May The Force, Maleficent, Bernhoft... and Moondog be with you!

In the past ten days, the English have demonstrated both extremes of the effort and achievement scale. At one end (the bottom) we have the English football squad. unceremoniously dumping themselves out of the World Cup. At the other, we have our award-winning team at Brandwidth.

I hate for my writing to turn into the agency equivalent of a party political broadcast, but sod it – we’re passionate, we’re dedicated and we’re brilliant. Not a particularly British attitude (we’re supposed to be all politeness and deference) but when most of the conversation on our own fair shores revolves around a failed football team and a shortlist of the same old agencies and developers, someone has to fly the flag. We're responsible for the current US number one Entertainment app and Multi-Touch book – I'm pretty sure we're the first developer in the world to achieve this.

So, what have I got to shout about? In a nutshell, having returned from speaking at the Mobile Show in Dubai, I spent a week in the US covering WWDC in San Francisco, visits to Apple in Cupertino and meetings in LA, I touched down briefly in the UK, only to head off to Poland.

“Why Poland?” I hear you cry... I spoke at the brilliant ‘Bitspiration’ Conference in Krakow, an amazing gathering of the great and the good from the worlds of music, digital innovation and start-ups. I couldn’t have been more pleased to be attending when our latest multi-touch book for Disney Studios ‘Maleficent’ was the number one Entertainment title in the US iBooks Store! I was also happy to reveal the incredible ‘Bernhoft Islander’ app and announce our forthcoming ‘Star Wars Scene Maker’ app. More on those later...

As if that wasn’t enough, we had just updated our classic ‘Top 100 Albums’ app for Amber Books in stunning Retina detail and a new FREE cover price. I challenge anyone with an interest in any genre of music to find a reason not to download!

Despite the superstitious overtones, I returned home safely from Poland late on Friday 13th and caught up with the wonderful Nikki Bedi on her BBC London 94.9 show on Saturday evening. My role as ‘Inspector Gadget’ allows me the freedom to talk about the latest tech from around the world, discuss Harrison Ford’s injured foot and further tease the Star Wars and Bernhoft projects.

A big digital product launch usually delivers a mix of extraordinary highs and monumental lows. I’m glad to say, the arrival of ‘Star Wars Scene Maker’ last Thursday offered many more highs than lows. The Brandwidth team has been working closely with Lucasfilm and Disney for nearly a year, with the mission to bring storytelling bang up to date – and take it kicking and screaming into the future.

Who wouldn’t want to step into George Lucas' or JJ Abrams' shoes and direct the iconic scenes from all six movies, then take the reins from Episode VII and beyond? I have worked in publishing, design and technology for nearly thirty years (I started young!) and this project delivers in all areas. Don’t tell me publishing is dead when this is the result – storytelling and interactive narrative taken to digital extremes.

I’m happy to say we’re not stopping here. This is a living, breathing product with a healthy future of enhancements and updates, platform and content opportunities. Oh, and a lot of fun!

Speaking of living and breathing products, another Brandwidth blockbuster is now available – ‘Bernhoft Islander’. We had an incredible opportunity to collaborate with HD360 and Jarle Bernhoft and bring his hypnotic blend of contemporary soul music to life in an encapsulated album app. We’ve worked with a number of digital formats for artists such as The Doors, Led Zeppelin, Demi Lovato, Michael Bublé and the aforementioned Top 100 Albums app but Islander is the first app to launch globally alongside the main album, providing a genuine HD experience, with all music embedded at the quality it originally left the recording studio.

360º video, the Loop Station, an interactive Studio, all create a unique approach for a unique artist and a genuine premium product. Don’t take my word for it, here’s the man himself...

As I’m still on a music theme, the clock is ticking on a superb Kickstarter campaign, ‘The Viking of 6th Avenue’ Documentary. In their own words:

"The inspirational true story of Moondog, the legendary musician and New York icon whose life was an unexpected, outrageous adventure. 

Charlie Parker and Benny Goodman hung out with him. Philip Glass lived with him, Janis Joplin covered his music, Allen Ginsberg stuck it on his fridge, Diane Arbus took his picture and Andy Warhol’s mother designed one of his album covers. Merv Griffin interviewed him, Lenny Bruce shared the bill, Phillippe Starck named a building after him, Elvis Costello brought him to London and fashion designers have created entire collections around his look."

