MyVomit-A-Pedia

This morning the White House streamed a video conference announcing the Open Government Initiative to promote transparency in government. During the announcement they used the government site MyFood-A-Pedia as an example of a data set that was released to the public. In this case one containing the nutritional data on foods commonly eaten and the site is to help with curbing childhood obesity issues. But seriously this is what you came up with?



This REALLY hurts my feelings (and makes it just a bit difficult to keep my lunch down). Not only is the logo and site awful, if you search common foods such as "Big Mac" or "Whopper" things people do eat that can lead to obesity issues it doesn't give you anything. Are you serious? The nutritional content for these foods is available on the back of the sheet that comes on your tray at McDonald's and Burger King. If their thinking is that people can just get this info elsewhere how helpful is it to make this site in the first place. It NEEDS to contain all the data, not just bits and pieces. And for God's sake get a real logo!

McGreen

Originally found at Brand New



The German outpost of the fast food mega chain, McDonald’s, recently announced that around 100 of its restaurants in Germany will change their well-known red backdrops to a deep green by the end of 2009. McDonald Germany’s VP, Holger Beeck, stated that the move is “out of respect for the environment.” But Germany isn’t the first to go green, France has been leading the European greening since 2006, when it launched the internal L’Eco Journal and its web site now features the logo against said deep green. This move is part of a bigger effort by McDonald’s to actually be green philosophically, more than just aesthetically, as chronicled in the McDonald’s 2009 Global Best of Green report. There are a couple of items for discussion: a) Is literally going green too lame? And b) does it hurt the brand by moving away from the very recognizable red? My take is, on the former, yes it’s kind of lame but at least they picked a nice green and, on the latter, McDonald’s has such a broad palette of brand icons — from the mnemonic Parapapapa sound to the Big Mac to the yellow arches — that substituting red is no big deal… in fact, just look how cool and recognizable it looks against black in the U.S. web site.

SQUIRREL!

It isn't just the animation that is always amazing with Pixar but also their writers and sense of humor. I love the"SQUIRREL!" parts of the movie Up. How many talking dog movies have you ever seen? Most of them seem to be too close to personifying the dog as a person rather than as a dog with doggie traits.

Knockout 2

This animation is a remake of my original second part of my Knockout Poster project which uses Adobe After Effects to create an animation of the poster. In the animation I chose to have the poster become the climax of a dynamic introduction that portraits Knockout as a world champion boxer. Using the sidescroll text sequence of the name in combination with the iconic Rocky Balboa theme song. The end of the movie is the pasting of the broadsheet and hanging of the gloves to bring a cohesive whole to the piece and it’s connection to the poster.

Pareidoodle

The above is just a doodle I did with Pareidoodle. Pareidoodle-Drawing Conclusions, is part of my master thesis Play and The Discovery of New Ideas. Pareidoodle is a new way of drawing ideas in a digital world. Based on the psychological phenomena known as Pareidolia, where a vague or random stimulus is perceived as significant. This phenomena is seen in common examples such as seeing images or faces in clouds, the Virgin Mary on a tortilla or even hearing hidden messages on music albums played in reverse. By using random marks and colors the user’s mind begins to make new connections to what they are drawing on and alongside in the seemingly meaningless and instill them with a sense of meaning through their own hand.

You can try Pareidoodle for yourself or even download a desktop version for Mac or Windows, here. Enjoy!