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The Thomas@ series by Carina Diedricks-Hugo is a popular title amongst Afrikaans teens. LAPA Uitgewers approached Etiket with the desire to make a more engaging reading experience for the next title in the series. In many ways, this project came along at the perfect time for me.

I found out about JC Hutchins & Jordan Wiseman’s book, Personal Effects: Dark Art, on Adam Christensen’s MacCast. Despite never having seen the title in the flesh, I was immensely inspired by the big ideas that form part of the storytelling.

I had just finished an initial brainstorming sessions to conceptualize the rough ideas for an ARG for a locally produced feature film. All I could see was possibilities. Alongside a couple of colleagues we threw around ideas on how to make this book interactive and engaging in meatspace.

The project progressed to a point where I had to bring together all of the ideas into a concrete way to extend the reading experience without changing the story for those who didn’t have access to things like smartphones or internet connected computers.

In certain places Microsoft Tags and URLs appear alongside the text of the book. The reader is prompted to scan these tags, at which point they are taken to an element related to that particular point in the story. The collateral created for these sections include photos of characters in the book, chat conversations between these characters, audio clips and a video performance of the characters’ band, webpages and Flash games.

For budgetary reasons approximately 60% of the initial ideas made it into the book. Etiket submitted the Thomas@ Augmented Reality reading experience for 3 categories of the Pendoring Awards 2011 and we got 2 nominations for it. I’m very much looking forward to the awards ceremony later this month.

Almost a month ago a friend on twitter asked the question “If you could invite any three famous people (living or dead) to a dinner party, who would they be?” I replied Kurt Vonnegut, Steve Jobs and Audrey Hepburn to balance out equal parts of wit, vision and heart.

Today, my reply to that question would most definitely have to include Dr Carl Sagan. Sagan was an inspirational person – earning multiple degrees that culminated in a PHD in astronomy and astrophysics – who had the incredible talent of making complex issues relatable to the mainstream public.There is nothing I have read or seen that comes close to evoking a feeling of unity and optimism that The Pale Blue Dot does (video above).

I was late to the game, discovering the incredible work that Sagan completed – I’m currently working my way through the incredible sprawling breadth of ideas contained in Cosmos – but I’m glad that I have come to discover it. My interest was especially piqued when I ran across the first video of the Sagan Series.

This is a series of crowd sourced videos edited together by Reid Gower to the voice track of Dr Sagan himself. The videos present some breathtaking themes to the viewer and I recall tweeting that everyone would have a look at them, if for no other reason than to see how far we have come.

The full collection to date is presented below:

What is advertising?

Is it the promotion of a viewpoint through the construction and dissemination of a message in exchange for money? Is the end goal of a professional advertiser to aid their clients to make money by selling a product, an idea, an experience to the consumer?

With that in mind I sincerely ask is this man the greatest advertiser?

Is a message created by a culture inseparable from the ruling ideology of that culture? Whether the stance of the message supports or opposes this ideology, does the message not lose meaning when it is removed from it’s context? Considering that Advertisers accept money for crafting messages, does this not make one complicit with their client’s activities?

Isn’t there system set in place to inform the individual when these activities wander into the grey moral area? I believe that this system is called Ethics. Ethics are sets of principles that inform behaviour. Principles that form the foundation for a belief system. When a discipline starts pushing the boundaries of what is possible, naturally ethical principles are called into question:

This may be true for matters of science, but what excuse is there for Advertising? While beliefs are considered to be sacred and above scrutiny, don’t the bedrock principles that inform these beliefs seem to be more malleable and adjustable to circumstances? While people in the media industries grapple with how to create or change public perceptions, why is there not more stringent accounting for why such perceptions are created or changed? The general consensus on diamonds, for instance, is that they are so valuable because they are rare:

In the case of diamonds, the most destruction happens in their mining. Is the long term destruction caused by the design profession not just as destructive and long-lasting? How can products destined for the landfill be force-fed to consumers by slick marketing that aims to transform “wants” into “needs”?

Clearly there are individuals in the industry who realize what is happening. People who disagree with the way that things are being done. If there was no merit to this viewpoint then why is there a popular movement creating images like these?

Is the highest achievement possible in Advertising a successful campaign? And what defines a successful campaign anyway? Is it the effect that a campaign has on increasing demand? Is it a campaign that affects the behavior of consumers that exist outside of the initial target market? Is this not then the best possible result of any campaign?

These questions become all the more difficult to answer when the economy looks like ours does. Or does it make it easier to chase the money regardless of the consequences? Maybe we can sleep easier knowing that we aren’t the only ones doing this. Maybe we’ll get relief from future historians who will believe that we thought that we could fix anything with enough money. Or maybe we’ll get relief from the neatly bottled products that we promote.

Friday. 9 hours that everyone struggles through waiting for the weekend. Instead of wasting productivity, at Etiket, I’ve taken control of organizing a series of discussion sessions. These sessions are intended to allow us to explore topics that are provocative, interesting and informative. Having the chance to present any topic, naturally, I spoke about J.J. Abrams. The references in the poster are quite obvious, but like any good story, the scene needs to be set in the first act. With that in mind, please pay attention as independent filmmaker Kirby Ferguson runs us through the true origins of creativity:

The next speaker is renowned radio producer Ira Glass. Mr Glass dispenses sincere advice on storytelling. On keeping at it until one’s abilities catch up with one’s taste. On learning to cut work and ideas when they are clearly not working:

And now that you’re fully invested in this narrative, your reward as a viewer is a satisfying denouement. J.J. Abrams talks about mystery boxes at TED:

Pushing the boundaries of what an AV can be, at Etiket we decided to actualize the figurative expression of beginning a new chapter.

The Brand Union Johannesburg and Coley Porter Bell Cape Town have merged. As part of the publicity around this enormous development, we were tasked with creating an AV to be aired at the launch event. The problem we faced was figuring out how to bring the message home to The Brand Union and Coley Porter Bell employees, clients and to the industry as a whole.

How much more real can you get than a physical book, that is paged through, written in and burned? The process of designing, printing, collating, binding and filming the book seen in the AV (and three successive books detailing both companies and their previous work) was a visceral and time-sensitive experience. The hard work done by the team of 9 comes through very successfully in the end product – so much so that this very same AV has been used to market The Brand Union internationally.