I’m not directly involved but Holly Elson is a brilliant documentary film maker and the Moondog story deserves to be told. At the time of writing, there are 3 days remaining and around $40,000 still to raise. It’s all or nothing – Kickstarter and the Viking of 6th Avenue are only a click away!

So that’s it then? Nope, we’re on a roll. Apart from the rest of the Brandwidth business, providing digital infrastructure and mobile solutions to the automotive sector, enterprise level websites, amazing experiential environments and all the data analytics you can eat, we have a stunning title ready to launch for Taschen later this month followed by many many more. It’s going to be a long hot summer where you’ll hear all about our amazing products, even if you don’t hear about Brandwidth.

There's an app for that?

My original Jan 2013 Computer Arts Column: now revised, updated and on ARB

​The internet gave us clients demanding their own version of Amazon.com. Social networks gave us clients demanding their own version of Facebook. Now they all want apps that combine Flipboard, Instagram and Angry Birds. Stop. Just stop. Take a second, slam your fingers in your desk drawer, then we'll talk.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not advocating digital (fingers, not pixels) dismemberment because I don’t like apps. Quite the opposite – I love ‘em. It’s this intimate connection on a personal device that drives millions of smartphone and tablet owners to interact with them on a daily, if not hourly basis.

There are very few situations where an app is less-effective than a website when trying to access information or engage an audience. However, if your website isn’t optimised for mobile browsing or your information would be better suited to a PDF, HTML5 web app or even an iBook, then you shouldn’t be thinking about a native app first.

At our current rate of app proliferation, in a couple of years I’ll be discussing the merits of the latest Crimewatch-sponsored Photo Fit Fat Booth or Gillian McKeith’s Turds With Friends. Brands need to focus and spend their money in the right places but designers and developers also need to push back and tell them where to stick it. So to speak.

This ill-conceived digital targeting hit home when I spoke at the Mobile World conference in Dubai last year. One of the more bizarre moments was a debate between mobile network providers (incidentally, big sponsors of the event) and developers. The premise of the debate was “should Telecommunications companies operate their own app stores?” And this set the alarm bells ringing, in my head, not at the venue.

The Telcos argued they should be able to operate outside the official app stores to avoid 30% loss of revenue and set up their own digital retail outlets. The developers wanted to sell individual apps without a store at all. With no one to physically restrain me, I was free to heckle the panel and inform them they were all idiots and not a single one of them was taking the consumer into consideration. 

Something I frequently tell developers is "Consumers don't give a crap about how complicated it is to build an app, collate all the assets, co-ordinate the contributing parties and steer the product through the Apple review process. They just want to know the end result is stable, looks and works beautifully, features appropriate content and is available through a trusted platform with a single touch and a password". As a result, I don’t get many Christmas cards from developers, but we deliver amazing results by avoiding complacency and putting the consumer first.

We’ve now reached an interesting point in the evolution of the app. On one hand we have a market voraciously pursuing the development of apps for any brand and any subject at any cost. On the other, we have those that think apps are merely a stepping stone to the next big thing.

As a designer, I spent many years defending Apple during the Jobsless wilderness years with PC devotees mocking me like a child with a melting ice lolly "Apple won't be around this time next year", "Everyone uses PCs, Macs are for the minority (designers)", "You can get Adobe software and Quark on a PC, so why would you use a Mac at twice the price?"

Anyone with a similarly negative opinion of mobile applications needs to sit back and think about what they’re really saying. Apps are neatly packaged software titles and no one in their right mind should be betting against software as a long-term investment. Consumers want the instant gratification of downloading a product direct to their device and syncing content across smartphone, tablet, desktop and TV.

If we take a sensible approach to the way we develop and the digital strategies we adopt, apps will continue to provide ‘a’ solution, not ‘the’ solution. Designers and developers must also be consultants, demonstrate a willingness to reject a bad idea and steer clients to the most appropriate digital platform – which may not always be an app.

​UPDATE: When is an app not an app? When it's an iBook of course.

To illustrate the above example, Brandwidth recently launched 'Led Zeppelin: Sound and Fury' with Rhino and Neal Preston.​

When we were tasked with finding the ‘best platform’ for ‘the best photographs’ of ‘the best rock band in the world’ we turned to iBooks Author for ‘the best coffee table book’.

