ELLIANCE | www.collegeprowler.com
College guides have traditionally been provided by boring corporate entities, says interactive designer Edward Shin. “So when we saw that College Prowler was uniquely positioned to be the only college guide not influenced by ‘The Man,’ we wanted to differentiate our client by creating a site that [does things] the competition wouldn’t be able to get away with.”

Shin recalled his own college experiences, with all their excitement, possibilities—and the chaos of his cluttered desk. He sought to channel his own recalled youthful irreverence into the site’s design, with the intent of evoking the universal college experience. As a result, the site is fun and dynamic, while extremely information- rich and practical. What College Prowler does is offer snapshots of real college life at different schools through the use of thousands of unedited student quotes on subjects ranging from campus dining to the local drug scene. Shin especially enjoyed creating hand-drawn illustrations. “The Live Trace tool in Illustrator was fantastic for transforming sketches into workable vector objects for the design,” he says. “The client felt we really captured the youthful energy of their brand.” Thanks to College Prowler, a new generation of high school seniors will know what to expect.
Romy Ashby

THE VACUUM DESIGN | www.pumasuperstructure.com
Heavy on 1960s-era space tech, this site dabbles in some Russian Constructivism, too, according to Vacuum Design creative director Nate Smith. For the launch of the Puma Superstructure shoe, Smith’s crew traveled back in time to the U.S./USSR space race. Using Photoshop, Flash, 3ds Max and Final Cut Pro, they built a timeline.

Each item in the timeline features a Russian or American vignette: a video, an interactive piece or an image. (Naturally the Americans win the race, blasting off in their spaceship-like Puma Superstructure shoe.) “The hardest part was the 3D render time,” says Smith. “Running back and forth, managing renders, making one tiny change and waiting three hours to see if it came out right.” Allowing their imaginations to run naked and free, the crew reached beyond the launch and into the future. “In 2035, the shoes become highly advanced and build a city on the moon, made up entirely of shoe parts,” says Smith. “In 3030, the shoes become self-aware, turn on their human creators and destroy the Earth!” Building that world was the best part of the job. “We’re very proud of this concept,” Smith says. “I think we pulled it off pretty well.”
Dana Rouse

THE VACUUM DESIGN | www.vacuumsucks.com/demo/officemax/reindeer
A little Photoshop, a good mic, Pro Tools and a lot of Flash went into creating this reindeer arm-wrestling microsite. It was developed as part of a campaign called “A Gift From Of- ficeMax,” explains Vacuum art director Tyler Kealey, and it was “intended to associate Of- ficeMax with holiday gifts.”

Located in British Columbia, the design team had only to look to the mountains for inspiration. “We often spend our weekends in the back country challenging deer, elk and other members of the Cervidae family to arm-wrestling matches,” says Kealey, who admits that finding a convincing way to arm wrestle a reindeer was the biggest challenge of the project. “Once it had been determined that we probably wouldn’t be able to find a live reindeer tame enough to videotape,” recalls Kealey, “we found ourselves the next best thing—a stuffed one! We were then able to photograph this deer from many angles, giving us the assets we needed to create some amusing animation.” Oversized horse mouths were used for facial expressions, he says, “helping make the reindeer look as ridiculous as possible.” The client loved the finished product, using it as one of the lead pieces in its Christmas campaign.
Dana Rouse

160OVER90 | www.morimotonyc.com
“Morimoto is about serenity and euphoria, blended into a Zen margarita with a side of wasabi,” says 160over90 graphic designer Giacomo Ciminello. The site design attempts to emulate the experience of this Manhattan restaurant, a collaboration of Iron Chef Masaharu Morimoto, architect Tadao Ando and restaurateur Steven Starr.

Ciminello positioned the larger-than-life Chef Morimoto at the center of his universe, with sushi, sake and even the Empire State Building revolving like planets around the sun of his kitchen. “Just as guests can often be surprised by unique items on the Morimoto menu, like lobster fritters or a soft-cooked egg baked into a wheel of cauliflower flan,” says Ciminello, “throughout the site, tiny discoverables are hidden.” The hidden stuff gives Morimoto its character, he believes, and the website was designed to make restaurant customers aware of the experience they should expect. “Should they,” he asks rhetorically, “don their latest Armani, grab their latest girlfriend by the arm and trim up to the entrance in their ’72 Ferrari 365 GTÐ4?” One gathers they probably should. They can’t take the G Train, which is floating around Chef Morimoto with the sushi—the G Train doesn’t run in Manhattan. So what? It looks great, nonetheless.
Romy Ashby

8REWARDSROAD.COM | www.expressyourself.com.sg
Marketing the Volvo C30 in Singapore posed a challenge to the interactive agency selected to develop an online campaign for the car. “Cars are expensive items in Singapore, and the carbuying public is forced by these circumstances to be practical,” says Kuok-Ming Lee, CEO of 8RewardsRoad.com. Volvo’s focus on safety and value “appeals to the rational, practical buyer,” he notes.

The problem was how to make the Volvo C30, a sporty two-door, more appealing to a younger, more emotionally driven buyer who might be considering a VW Golf GTi or Mini Cooper, both of which have strong presence in the market. The site 8RewardsRoad developed accomplishes this with interactive features such as a contest for visitor-generated videos, an index of reviews and blogs, a chat room and a poll—all designed to, as Lee puts it, “grab the hearts and minds of the target audience and get them to reconsider their perceptions of the Volvo brand.”
Tom Biederbeck