Monthly Archive for August, 2007

Newspaper as the artist’s muse (Part One)

Published
by
Robb Montgomery
on August 23, 2007
in Blog, Design, photography and robbmontgomery
. 1 Comment

By Robb Montgomery



“les maux se font entendre”, originally uploaded by Bertrand Eberhard.

One of the things I have enjoyed about subscribing to a Flickr RSS feed on media are the occasional ’serendipitous’ encounters with fantastic new images that lead you to discovery. Take Flickr uploader “Lemoox” for example. Lemoox is the screen name for Bertrand Eberhard.

Eberhard’s “les maux se font entendre” is but one example of this French artist’s prolific output. He often draws paints and sketches on the pages of local editions. In this set he posted on Flickr, Bertrand inks on the pages french and chinese newspapers. Most of them are done on the pages of “Libération”

If you have a few minutes (and are not offended by pen and ink studies of the nude female form) then you will be amazed how quickly he can transform ordinary news pages into works of art. He has a stunning range of skill and you can’t help but fall in love with the women he portrays.



tendances, originally uploaded by Lemoox.

From Russia comes a stealthy stylist



DOU_2007_newspaper, originally uploaded by Oleg Dou.

Oleg is a Moscow-born artist who has a background in computer science and web design. He says he only recently discovered photography and is interested in exploring how design and photography can merge.
This image was pulled from his stream that shows an incredible command for photographic vision and inspiring design concepts. Creepy, but cool.

Oleg gallery

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David Gollob of the Canadian Newspaper Association

Published
by
Robb Montgomery
on August 17, 2007
in referral and robbmontgomery
. 0 Comments

Personable, Expert, Creative

Robb is an inspiring speaker and trainer dedicated to helping newspapers expand their journalistic output and continue to reach mass audiences through creative and innovative approaches to digital a/v production. I would strongly recommend him to any newspaper committed to taking on the challenges of the new media universe

David Gollob
Vice President, Public Affairs at Canadian Newspaper Association

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Beyond Soundslides - shake things up with Animoto

Published
by
Robb Montgomery
on August 15, 2007
in Blog and robbmontgomery
. 1 Comment


This slideshow video was ridiculously easy to produce. I didn’t have to upload any photos (Though I could have) Pay any fees (Though I would if I wanted to produce a longer segment) or upload any of my own audio (Though I normally would)

It’s just fun, fun, fun and if you have never picture edited for video before using Animoto could be a a great tutorial.
Animoto lets you tap into any existing photo set you may have handy in Flickr, Facebook, Smugmug, Picasa, or Photobucket. There’s some built-in music for you to mashup. All the Final-Cut-Pro type effects are rendered on their server and when it’s ready you get code that you can embed in your blog.

Animoto uses patent-pending technology to analyze your images and everything about the selected music — its structure, genre, energy, build, rhythm — before developing a blueprint for the motion design of your video. The remaining time is spent rendering your video, using a giant farm of computer processors to custom-generate 24 new images per second for your final video.

Here’s another one I cooked up. Fun.

This is really early in the product’s development life but it is worth playing with and keeping an eye on. Soon you’ll be able to download the video segments you create and that is where there become a greater potential to use these mashups as a video editing tool. One that is used sparingly, mind you and only for the right story elements, like, robots perhaps.

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What can you learn from job postings?

Published
by
Robb Montgomery
on August 15, 2007
in Blog and robbmontgomery
. 1 Comment

These new Internet job boards have made finding really interesting jobs and the companies that are interested in hiring creative people with journalism skills a lot easier.
Every week I read through hundreds of job descriptions using a custom-aggregated RSS feed I have cultivated from a number of sources. The jobs that pop up are amazing.

Want to be the Director of publications for Carnegie Hall, Work on interaction design for Apple, Develop new products in Silicon Valley, or be the Managing Editor at the University of California, Berkeley?

With headlines (like these in today’s I Want Media RSS news feed) you too may want to build your own jobs feed - or subscribe to mine.

A harsh reality check but the good news is that there are hundreds of new jobs every week that require expertise in visual editing, new product design, new media and digital journalism.

Reading these job descriptions you can begin to see where skills crossover, but that’s just the start.
I like to see where media companies are heading in their strategic direction. In corporate America, a manager can only get the greenlight to post jobs that have a strategic plan behind them. Often the language for that new direction is copied verbatim into the pitch for the job.

Like this one from a company called, Lab49.