We began working with Warner Music Group eighteen months prior to launch and ahead of the introduction of iBooks Author production software. We soon saw the shortcomings of our initial app build and the benefits of an iBook and swapped platform at a critical time.

Neal Preston’s stunning photography was ideally suited to full screen pinch-zoomed enlargements and galleries within the iBook and we brought the Led Zeppelin portfolio to life with bespoke audio commentary and additional video interviews by Neal and key industry figures.

With over 250 photos, 80 contact sheets, 25 audio commentaries, 11 video interviews, 24 Led Zeppelin set lists and many samples of ephemera and memorabilia our greatest challenge was one of logistics and effective curation.

We created a unique character for the entire project and wrapped the engaging contents in a recognisable brand that would sit comfortably with the army of existing Led Zeppelin fans and those newly introduced via Apple’s iBookstore and iPad range.

This title also introduces in-book music preview and purchase for the first time within an iBook project – just one of many boundaries pushed.

So when is an app still an app? When it's a Door!

Well, 'The Doors' to be exact. An app offered the only framework flexible enough to accommodate the high technological standards of our client – Jac Holzman, one of the world's greatest living innovators and someone we've lived and breathed this project with for over a year.

Jac founded Elektra Records and signed The Doors to the label in 1966 (amongst other highly-respected recording artists) and this app tells the story of the band through an unrivalled collection of ephemera, music and stories with over 45,000 words of text, a graphic novel depicting Jim's arrest in Miami, FBI files, an interactive timeline and map, hundreds of images and, of course... music.

​It's a major step on the road to the evolution of the music box set, but don't take my word for it... here's a superb article by Stuart Dredge for The Guardian and a few words from Jac in the video below.

2013: Future Fiction

What's new for design, technology and publishing in 2013? A valid question but why not resolve to make a difference, rather than predict what everyone else will do.

It's all too easy to find yourself caught up in the present, like a fly in a web, albeit a digital one in this case. Attending to clients with immediate requirements and never allowing yourself time to look further ahead than lunch or the next meeting can lead to a very blinkered approach to work and life.

I am in the fortunate position where my job specifically requires me to daydream, allowing my imagination to wander, looking beyond the present and jumping headlong into the future.

I have always loved the concept of time travel but it's not the vision of future civilisations or making history tangible that intrigues me, I'm fascinated by the impact of our actions and the rebuttal of inevitability. I don't believe in fate and I have never subscribed to the theory that our lives are in any way shape or form planned for us. If they were, why even bother to climb from our beds in the morning? Why take a different route to work? Why try to shape a business or industry for the better when the end result is written in stone.

Stephen King explored the obdurate past in his novel '11.22.63', stubbornly trying to reassemble itself into a network of intersecting lines that results in the same conclusion, the same historic path, the same planned inevitability. The challenge lies in breaking these strands to change the course of history.

OK, as the option to change the past isn't currently available to us, let's focus on the future as this lies in the hands of individuals prepared to write the history books and create 'Future Fiction'. You don't have to be an author, but someone with a passion to create a narrative for history, rather than slavishly follow focus groups or base all resources on developing multiple-choice products. In order to create and shape demand, you need to define the criteria and the product yourself.

Apple's 'Think Different' slogan is as powerful today as it was when this inspirational ad aired in 1997.

From Albert Einstein to Martin Luther King, Jim Henson to Steve Jobs himself, these were individuals with strong personalities and conviction, carving out deep impressions in the very fabric of history. 

The author Philip K Dick is a great example of a 'fictional innovator' – he gave us incredible glimpses of the future with classics such as Blade Runner, Total Recall and Minority Report. A recent comment on Twitter referred to Minority Report as pure fiction that should be treated as such. Well, we may not be exploiting precogs, but we're certainly using Tom Cruise's gestural interface. Several years ago Brandwidth worked on some stunning gestural interaction and 3D plasma screen projects for Toyota, so we've been used to keeping in line with fiction in order to keep clients ahead in the 'real world'.

