Collective knowledge is part of what defines Digit. We work in collaborative, multidisciplinary teams across projects and at all stages, approaching our work with equal parts vision, strategy, design intelligence and technological expertise.
There’s no doubt in our minds that the only thing better than a team that works well together is a team that truly understands and values what each member brings to the group. So we’ve decided to expand on our passion for collaboration with in-house skills sharing by launching a school-within-a-studio, School of Digit.
Based on a curriculum created by us and for us, School of Digit is one way the studio is actively creating a culture of informed collaboration. The school is comprised of a series of talks and workshops led by members from each of our studio teams — Strategy, Technology, Design, User Experience, Production and Finance, and will soon include outside experts who can teach us new skills.
We held our very first class this morning on Brand Strategy. Stay tuned for our school calendar, and if you’d like to attend a class, drop us a line and register.
Remember Digit’s award-winning data visualisation work for TNS’ Digital Life study last year? Well we had the pleasure of outdoing our own work by creating the website for Digital Life 2011, the biggest study ever on how the world thinks and behaves online.
Our design team approached the project differently this year, using an insight-driven and user-centric approach to showcase the study’s provocative findings. Furthermore, a unique link is created for every data permutation to increase the site’s shareability. Digital Life has also been designed for tablet and mobile users, and the site was developed using elements of HTML 5. Above all, our work shows the power of storytelling through data visualisation and delivers an interface that is both simple and intuitive.
Here’s what our Creative Director, Henry Brook, had to say about the design process:
We wanted the site to have substance; to not only deliver data but to tell a story. So we trawled through the data to look for stories while TNS married these up with insights to produce the whole package. The challenge was to combine all of this into a site that was not only relevant but interesting. We decided to go for an editorial feel; to present the content behind contentious headlines and hooks that would tap into concerns and interests.
Digit’s partnership with TNS on ‘Digital Life’ has been awarded Crème de la Crème at the this year’s WPPED Cream Awards. Up against fierce competition from agencies within the Kantar group, Digit came out on top of a record number of submissions in the consumer insight category.
Slick interaction design and beautiful data visualisations brought to life the largest and most comprehensive study of the global digital consumer ever produced. You can view ‘Digital Life’ at www.discoverdigitallife.com
For a studio of tea-lovers, nothing makes a more perfect gift than some fresh tea sent direct from the source. So, it was pretty exciting when a package arrived at Digit, wrapped in cloth, containing a small container of tea all the way from ‘Delight Homestay’ in Kerala, India.
It came from our currently nomadic Associate Creative Director, Adam, who has embarked on an exciting round-the-world trip with his wife. It was true Adam-style that he would send this characterful bundle rather than your average “wish you were here” postcard.
Inside the bundle was a pot of the freshest hand-picked ‘silvery tips’ tea from the highest tea plantation in India. So fresh, that you only need a few measly-looking leaves to make a whole cup. It doesn’t look the most impressive of drinks but it tastes delicious and unlike most ‘English’ tea it is remarkably refreshing.
Thanks Adam! More tea from your next tea-producing destination please! Here’s a picture we stole from Adam’s blog that shows those beautiful tea plantations.
And here is the little note that came with it:
“It’s from Munnar, India’s highest tea growing area. Hand-picked that stuff! By beady-eyed women who trawl the mountain looking for the youngest leaves, covered in the most crystals, hence the name silver tips. It was wrapped up pretty efficiently wasn’t it!
In India, if you want to send a parcel, you have to go to a tailor (not exactly Saville Row) who will sew you up a little linen sleeping bag for your item before sealing it up with candle wax. You then go to the post office and fill in a mini biography of yourself. All in all it takes about 3 hours off your life. Entertaining and frustrating in equal measure.”
Digit peeps past and present gathered last night to celebrate the 10 year anniversary of Creative Director Henry Brook, who has pioneered Digit’s creative work since 2001 (or is it 1998?).
It was a fantastic night – great to see so many familiar faces from Digit past and present. A big thank you to all who joined us in making it such a special occasion. Congratulations Henry! Here’s to 10 more!
Having no friends and being unpopular does have its advantages. It give you plenty of time to learn how to program and play musical instruments.
I spent many a happy hour with a knackered out electric guitar, microphone, trashed drum kit and a tape-driven 4 track (Tascam Portastudio 414 MKII if I remember correctly) layering up tracks and bouncing them down.
