Recently in Interactive Category
I first started working on this project when I arrived at MIT last year, and while it was only supposed to be a part-time one-year RAship here (along with my work for C3), it wound up going through numerous revisions, reinventions and other snags along the way. Working with academics can often be like herding cats – getting the entire faculty of the literature section to agree on anything proved to be impossible, but at the end of the day I think we managed to create something that's both very beautiful and extremely useful, as well as a platform upon which my successor, Belinda Yung, can build out a really amazing experience over the next couple of years.
I'd like to thank my close co-workers on the project here at MIT: Professor Shankar Raman was my closest conspirator, along with the head of the section Professor James Buzard and Professors Mary Fuller and Ruth Perry. Professsor Diana Henderson was a joy to work with, as always, as were Professor Wyn Kelley, Professor John Hildebidle, Professor Stephen Tapscott and Professor Sarah Brouillette. I had a great time working with almost the entire section, to be honest. Great folks with a passion for their work – usually a recipe for a fun project.
When this eventually makes its way into my portfolio, it'll fall into both the 'interactive' and the pending 'identity' sections. The new LIT@MIT logo I designed, above, made its debut last year and has been trickling its way out across all of the section's announcements and materials. It's designed to feature multiple colors (as evidenced by the website) and be easily recognizable at a distance, with the 'L' shape of the pages echoing the L in 'literature', of course.
This evening I'll be attending a LIT@MIT event as a photographer, as the section hosts Jamaica Kincaid for a guest lecture and reading. I'm looking forward to this – I greatly enjoyed Kincaid's A Small Place as an undergrad and I seem to recall my Mom enjoying her copy of My Garden (Book). I'd like to think that the event was being held to celebrate the release of the website, but I know better. :)
After that, I'm rushing off to teach my second class this week, the Toy Design Workshop of my friend Barry Kudrowitz, where I'm co-lecturing with another of my friends (and old C3 colleague) Ilya Vedrashko. I'll be speaking on transmedia storytelling (natch), and Ilya will be speaking on product design and branding (also natch) – the curious can get a sense of my talk by reading an essay I posted to this blog nearly three years ago, "On Toys and Transmedia Storytelling." Rereading it now, it's funny to see how my ideas both have and have not changed during my time here – if anything, my graduate school experience has honed and expanded my thoughts at the same time. Which, I suppose, is exactly what grad school is supposed to do.
Anyway, gotta run – still a ton left to do in the next couple of hours before the evening's events. Enjoy the site!
Another small project went live today – Blue Compass Executive Recruiting is a new company by an old friend/client. There's not much to the site yet – it's only one page and is almost purely utilitarian in nature – but I liked the way the blue compass logo medallion came out. Like the site, it's extremely straightforward, but there's just something about the feel of it that pleases me. Plus, it looks dang sharp on the letterhead and business cards. Another entry for that 'identity' tab I keep meaning to add to my portfolio...
A big shout-out to my brother Talon, who just landed an excellent new agent in Chicago. To celebrate, we've polished up his website a little. Check it out over at talonbeeson.com – and if you happen to be looking for some smooth vocal talent for an ad campaign, animation, game or something similar, hey, here's your boy!
In case anyone was wondering, yes, the newly-unveiled MIT CMS/C3 Futures of Entertainment site is one of mine. Not sure how the actual homepage title got hosed that way, but whatever. The design is a riff on the new look-and-feel for the C3 site which is set to launch on Halloween or thereabouts. The C3 site will be black, gray and green though.
That is all.
Another little project just went live: my friend Jim Frazier is a kick-ass musician, and he needed a little music site to accompany the audio engineering site I built for him earlier. Small, subtle, and functional: Jim Frazier Music.
Today saw two more voiceover sites go live: Eileen Kugman and Chad V. Holtkamp. The way things are going, I'm going to have produced over 50 websites in 2004. That, my friends, is a somewhat dubious distinction.
