Something I was working on quite intensively throughout December has finally come to fruition, with the Teletext Holidays iPhone application becoming available in the iTunes App Store.
Working closely with software development gurus Vivorum.com I designed the interface and sorted all the graphic and branding elements, and have to say I’m mighty happy with the result.
The interface is a very cool purple glossy experience, totally square with the brand’s “art of less” philosophy and has beautiful slick usability touches, such as swiping from deal to deal with a flick of the finger and a nifty “Saved” function whereby you can store off holiday deals (from the daily updates) to review later. Each deal also contains a handy button that instantly uses the iPhone to call the travel agent.
And each time the user launches the application they get a different inspirational image and brand message.
It’s a really nice piece of work, and it was a great experience working closely with Teletext and Virorum on it. I reckon it’s a huge and healthy jump in Teletext’s delivery and continues to move them from ‘analogue’ to very very very ‘digital’. And for me, an enthusiastic iPhone user, it was a revelation to get deep and dirty into imagining and delivering a completely new kind of user experience for a famous UK brand about which people tend to have very firm preconceptions.
There’s an info page on the application here – and the iTunes App Store link is here.
It’s a free download, and a great way to scout around for your next holiday deal.
Silicon Alley Insider has some choice snippets, apparently from someone who’s actually seen the forthcoming Apple ‘tablet’ / ‘slate’ device – about one of its (many) great mysteries… what it’s Operating System is going to look like. Is it iPhone-ish? It is OSX-ish? Is it a hybrid? How do you use it? What’s the interface metaphor and control paradigm?
Well apparently the best we’re going to get for now are…
• “It’s pretty.”
• “The UI has a good bit of new sexy to it.”
• “It’s a big iPhone, but it’s not just a big iPhone.”
Helpful, eh…?
Oh, and here, if you’re interested in the device, are a few artists impressions drawn from across the interweb of what it MIGHT be like (according to the voices in their heads). Some nice bits of ideas in there, but you kind of know the real thing is still going to exceed pretty much any expectations.
Roll on the end of January.
Very cool and leftfield design puzzle thing by the excellent Londonist.
If you’re having trouble working out what the “elements” actually are, then there’s clues, discussions and answers here…
Enjoy.
artvinyl.com – a company specialising in display systems for album covers – has just announced the winner of the 2009 Best Cover award. Industry experts produce a liast of 50 nominations which are then voted on by the public. It’s good that the art of the album cover isn’t dead in the age of downloads, given that it’s such a tangible, physical thing – something currently on my mind with the recent post on the aesthetics of “Avatar” and the album artwork of Roger Dean – and a good choice for this year’s winner; “The Resistance” by Muse.
You can see all 50 nominations at artvinyl.com
I went to see Avatar yesterday – basically seen posters around and the odd trailer online and thought it best to catch it in 3D on a big screen – and thoroughly enjoyed it.
If there were any misgivings they’d be about the lack of subtlety in the environmentalist and political / foreign policy / war on terror messages in the film; although it’s worth noting that given the mess we’re all in with the planet in general and also fucking people over for the resources they happen to live on top of, the time for subtlety might be gone anyway.
It was nice however that the film didn’t go totally overboard on 3D by insisting on pointing everything at you; a couple of guns and bows and arrows was enough. As with films like Jurassic Park, some of the most impressive visuals were not about action but about detail. Jurassic Park had a lovely longshot of herds of dinosaurs grazing on an open plain, which at the time looked breathtaking, Avatar has tremendous shots of slightly defocussed insects floating in and out of shafts of light, or brief glimpses up through fern leafs into the forest canopy and the sunlight. Every bit as amazing as the full-on action.
Perhaps the most surprising thing for me, though, was how familiar the aesthetics were. Despite the contemporary politics and the bang up to date 3D delivery, the film actually took me back years and years. To the album covers of prog-rockers Yes, and the visionary artwork of Roger Dean (who also did their classic logo design).
It wasn’t only in the most obvious things like the floating mountains – a theme that Dean visited and experimented with on a number of occasions – but also things like the luminosity of Pandora’s forest landscape at night, the multicoloured dragons, and the arcs of stone surrounding the sacred tree (see the image attached for examples of Roger Dean’s originals; click for a larger view).
It could be said of course that Cameron has visited the territory of stuff like weird luminescence before in The Abyss – but there was a particular overall aesthetic approach to the whole ecosystem that had very very strong echoes of Dean’s artworks and worlds.
I have no idea if he was in any way a conscious influence or not, but it’s nice to be nodded into memories of another time and of such inspired pop art.
EDIT: Just found this website which tends to ask the same question, but is also worth a visit purely as a great selection of images of Roger Dean’s work.
And it’s not just James Cameron… Did anyone else think that the Ood’s homeworld in the Christmas episode of Doctor Who looked strikingly like the cover of “Relayer”?
Something I was working on quite intensively throughout December has finally come to fruition, with the Teletext Holidays iPhone application becoming available in the iTunes App Store.
