The idea was to create a unique and special display for a garden light company. They already had some nice brochures with good looking photography and an own personalised display in several outdoor/garden shops, but I wanted to take it a bit further

As I said, there already was some graphic expressions and the company also had a website already. I analysed the brochure and it basically showed two layers of information:

1. Technical specifications
2. Application

I wanted to combine those two with a third one. The next step should be the experience. What does your garden look like when certain lighting elements are used? Different moods had to be visualised so that customers can relate to that and imagine what it might do for their garden.

I won’t explain the whole process and everything I tried or made, but it basicly came down to the idea to create an animation that incorporates all of the above points including the experience. The animation can be used on the web (as a really interactive one) or on a screen incorporated into the display in the store. Either way it shows the same, but the web version is easier to interact with.

I made a lot of sketches and eventually came down to an animation that shows a dark garden at first. Then lights pop-up everywhere and turn on. The user can now interact with the animation and move the camera over it’s track (and by doing so all the lamps are shown one by one) and make a tour around the garden. Individual lamps can be turned on and off or selected to check more details specification.

I took a lot of inspiration from the following two clips. The first one shows a scene from the movie Fight Club where we zoom in on an IKEA brochure and litherally are inside the page. Great use of text and lighting, this is exactly as I imagened the animation should be:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkVRL2po0Y8

The second one is a clip from a commercial from a Dutch hardware store. It visualises the start of the Garden Lights animation I had in mind:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZoRrPwNSKI

These two clips were really showing my whole idea and as a last teaser I created this film still in Photoshop as a possible shot from the Garden Lights animation:

Too bad the animation never really made it due to money problems, but hey, that’s wat concepting is about too. Just make great ideas and not really focussing on the constraints at first. Atleast it was a very fun project to work on!

To be honest I have been pretty bussy with working at TriMM lately. We decided to postpone my farewell at TriMM so that gives me and them a bit more time to find a next job/co-worker. Just yesterday I made a list with all the web related work I want to add to this site so that potential employers get a better idea and picture of me. Or atleast my work.

Updates will be made, but for now let me reward you with a nice link to 50 great examples of infographics!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dgd2ZBDsGNw

A bit more about the animation can be read over at it’s own page.

Working with my hands is what I like and that made me think of some old school work I did that wasn’t on the website already. Simple redesign of a matchbox and some ‘shoebox’ pictures based on the lyrics of DJ Shadows Six Days. Apart from the schoolwork there is a lot more that needs to be uploaded, but I have to get approval from the big bosses first… Very frustrating to have very nice work laying on the shelve, but you can’t show it to the world… Aargh! To hell with legal issues!

Ow and by the way, the titled is written in the dialect of Cologne meaning “the water of Cologne is good”. Since it is pooring with rain today I thought it was appropriate.

During the last two years I have been working at TriMM I also did some smaller assignments for the in-house consultancy agency GriDD. It started of with some small DTP-ing and tweaking businessmodels and presentations but it’s getting bigger and better. Last year I made an infographic that represented the new office we were going to move to and it was a gift ofor TriMM. Since last year NXP and some other major clients got me and GriDD all worked up about infographics. I really like working on these visuals and wanted to thanks GriDD for those fine jobs.

As a sidekick and to help out in their presentations GriDD asked Sjors Trimbach to design a character. And so Gregg was born! One year ago Gregg saw the light of ‘day’ and as a celebration different artists were asked to make a drawing/sketch/piece of art. In a few minutes time I made my share which came in handy since the planned artist couldn’t make it! Thanks Gregg for all the nice work you have brought me!

Yesterday was the third edition of the Dutch Infographics Congress in Zeist. It was a very informative and diverse day with a handful of speakers that were really worth listening to. What me immediatly surprised was the mixed audience. Students, professionals and even some grey haired older man. Very broad so to speak. I won’t be writing a report about the whole day from start to finish but just give you some highlights.

My personal favourite were the last ones to have their speech, the guys from Catalogtree. They have a really nice approach to their infographics and I love the way how they come up with nerdy-computer-techie solutions to create their graphics. I feel very related to that style of working, hehe. They showed us a great project about diplomats who work in New York and got parking tickets. The locations, time of date, how often, they had all the data and using computers and software they created some awesome very clean and stylish infographics.