Part time jobs helped fund my obsession and I eventually bought some effects pedals including the Boss DS 1. This gave me the ability to digitally loop small sections of guitar and vocal parts to create some wild and wonderful experimental sounds.
Live Looping is now very popular and takes many forms. In its purest form, live looping is a single musician creating an entire track from scratch and on-the-fly without the aid of pre-generated backing tracks.
Here’s a few of my favorite live looping artists, they all have something different to offer and cover loads of musical genres.
Enjoy!
Artist: Andrew Bird
Track: Section 8 City
Pedal: Line 6 DL 4 x 2
Artist: KT Tunstall
Track: Tutorial Black Horse & the Cherry Tree (part 2)
Pedal: Akai E2 Headrush
Artist: Emily Wells
Track: Symphony 1 (In the Barrel of a Gun)
Pedal: BOSS RC-50
Artist: BEARDYMAN
Track: Monkey Jazz
Effects unit: Kaoss pad 3 x 2
A healthy sample of talented young graduates in illustration, graphic and digital design were invited to the Digit studio last Friday as part of this year’s D&AD New Blood festival. The afternoon involved an intensive workshop, in which participants were asked to come up with ideas based upon a single brief, which was to make Britons of all ages become sports obsessed in the run up to the London 2012 Olympics.
The students were given just two and a half hours to come up with a winning pitch, presented on 5 sheets of A3 paper, and then delivered to a panel of judges for 5 minutes each. After a long, hot afternoon of brainstorming and concept sketches, it finally came time to pitch them in front of a panel of industry heavies. Although nerves had been running high, each group did incredibly well in selling their ideas to a highly opinionated and experienced panel, who eventually spent over half an hour deliberating over who would be the winning team.
The judging panel, which included representatives from Microsoft, Diesel and The Roundhouse, as well as our very own Creative Director, considered all the pitches to be of a very high standard. However, the winning team was announced on the day: A massive congratulations to Shinji Pons, Keir Ferne and Lilianna Kuang, each of whom will be invited back for a unique opportunity to discuss their portfolios with our Creative Director and other senior designers at Digit.
The whole afternoon was rounded off by celebratory drinks with Digit staff and judges who even managed to fit in a nail-biting performance of Fifa on the Studio X-Box before moving on to the Ten Bells for a well-earned pint.
Thanks again to everyone who made it such a memorable experience!
I’m no Lady Gaga fan. In fact, she kind of irks me… not sure why, but she just ain’t my cup of tea! That said, I respect her, and her team, tremendously for their digital savviness.
The Gaga brand has its fingers on the pulse of exactly how the masses are navigating the online world: Yes, Gaga became the first person on Twitter to surpass 10 million followers, yes, she has almost 37 million (that’s 37 MILLION!!) Facebook fans. But the really interesting digital move from Gaga came last week when she partnered up with Farmville – the virtual farming simulation game – through developer Zynga, in what is being touted as an ‘interactive celebration’.
A specially allocated area of Farmville was created last week, for a limited time, called ‘GagaVille’ which invited users to “execute Gaga-themed quests” in order to unlock songs from her upcoming album. For any dab-handed-veteran users of Farmville, GagaVille was just like the regular version, but with added glamour and a bit of novelty weaved into the gameplay. It featured new crops such as Chrome Daisies and Electric Roses; new goods like Crystalmist Wine and Shiny Daisy Cakes, as well as new market items like a Crystal Fountain and Gem Tree – all at Gaga’s request. It was essentially a customised built area for the Gaga brand to interact with some of her most ardent and enthusiastic fans.
Lady Gaga is not the first artist to spot the business potential in workinig with online social games – Guns n’ Roses partnered with Rock Band 2 and Dr.Dre has partnered with Mafia Wars in the past – and it’s easy to see why artists and brands are seeking these gaming partnerships. Looking at the numbers, it makes absolute sense for Farmville to be exploited by brands – musical ones or not. There are 60 million + players globally and the demographic appeal of Farmville is extremely broad. What’s more, Farmville fanatics spread the word through Facebook, simply by carrying out their activities within the game.
