Momoko Golf Lab, a promotional site for Sony Japan. Providing you with multi angle videos, hi-speed camera footage and so on, all featuring golf. What I like about this site is the interface and the use of 3D for an immersive experience. You rotate around a 3D scene, with videos mapped onto planes and cubes, all a bit surreal and ‘techy’ but it looks pretty cool.
Created by Archetyp, Frontage, TYO Interactive Design Inc., and kirameki
Nice site which aggregates a daily news feed, featuring ‘Media-Man’, a character that shows emotional responses based on the content of the news feed! The character is composed of the text, it walks around on screen doing dances and so on, all in a very realistic way – looks motion captured. You can click on the guy to see the feeds that have composed him. Pretty cool…
Created by IMG SRC, Inc., Kaibutsu, and undefined Inc.
Very simple site promoting NIKEiD and it’s ‘blazer’ shoe in Japan. A short manga style film featuring characters who fly around and colour in a blank city – of course wearing the shoe in question – you are then presented with a blank shoe. By clicking on the different sections of the shoe you can create your own version of the shoe which when complete then colours in the city with your selected pallette. You can then click through to NIKEiD website where your creation can then be bought! I really like the simplicity of it all, the cool animation and most of all it’s fun…
Mega cool site for what I can gather is a club night somewhere in Japan. Great use of typography and navigation, the menu wraps the character in the centre, you drag your view in 3D space and the text slides around. Your view zooms in/out when clicking on items. Really nicely designed, with a really good use of 3D… love it…
Created by ANSWR Inc.
Japanese Microsite for Nescafe Charge, an easy and environmentally friendly way to replenish your instant coffee jar. Again the Japanese prevail, I love the way they demonstrate the product, you learn about it by using it to ‘charge’ an empty jar – it becomes more like an enjoyable game than a product demonstration, by grabbing the charge jar and dragging in onto an empty jar, then dragging down to simulate how you would use it in real life. Along with the slick animations and ease of use I feel its a thoroughly effective way of promoting a product.
The Morisawa Font Park 2.0 is a playground for creating images from characters. By dragging characters onto the stage you can then scale, rotate, break apart and move the various letters. This is all done via a really intuitive interface that is very fluid and easy to use. You can also view a gallery of images other people have made, it even goes as far as to show the movements they made to create the final image. The polish and high level of coding makes this a really accomplished website.
Really interesting site, showcasing the creative awards of Pen. A very simple, minimal site where you control the panning and movement of the camera whilst images appear and float from bottom to top, pausing when you rollover them, the camera zooms in when you click. Nice.
Another nice campaign site from Uniqlo. A series of slow motion videos with people dancing and moving, shown from various angles, play for short periods of time and change position on the site over time. There is a simple menu with links to the clothing, and thats it! I like the way the videos are in circles and the progress is displayed around this circle. Another nice minimal approach, nicely done, and strangely compelling to watch.
Beautiful, stunning work! Not quite sure what it is for – but it is inspiring you to take better care of the environment. Just simply an amazing website. Built around a cut out concept where the stories of various characters are told, through a cut out look and feel executed in a 3d fashion. When you click on a character your view zooms to the pop up book of their story, the beauty of it is the panning and rotating of the camera around the book, there is a huge attention to detail – by rotating the view you can see more details and explore the scene. I love the concept and the look and feel of the whole site, it is truly inspiring – where technology and design meet in unison – the 3d element is smooth and perfectly executed, the visuals are great and fun.
Created by the ultra talented Masayuki Kido, known as ROXIK – of Pictaps fame. He used his own 3d engine ‘Sharikura’.
Wow, another amazing Japanese website for Uniqlo – the presentation of opinions of 343 customers to a bra Uniqlo make! The work created for Uniqlo has been consistently amazing, always technically brilliant backed up with a nice concept. This is another example of that, instead of producing something simple & boring, something that is essentially about a survey, a fantastic 3d representation of opinions has been created. Floating through the opinions the way the data is presented is constantly flowing from one state to another, making new 3d shapes, and morphing colours. I really like the crisp presentation coupled with the smooth transitions and fast performance of the site. Technically proficient and well executed to present a really enjoyable user experience.
I have long been a fan of Japanese web design and its really good to see so many amazing sites appearing. The mix of music, technical excellence, and simple layouts provide the fun, colourful, and enjoyable approach that is often common place in Japanese designs. So often the more imaginative, conceptual side of web design is ignored for the slicker, polished look and feel, it is so refreshing to see a different viewpoint.
Created by Simone Inc.
Another great Japanese website, this time promoting the Smart car in Japan. In 3d you can design and drive your own Smart car, the great thing about the driving part is the way it is thought out. Presented in a ‘join the dots’ fashion, you drive your car from point to point, when completed the camera zooms out to reveal the picture you have just made, you can then download it or try again. There are several puzzles to complete and you get points to unlock design parts for your car. This is all set in a fun, easy to use look and feel, just a fun well thought out and executed site. Similar in many ways to the Red Bull Flightlab.
Created by CMD9.
Nice idea for Vidal Sassoon in Japan, a booth that takes 360 degree photos of people has been setup for a new promotion. This has resulted in a nice set of photographs which can be seen in this interactive gallery. Each photo can be enlarged and there are some nice results that provide a quirky slow motion experience. Would have been really cool to be able to rotate each picture!
Made by Imaginative Inc.
Great little website, promoting Japanese cards ‘Torecale’ – cool playing cards that feature great designs. The site is really straight forward and full of great touches – based around 4 card games you play the computer and in tern get to see how cool the cards are. Just really slick and fun.
Created by Makibishi.
Another cool UNIQLO website, this time in the guise of a grid ‘game’. I say game lightly as its more like a kind of interactive experiment with up the 50 people from all over the world interacting with cubes in a virtual space. You can create cubes, rotate them, divide them, move them and so on, everyone can edit your cubes and vice versa. It provides an interesting irreverant website, with cool sounds and great interactivity.
Created by the legend that is Yugo Nakamura of YUGOP.
