Posts for Tag: kathykavan

Memory Lane...Sky Active & Sky Gamestar iTV UI (2006 and before...)


Just came across video capture of projects I worked on a lifetime ago (well not that long, pre-2006 but it feels like a lifetime). Sky Active and Sky Gamestar on the SkyTV interactive platform.

Sky Active was a video fronted interactive TV portal that linked you to all of Sky's interactive services, and Sky Gamestar was the interactive gaming platform featuring favourites such as the ever popular Beehive Bedlam and Who wants to be a Millionaire. Brilliant to work on it all that time ago...*sniffs*



Gold for Glee 'Cross-Media Campaign' at Promax UK 2012

The Glee Cross-Media Campaign

The Sky Creative 'Glee' Campaign team has been awarded Gold for the 'Best Cross-Media Campaign'. Fantastic. It's always great to win awards, but the reason I'm especially pleased with being part of this collaborative team is that integrating campaign work cross-media often doesn't work too well, has a bias to one media over another, or logistically runs out of control.

It takes a lot of people to work together to make a campaign of this size, in particular I would like to highlight the collaborative strategy work from DennyTu at Sky Creative who kept it together and made sure that all areas delivered a joined-up experience. This award shows that the cross-media campaign's at Sky Creative are working and the integration of all creative areas is essential for the future of campaigns.

Congratulations to everyone who worked on the campaign at Sky Creative and the Sky1 Digital Entertainment team!

All Promax UK 2012 winners list http://www.promaxuk.com/2012-award-winners/

See the Sky 1 Glee Creative Work

Sky Creative | Glee & Treasure Island Campaigns

Here's a taster of some of the great integrated campaign work coming out of Sky Creative, my daytime home. As a Digital Art Director at Sky Creative I'd particularly like to add a big shout-out to all those who worked on the digital elements of these two projects.

In Glee, check out the Glee Twitter Visualiser and Yearbook, and in Treasure Island, check out the cool Aurasama augmented trailer...

Glee Creative Work

See the site here: http://sky1.sky.com/sky1hd-shows/glee

Treasure Island Work

See the site here: http://sky1.sky.com/sky1hd-shows/treasure-island

AnotherDesignBlog featured in 'Posterous Inspiration Centre'

A big thankyou to Posterous for adding 'Another Design Blog' to the Design section of the Posterous Inspiration Centre, see http://examples.posterous.com/kathy-kavan-another-design-blog 

Check out all the great design blogs at http://examples.posterous.com/tag/design

'Introducing the Posterous Inspiration Center - A collection of the best uses of Posterous'
http://blog.posterous.com/introducing-the-posterous-inspiration-center

For the love of Kubrick | Cinémathèque Française

The Cinémathèque Française is currently running a major exhibition on Stanley Kubrick http://www.cinematheque.fr/fr/expositions-cinema/kubrick-exhibition/stanley-k... - and for the online part of the exhibition they have collated fan-art inspired by Kubrick's work...

The best Kubrick web creations
"The Cinémathèque française launches an ambitious project: to present on its website the best web creation on the Kubrick legend. Graphic artists, video artists, stylists, plastic artists: a whole generation of creative talents has turned to the work of Kubrick over the past 15 years, paying homage to him, questioning his work, remixing it, etc. The adoration of these artistes for Kubrick will be the occasion to highlight the modernity of a film director adopted by a host of netsurfers all over the world, and whose works will be united for the first time in the same place." http://www.cinematheque.fr/expositions-virtuelles/kubrick_web/index.php

They have included three of my mock Kubrick book covers, 2001: A Space Odyssey, A Clockwork Orange and The Shining.
As well as being my favourite Kubrick films, they all contain layers of visual symbolism both iconic and open to personal interpretation.

"Reactions to art are always different because they are always deeply personal...the film becomes anything the viewer sees in it." (Stanley Kubrick)  

For the 2001: A Space Odyssey cover, I visualised the final space trip as it offered the most interesting and psychedelic space for graphical expression. http://www.cinematheque.fr/expositions-virtuelles/kubrick_web/item.php?id=230

In the A Clockwork Orange cover I chose what I personally found the most visceral image, Alex's terrifying eye-popping "rehabilitation". http://www.cinematheque.fr/expositions-virtuelles/kubrick_web/item.php?id=252

Finally, The Shining cover replicated the intense geometric carpet from the Overlook's corridors, suggesting menace on an almost unconscious graphical level. http://www.cinematheque.fr/expositions-virtuelles/kubrick_web/item.php?id=321

Kubrick is Graphic, in all senses of the word - his filmmaking is a design process that realises his artistic vision. He distils every component, in every scene, in every film into exactly what it needs to be, meticulously crafting and reducing until what is left is the pure communication of its message. My aim for these fantasy covers was to produce a distilled, graphical image to represent each film and to place the style somewhere in the near past.

...and here's a sample of some of the cool and varied work in the online exhibition

Real-time Generative Art on Southbank Sky Arts Awards 2011 Website

To celebrate the fantastic creativity being featured in the Southbank Sky Arts Awards 2011, we at Sky Creative have designed a website allowing you to create your own unique piece of Generative Art simply through navigating the site.

Site Design

Examples of Generated wallpaper Art
Also available for download here:

Generated iPhone wallpapers
Also available for download here:

Brush Samples
Included in the pool of assets that the generative code is sampling from...

Why Generative?
The thinking behind the Generative Art for was to create a dynamic vibrant backdrop for the users to engage with through the process of interacting with the site itself. The Gen Art evolves over the course the user's journey and is directly influenced by the interactions they make within the site (page views/mouse clicks). This affects the current art style and the range of brushes available at any one time. The Gen Art draws upon a variety of individual 'brushes' which are then grouped used together and used to simulate a particular 'art style'. Some of these styles are custom-made and others are designed to reflect the essence of a particular well-known artist (e.g. Matisse, Miro). A compatibility matrix was created that allows the styles to flow into each other whilst attempting to maintain a visually appealing mix of colours and patterns. This allows for greater variety of art and gives the visitor a unique experience every time. The visitor then has the option to save the 'canvas' as wallpaper for their desktop or mobile device, as MSN and profile icons or submit it to the Generative Art Gallery housed within the South Bank site to share with others. The Awards Ceremony takes place on Tuesday 25 Jan on Sky Arts, go to http://www.skyartsonline.co.uk/southbank to create your artwork and hear all the news about the Awards.

Credits
By the Digital team at Sky Creative:

Senior Designer | Marc Bendel http://www.marcbendel.co.uk/
Art Director | Kathy Kavan http://www.kathykavan.com
Creative Technologists | Greg Fleming, Dennis Hing http://uk.linkedin.com/pub/dennis-hing/2/176/6a
Creative Technology Manager | Andy Dobson http://www.andrewdobson.co.uk/

My Chair Design Fetish