrome 4 or any recent Safari version to see the video.

Indian Road Safety – Don’t Talk While He Drives

An Indian road safety campaign has gone viral after a print advert was published online.

Simply titled, “don’t talk while they drive”, the series of print adverts show the effects of distraction while driving on the relatives of the driver.

The adverts are clearly intended to shock, but they soon went viral on major social bookmarking sites including digg.com, stumbleupon.com and reddit.com. After picking up popularity across these sites, many were actively commenting on the adverts powerful message however some disagreed arguing that drink and drug driving was more hazardous than distracted driving.

The campaign has just been launched in Bangalore, but it’s shock nature and effective message has resulted in a global impact.

Indian road safety, "Don't talk while he drives"

BlinkBox goes all arty

Online film and TV aggregator BlinkBox has gone all arty on us, signing a content partnership with the British Film Institute (BFI) — bringing the total number of British TV and film titles on offer to over five hundred and the total number of “premium” titles available on the service to just under six thousand.

Seeing BlinkBox, arguably, go a little up market with the BFI partnership sits slightly at odds with the company’s recent credit crunch-busting Pizza Hut promotion or its long term ‘viral’ marketing strategy whereby users can create movie clips – referred to as ‘Blinks’ – to share with friends via email or SMS. But hey, more choice is always welcome.

The new BFI partnership gives users of the UK service access to the institute’s “world-renowned catalogue” of classic British films on a free ad-supported basis, with 37 feature films being made available including Love is the Devil (featuring Daniel Craig), Caravaggio (directed by Derek Jarman), The Draughtsman’s Contract (directed by Peter Greenaway) Distant Voices, Still Lives (directed by Terence Davies) and further films directed by Bill Douglas and Alex Cox.

Additionally, BlinkBox will be offering a BFI ‘Feature Film of the Month’, for purchase and/or rent via streaming or downloading, the first of which will be Stephen Dwoskin’s “challenging experimental” film Central Bazaar.
The service already has licensing deals with a number of studios including Warner Brothers, Universal Pictures, Paramount Pictures, Aardman Animations. Discovery Networks and FremantleMedia.

BlinkBox was founded by Michael Comish (CEO), formerly managing director of 4 Services at Channel 4, and Adrian Letts (COO), formerly with the mobile content team for Vodafone, and has backing from Arts Alliance, Eden Ventures and Nordic Ventures.

Recognising the best in packaging design

Established in 2007, TheDieline.com is dedicated to the progress of the package design industry and its practitioners, students and enthusiasts. Its purpose is to define and promote the world’s best examples of packaging, and to provide a place where the package design community can review, critique, be inspired and stay informed of the latest industry trends, news and projects being created in the field.

The Dieline has quickly grown into the most visited website on package design in the world, and it has become the voice of the industry. It is used as a daily resource for hundreds of thousands of people around the world. Our first book, Box Bottle Bag: The World’s Best Packaging Design, will be published in February by HOW Books.

As The Dieline continues to find and define the world’s best packaging, it has launched The Dieline Awards, an international design competition recognizing best in package design, further promoting the progress of package design industry.

Inspiration for all typography lovers!

Emigre and Gingko Press have released Emigre No.70: The Look Back Issue – Celebrating 25 Years in Graphic Design. The 512-page book covers the best of a quarter century of Emigre magazine – one of the most influential design publications ever.

During the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s, graphic design was experiencing one of its most exciting and transformative periods. The Apple Macintosh computer had been introduced, design schools were exploring French linguistic theory, the vernacular had become a serious source of study and inspiration, the design and manufacture of typefaces was suddenly opened up to everyone who could use a computer, and for the first time in the United States, New York City was no longer the place to look for the latest developments in graphic design. And in Berkeley, California, across the bay from Silicon Valley, Emigre magazine, like no other, recognized the significance of the events, and became both a leading participant and a keen observer of this innovative international design scene, generating a body of work and ideas that still resonate today.

This book, designed and edited by Emigre co-founder and designer Rudy VanderLans, is a selection of reprints, using original digital files, tracing Emigre’s development from its early bitmap design days in the late 1980s through to the experimental layouts that defined the so called “Legibility Wars” of the late 1990s, to the critical design writing of the early 2000s.

Emigre No.70 is a must have book for those who missed out on all the excitement the first time around and for those who have been long time Emigre fans alike. Any graphic design library would be incomplete without it.

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