Then their was Chris Campbell. He works as a infographic designer for the International Court of Justice in The Hague. His work only shows data that is true. If their are not sure about a certain detail it cannot be included in the graphic. That is because the graphics he makes are used in trials for the Prosecutor. Since the defends alost always objects when he want’s to show one, he thinks he does a good job. So do it. He makes good use of time in his graphics. Some of them are animated, but only when needed.

That is also something that Chris Blow said at the start of the day. He finds it problematic that people who create infographics these days only make them because they look good (I personally think that is what we can call art). He says that infographics should only be used to clarify your opinion about something. The infographic is just a tool, not the result. I somehow agree with him, but come one, sometimes it just looks really cool and there doesn’t have to be a point to it. For the same reason he also isn’t a fan of competitions (basically the whole point of the Infographics 2010), because then graphics are designer for judges and not for the audience. True.

A different and more relaxing presentation was the infographic battle between Kay Coenen and Roland Blokhuizen. They both got the assignment on Wednesday last week so they had two days to prepare, but man was it cool to sey their completely different approaches to the problem. They had to clarify why the earth was turning faster since the earthquake in Chile. During the 20 minute period the audience could listen to some nice jazz music and Remy Jon Ming who talked it all together. Roland has a very 3D approach where as Kay works much more simpler. The results where both really nice and I won’t go into the details, but Kay’s was way simpler and easier to understand. After their battle the public got a really annoying and boring commercial speech about Cinema 4D and how awesome it was. Hope these kind of speeches won’t be their next year…

The other commercial speech was from the Augsburg University and their professor Michael Stoll. It was a boring and lengthy. What more can I say. Only cool thing was one of the student’s final exam work. An installation that lets you skip through records who are sampled. You can listen to the original, check what pieces are used as samples and listen to those sampled parts in the songs. The guy, Roland Lößlein, made a very niceinstallation that contained LP’s with RFID chips and a projected user interface onto the record itself. Really intuitive and very slick and stylish. This whole day gave me a load of inspiration and good idea’s. Next year I’ll be attending again for sure!

On this dull and snowy Monday morning I received an e-mail from a colleague for an upcoming event about infographics. Since I have made a few infographics for GriDD consultancy in the last year he thought I would be interested. Hell yeah I am! Infographics ask for such a different style of thinking and analysing compared to the way I worked in art school… Maybe it is my two years of University and the technical study I attended that make me hungry for big truckloads of info that need to be visually explained. Who knows?

Anyway the 5th of March we will be off to the little town of Zeist (near Utrecht) to attend InfographICs 2010! Really looking forward to this since Charles Blow is having a lecture in the morning. Since “he led The New York Times to a best of show award for the information graphics coverage of 9/11″ I don’t suspect it to be boring. If you just read this and don’t know what infographics actually are you should just go and have a look over at Smashing Magazine’s article about Data Visualization and Infographics. Very, uh, informative.

Because she is just running a small business the number of prints was also very low. Because of that I decided to try out an online business card printer called Moocards. I must say that they did a really nice job. You can either upload your own designs (like I did) or use some standard templates. The fonts are not really complete as I heard they use some faux bold for their bold typefaces. Too bad, but as long as you used your own designs there is nothing wrong with it!

Last post I mentioned the Golden Receivers, remember? If not scroll down and read… Well as it turns out they just released their new EP. It can be downloaded and listend to online over at Bandcamp (including all the older EP’s). The first four songs are newer ones and are also of a different style, but I prefer that one. The other ones are older and leftovers. Crotch rocket being my personal favourite for a long time… Nice to finaly have a recorder version of this song! The EP isn’t called “A Horse Named Sadness, Leftovers & Lost Sessions” for nothing.

Don’t get too excited because the band is planning on calling it a day (which doesn’t mean the band members stop making music). Too bad, but I hope this new style will get some more attention (especially from their guitarist) and untill then…fingers crossed and hope for the best.