2013 offers us more tools than ever before to bring the future into focus. Watch out for wearable technology and a return of gestural interfaces, powered by great hardware such as Leap and Microsoft's Kinect. When scale is important, we'll move beyond touchscreens and bring digital content into our physical environment. Don't worry, that doesn't make your smartphone and tablet obsolete, just open your minds to TVs, shop windows and car interiors that need you to wave your arms around.

This is an exciting time to make a digital difference in a physical world. Don't settle for today, when tomorrow has yet to be shaped. Get out there and write the future, don't sit back and read it.

Pop Art

If I were to pose the question “what is interactive design?” I would expect the response to be along the lines of “digital” or ‘“websites” or “mobile stuff”. Not an incorrect statement, but certainly incomplete.

Taking interaction back to basics, it’s about creating moments to interact with the world around us in its digital human and physical form.

It’s the paper-based communication that hit the spot for me at an early age. I loved books from the moment my parents started to read to me and, whether I realised it or not, my fascination was with the illustration, materials and feel of each hardback, softback or ringbound volume. This all took on a new dimension with my first pop-up book.

Enter, Fungus the Bogeyman. Raymond Briggs’ irreverent and slightly unsavory tale was my first meaningful pop-up experience (if you’ll pardon the expression) and pulling tabs to raise toilet seats and reveal the monsters within appealed on many levels to a six-year-old.

Sadly, my copy of the ‘Plop-up’ book hasn’t survived, however, the following examples are in pretty good shape for low-tech paper and card.

My renewed inspiration comes from the incredible Commander Nova's Pop-Up Alien Space Station by Nick Denchfield and Steve Cox. This book doesn’t follow the conventional pop-up approach, shunning individual spreads in favour of one spectacular fold-out structure whereby the outer cover folds 360º to sit back-to-back and form a freestanding space station. Additional card figures and pop-up spacecraft turn this into something much more than a book – now we’re really talking about an experience.

Commander Nova is an extraordinary collaboration between illustrator, paper engineer and publisher. I’m glad to say that it isn’t alone. Some other quality pop-ups include:

• The Super Science Book (Kate Petty & Jennie Maizels): Pop-ups, fold outs and a wealth of learning opportunities
• Ships (Robert Crowther): Ships of all shapes and sizes brought to life
• The Time Traveller’s Journal (Prospero Hermes): A paper engineering adventure through the ages
• X-Men Pop-up (Marvel Comics): An impressive example showing how far digital comic books need to evolve if they are to provide a more immersive experience than the printed version
• Encyclopedia Prehistorica: Sharks and Other Sea Monsters
  (Robert Sabuda & Matthew Reinhart): Incredible depth of content with numerous pop-up elements on every page

Photos don’t begin to do the books justice as half of the pop-up experience is in the animated theatre created, first when the book opens, then pulling, spinning or sliding additional tabs. The video (below) should help to bring each book to life.

I still love paper engineering but we’re all too aware of the cost implications, practicalities and longevity of these interactive masterpieces. I’ve been working to keep the dream alive since we began development of the next generation of digital publishing at Brandwidth last year.

We have been looking at the most engaging ways to bring the spirit of the physical pop-up book to the iPad. We’ll be adding as much additional content to narrative but in ways that card hasn’t been able to achieve. 

Interaction through gaming is our first option (see Headspin: Storybook below) where a competitive or educational element can be introduced to certain spreads and sensitively weaved into the storytelling.

Although new research by The Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology claims that traditional pop-up books are a less effective educational aid for children than a conventional text/image mix, I’m not convinced. Learning is achieved through different methods for different children and the younger generation is becoming increasingly proficient in its digestion of multiple data sources and methods of interaction. We shouldn’t forget that a fun experience also encourages a child to return to a book (or app) time and time again.

Multitouch interfaces will help to familiarise users of all ages with content in an increasingly personal experience.

I’m not a believer in taking engaging printed material and simply repurposing it for a digital platform. The technology has to add some value or, as designers, we’re not doing our job.

Having caught up with Steve Cox (Commander Nova) this week, it is clear that illustrators are keener than ever to see their content brought to life in ever-imaginative ways. The iPad provides just such a platform, reuniting creative production with the sense of touch.

It’s time to bring back Fungus in full multitouch glory and recreate Commander Nova with three dimensional pop-up sets providing entertainment and reading pleasure that does the new technology justice.

A version of this article first previewed in Design Week.