But not really. Much like taking a few aspirin or drinking Tabasco Sauce after a night of heavy drinking, we’re beginning to think clearly on an important topic that’s easy to forget about: interactive design. The Internet boom may have come and gone just as quickly—and as ingloriously—as bellbottoms and mood rings, but the notion of interactive design hasn’t as yet been explored as fully as need be. Certainly excessive flash intros are out of style, just like blinking text and rainbow-colored rules vanished from any serious web presence years ago. Having been referred to as multimedia, new media and web design in the past, the industry seems to have settled on the more amorphous, less specific term “interactive.” Which implies more of a mindset and an approach rather than purely focusing on the final produced format—in other words, its more than web sites. It’s also more than DVDs, CD-ROMs, and applications for palm pilots and cellphones.
Two years ago Fallon released BMW Films in conjunction with David Fincher and Anonymous Content—the premise was simple, just go to a web site, download the films and watch Sexy Brit Clive Owen do dastardly deeds in either a 5-series or Z4. Pretty cool. While the technical wizardry wasn’t supreme, the web design solid but not earth shattering, the concept was absolutely brilliant. It perfectly played off of how BMW drivers feel about driving, their cars, and gave them an outlet for their passion for German engineering. It got people to INTERACT with the brand in a way they had never considered previously, and until recently, would not have been able to do because of technological constraints.
In just the past year, Crispin Porter + Bogusky of Miami, FL won the $350 million Burger King account without a review, because the agency (of IKEA lamp fame, or MINI Cooper) established itself as coming up with outlandish, unexpected, but unusually relevant and effective ideas. They may be in advertising, but that doesn’t mean they sit around and come up with dippy TV concepts all day long and then blow loads of money producing 30 second crap that well-adjusted individuals loathe. No way. Instead, they came up with Subservient Chicken. Go to the site, and “ask” the “chicken” to do things…yes, its bizarre, but it figures in well with the “Have It Your Way” tagline that drives the Burger King brand. Technically, its brilliant, and its one of the more innovative ways of extending and expressing a brand that I’ve seen. If nothing else its more interesting and engaging than a brochure or spiffy new signs in a store.
Other examples of superlative interactive design include The International Herald Tribune, for its intuitive interface and effective method of handling copious amounts of information, and Plumb Design’s Visual Thesaurus, which through a flash interface allows you to discover relationships between nearly 140,000 words.
Design is more than putting words, colors, images, and shapes on sheets of paper; print isn’t dead, its not going to die, but interactive is “the future.” Why? Well, from a branding perspective you can accurately track interactive applications and gauge performance more effectively, which assigns more accountability to agencies. Interactive targets people in a refined fashion, allowing brands to talk to the right audiences, thus saving time and money. Its not as simple as saying that because interactive capabilities now exist they will therefore take over; they will play a significant role though, because they can work quite well. I think there’s always going to be an electronic component to anything interactive, even if its just on the back-end, but it need not only be electronic, there are surely ways to incorporate printed materials and other more traditional means of communication into the mix.
What are some of the more inspiring examples of interactive design that you’ve seen? What do you think of its role in our profession in the coming years?
Wow, Bradley, thanks for the interesting post.
Just a few scattered thoughts:
1) It got people to INTERACT with the brand in a way they had never considered previously
Actually, we interact with brands like that all the time. It just comes from a different perspective - we're so used to seeing product placement that it bounces off us. In fact, I can't speak for anyone else here, but I (think I) prefer to see a real product in a movie than a generic representation. I'd rather watch the hero drink a can of Pepsi while driving a Ford... I can understand these, and they add to the percieved authenticity. IN the case of a movie like The Italian Job, the brand kind of WAS the movie. (One exception: Kaboom cereal. Thank you, Tarantino).
What was revolutionary (?) about the BMW Films was that the brand wasn't shoehorned into a wonky placement, the brand WAS the content. They were nothing more than very cool, very long commercials. But the content was good enough that people wanted to watch. That was amazing, and smart ad people will take that lesson away. The others will keep on cranking out those, "Our Prices Are Insane!" commercials. Hello, Mr Whipple.
2) I think "interactive" is necessarily ethereal and transient. The very nature of this kind of media is so flash and fade - by the time my mom knows about the Subservient Chicken, I'm way over it. Unlike campaigns of the past (like, say, the Snuggle fabric softener bear, who seemed to never EVER die), the cutting edge interactive stuff vanishes as soon as it flares. Quick impact is the order of the day - it's like blitzkreig adverts.
3) Why does PRINT have an INTERACTIVE issue?
On Aug.31.2004 at 11:34 AM