Gaga is using digital platforms in a way that is creating an entirely new business model to interact with fans and to market music. Rather than focusing on TV and print solely, Gaga promotes herself where her fans are spending most of their time. For example, Starbucks launched a “digital scavenger hunt” for Gaga-inspired goods. Google debuted a commercial with Gaga, featuring a track from her album. The online fashion outlet Gilt is offering Gaga-inspired clothing and VIP performances, and if that’s not enough, Best Buy is giving away the album to anyone who buys a mobile phone with a contract.
While the reaction from influential bloggers to this particular Farmville promotion has been mixed… ‘taking the worst part about Facebook and using it to promote music’… something tells me that Gaga and Zynga are just happy to be getting the attention. And the partnership was, ultimately, successful. Traffic to the online game was up by over 30% at its peak of the ‘interactive celebration’, plus online buzz and PR was massive. The Gaga-Farmville partnership could become a tipping-point in pop music interaction and design.
Check out this fun video to get a sense of how the real world “GaGa” and the virtual world “Farmville” successfully merged:
Ever kept a diary? Weighed yourself? Or tried a heart rate monitor? How about kept a detailed record of your mood, calorific input and expenditure, sleep patterns, stress levels, water and energy use or where your money goes? Some people do…
Self-hacking Self-hackers (to use a London Quantified Self Group term) are those interested in measuring certain aspects of people’s lives in order to uncover underlying causes and effects of the things we do, our health, how we feel and ultimately how we ‘fix’ ourselves.
There are an ever-growing number of devices and services enabling the capture of our actions and status. Here’s just a few of them:
Hungry? Services such as online food diaries enable the individual to, tediously, record their calorific consumption and use. This information is used to monitor if they are going to be consuming more energy than they will expend. In contrast services such as the ‘Magical Meal Logging’: Meal Snap provides calorific estimates based upon photos you take of your food.
Sleepy?
Sleep devices, such as the Wakemate monitors, use accelerometers such as those found in Smartphones, to track sleep time and stages. The user can also request to be woken within an optimal sleep stage window.
Where does your money go?
One of the tools for tracking spending habits is the ‘Lovemoney’ Money Tracker
This service enables the monitoring of financial ins and outs of multiple accounts. This data is then fed back as pie charts chunked into different categories such as travel and groceries.
iSave water The iSAVE Water-Saving Faucetsindicates water usage and temperature. By making the cause and effect of people’s actions obvious these types of immediate feedback loops are believed to help motivate people to conserve water and energy use.
Sharing the where Sports-tracker: Nokia’s exercise monitoring and sharing mashup tool is one of many exercise monitoring tools that enables people to track their movements and, if they wish, share them with others. The social side of these tools can be both a motivating factor for improving, as well as just -creepy.
So, are you eating well? Drinking too much? How stressed are you? Get enough sleep last night? How about last month?
Don’t care, don’t know? More information and many more tools can be found at: quantifiedself.com
In keeping with Digit’s multi-disciplined approach to nearly everything we do here, Claire – our talented designer and yoga expert – offers some tips on how to improve your posture and work out those knots, without even leaving your desk…
Sitting at a desk, hunched over a computer screen all day doesn’t help your energy levels or posture, and in a recent study, Business Insider even attempted to explain “How sitting will kill you”… A little extreme perhaps, but after recently completing my Yoga teacher-training course, I thought I would illustrate a few easy stretches that you can carry out at your desks, to improve circulation and stimulate maximum creative power!
So, here are three simple desk poses that shouldn’t draw too much attention from your colleagues: (Its best to have your feet flat on the floor for these, so might be worth removing those 4inch heels boys).
If you can, close your eyes.
Let your chin drop down to your chest.
Make sure you are not carrying any tension in your shoulders by relaxing them down, and back.
Begin to circle your neck, taking the right ear to the right shoulder, moving the head back and then over to the left.
Try to slow it down, as slow as you can go.
Try 3-5 rolls in each direction.
Stand up.
Turn your hands so your wrists face the computer, and your fingers face the edge of the desk.
Lean into the wrists and flatten the palms.
Stop if you feel pain but don’t be scared to give it a good stretch.
Keeping your back straight, and your tailbone tucked in slightly, rotate your torso to the right.
Hold on to the arm of the chair for support.
Inhale. Extend up, out of the hips and as you exhale, rotate more, keeping your chin inline with your shoulders.
Hold for 3 long breaths and then repeat on the other side.
Try carrying out these exercises once, or twice a day, and your body will start to feel more relaxed, as your posture also improves!
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