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.

Designing the Future at Silicon Beach

Last week, I spent two days basking in glorious sunshine on the English riviera (yes we have one, it’s called Bournemouth). It wasn’t all sitting around outside as I was attending Silicon Beach, an annual conference dedicated to stimulating the mind with a dynamic line-up of speakers from many creative walks of life.

It would be unfair of me to highlight any one speaker over another as all were of such a high quality – higher in fact than any conference I have attended before (and I’ve been to a lot!)

Credit for this line-up goes to event organiser Matt Desmier who pulled a bunch of mavericks (including myself) into 16 hours of coherent entertainment.

The presentation videos will follow over the next few weeks. For now, my irreverent slides are available on Slideshare but here are some thoughts I pulled together for the Silicon Beach event book...

“What do you want to be when you grow up?” The age-old question that encourages us to reach for the stars and realise our true potential. But what do we ever really do about it?

It’s a tough question for a kid – Astronaut? President? Oscar-winner? Tea cosy? If you chose a more creative path, your answer may have been Picasso, Thomas Heatherwick or Jony Ive but the end result would be the same – do what you want to do, then adjust accordingly

To be honest, I think the whole thing puts too much emphasis on ‘growing up’. I hope never to lose a certain childlike-enthusiasm when approaching life’s challenges. Knowing too much about how something works or behaves all too often results in a solution governed by rules and barriers.

I’m not rebelling against briefs or processes per se, I’m just suggesting we take those ‘guidelines’ and push, shape and challenge whenever possible. Those kids aspiring to a career as an astronaut were aiming for the stars and that’s the place to focus, not the launchpad.

So how does this relate to creatives of all shapes and sizes when many have already set off on a career path or feel there’s nowhere else to go? This isn’t a rallying cry to push your Herman Miller chairs from your desks, close down your Macs, walk slowly to the door and head for a recruitment agent. No, shape what you have first – and that starts with you, then the work, then the client. If you can’t tick those three boxes then maybe you should consider plan A after all.

If we’re aiming high, then let’s extend that to creative daydreaming, otherwise labelled as Innovation. Where’s my flying car? My neural Twitter implant? My inflatable lifesaver pants? Innovation has been regarded as a buzz-word, dragged out and paraded around when really only referring to something new – not necessarily innovative.

With a scattergun approach to job titles resulting in celebrities such as Will.i.am jumping on the ‘Creative Director’ and ‘Innovation’ bandwagon, the boundaries are being blurred further still. Who is providing genuine solutions and who’s merely delivering a beautifully crafted answer?

These aren’t mutually exclusive – far from it, the best solutions arise from closely aligned creative, technology and innovation teams. Back to the daydreaming...

If we look to the past for inspiration, and the present for the tools, then our solutions should be based in the future. When Leonardo da Vinci sketched his plans for a helicopter or Alexander Graham Bell made his first telephone, they had a much bigger picture in mind.

Unleash creative abandon on an epic scale and you’ll find that not only do you discover an abundance of answers and unleash that hidden potential, but enjoy yourself in the process. Isn’t that where we came in?

Jon Burkhart presents 'Sorry cakes'

Russell Buckley's David Steel T-shirt

Matt Ballentine has been assimilated

Honey I shrunk the Matt Ballentine

Great words to live by (and music to listen to) from Dave Birss

Andy Law - no slides required

Russ Lidstone on Frank Lloyd Wright

Mark Stevenson's Stephen Hawking put-down

Miss Piggy + Kermit = this, via Dave Birss

The Phone Ranger Rides Again

It's hard to believe a whole year has passed since my last US coast-to-coast WWDC week. A lot has happened in that time, much of it as a result of that week. America feels like my second home now so you can't beat the adrenaline rush of 6 big towns in 6 big days (June 9-16) – San Francisco, Cupertino, Mountain View, Los Angeles, Washington and New York.

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Last year Apptain America and the 'Avengers Dis-assemble' poster took centre stage. This year it's the turn of The Phone Ranger.​

There are a few familiar faces starring in this production. See if you can spot Chris McVeigh, Dan Franklin, Apptain America, Sam Missingham, Eric Huang, Charles Catton, Alastair Horne, Nikki Bedi and taking centre stage, Mark Staufer and er, me.

Hi-Yo Silver and all that...

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.