Building nifty creative websites is fine, but we’re reaching far beyond; building large-scale, multi-threaded applications for use in the world’s toughest technology environments. And we’re defining a new visual language for high-throughput, multi-dimensional data exploration. A talent for graphic design or information graphics is a major plus.
Read Edward Tufte? Stephen Few? We want you.

Reading this reinforces the evidence I have been gathering that the media development world is moving more towards frameworks and away from Flash container solutions. Why else would they be hiring Flash designers to NOT use Flash?

Subscribe to my Jobs RSS feed at http://feeds.feedburner.com/mediajobs or grab the code for the widget.

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John Ryan, Journalism Professor

Published
by
Robb Montgomery
on August 14, 2007
in referral and robbmontgomery
. 0 Comments

He does a tremendous job

Robb does a great job of talking to and working with college students. He is at the forefront of his craft in both newspaper design and online news. His multi-media presentations are educational, entertaining and informative. He has no trouble keeping students’ attention, and he usually wow’s them with his work. I’d highly recommend Robb to be a keynote speaker or to lead a session on just about anything at a conference. He does a tremendous job.

John Ryan
Professor/director of student publications
Eastern Illinois University

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Boris Trupcevic - Editor in Chief (Zagreb)

Published
by
Robb Montgomery
on August 6, 2007
in referral and robbmontgomery
. 0 Comments

A very broad insight, knowledge and perspective on the media

Presenting with Robb at IFRA workshop in Kuala Lumpur was a pure pleasure. Although I came there as a presenter (of my newspapers’ success) I learned a lot from Robb’s presentations. I was fascinated by the wideness of his expertise and a very broad insight, knowledge and perspective on the media he has demonstrated. Robb knows what the media in the future need . . .

Boris Trupcevic
Editor-in-Chief, 24sata
Croatian national daily newspapers (Zagreb)

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Revealed: Design style guide for iPhone

Published
by
Robb Montgomery
on August 5, 2007
in Blog, Design and robbmontgomery
. 0 Comments

Using rounded forms - Apple specifies 7 degree corner radiuses, Helvetica type and a simple color palette

Apple details these design guidelines and are redefining how mobile applications can be used.

If you want to make your Web page or new mobile app look great on an iPhone, you might be interested in checking out Apple’s design guidelines.

One of their key tenets states:

Use columns and blocks like many of the online newspapers do. Text blocks that span the full width of the page tend to be difficult to read. Columns not only break up the page, making it easy to read, but also work well when users double-tap the screen.

The section on XHTML design begins:

The best way to start coding a new website is to make a rough sketch on paper.

Plus c’est la meme chose, plus ça change, eh?

Visit this iPhone page on the Apple Developer site to learn how Apple specifies 7 degree corner radiuses, Helvetica type (in 12 17 and 20 point sizes) and a simple color palette.

The human finger is less precise than a mouse pointer so there are other design considerations to make as well. (Like link density, meta strings for CSS rules and files sizes . . .)

My fave new, killer iPhone apps

I have been checking out some of the new Web Apps designed for the iPhone and it clear that some developers are clearly following these design guidelines strictly and others are at least getting the big picture for how mobile apps need to be designed for rich media interaction. Here’s a list of my current faves - ones that I use every day. Some are beta, some are alpha - all are already pretty good out of the box. I expect them to evolve rapidly.

Why these?
This Ajax-ified Google search app is far better for my mobile info gathering purposes than the built-in Google search.

The Facebook app is all I need out of Facebook. Can’t think why I would ever need to log in from a laptop or desktop? Someone tell me why after trying this App out on your iPhone.

The Movies app is not a ‘work-related’ app but it is so handy, powerful and just plain fun that it has to stay.

The Weather Radar link is not a mobile web app, per say, but it is a bookmark I leave loaded all the time. The built-in Yahoo! weather app is cute but I live in the Windy City and need more visual data to make me happy.

The Gas app follows the Apple style guidelines - you can open in a Web browsers but, trust me, it looks way better in your palm because of the way the XHTML formats it on an iPhone.

Twitter, because it works the way it should, simple.

Beejive let me log onto multiple IM networks and manage my AIM, MSN and Yahoo! accounts in one slick app. (Now, if I could only get all my contacts to agree to the same IM client) Beejive also handles GoogleTalk®, ICQ®, and Jabber - but I am not on those.

Tip, Top, double-Tap?

I hope to see you at the Tech Talk event in Chicago August 28.

It is a free seminar so I will be there to learn how to code and design for the iPhone. Let me know if you are coming.

If you can’t make it into the Loop you can at least catch this one hour video where an Apple engineer walks you through all the interface design elements for making your mobile Web apps rock solid.

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