How to Produce a Super Platform and Leverage Brand-You — Inside Knowledge and Tips. Part II
Remember these. CD Roms and DVDs. They would come to hold the key to future designs online and content creation, despite the fact they were heading for obsolescence.
In Part I, I wrote about how spotting a gap and creating content gave us an edge, but it wasn’t enough. You might want to head on there first before reading this part.
The Gordian Knot was how to make the content we came by more than the sum of its parts. That answer I came to recognise lie in a combination of ‘adjacent possible’ technology and design.
Look at the outlay of Netflix, BBC I-player or ABC.com and you can’t help but be drawn in. But before any of those design aesthetics existed, or provided intuitive access points, that menu system could be found in DVDs and CD Roms like Computer Arts Magazine and The Sunday Times entertainment CDRom.
What if you could replicate that interactive CD Rom experience online. Author Steve Johnson refers to this as seeing ideas from the adjacent possible. Two main problems prohibited this back then in 2005.
- The Net couldn’t support download speeds of 8mb/s which experts said mimicked TV transmission.
2. There was no appropriate video display system online. YouTube was years away and two favourites Metacafe and Brightcove couldn’t provide the flexibility I wanted.
I created several DVDs using programmes like Director, but not before burning through at least 300 CDs/ DVDs stacked up in a corner of my study. The problem was the discs had to be compatible for PCs and Macs and that was no easy feat. By 350 CDs later, I was proficient enough to create video-magazine business cards that would slot into a PC.
The mantra, “What am I doing that’s new?”, kept ringing in my head, and eventually it would be solved. The tech solution was an application called Flash. It was an animation tool, but I figured it could be used to accomplish my needs.
An early prototype proved successful, so much so, that a number of friends and acquaintances would trust me with their time and copy. Bob Marley archivist and record label Jeremy Collingwood wrote about his new find, with rare photos of Bob Marley.
Kim Jack-Riley formerly MD of the Source (Hip Hop bible) interviewed her colleague now editor of another Hip Hop tomb, The Vibe. Palesa Letlaka an extraordinary producer/ director from South Africa wrote about breakthrough theatre. Brit Ishraga Lloyd travelled to Sudan for the first time to search her family routes. When clicked each photo activated a video stream.
Alongside these pieces was content on Ozwald Boateng, the future of the web, mobile phones and podcasts — three students interviewed the US author who alleged The Matrix script was stolen from her. She filed a multi-million dollar law suit.
The formula then
- Problem solve a need for your content
- Research the gap it could occupy
- Ask how you’re making a difference
- Question what value you’re bringing.
In 2005, this early foray into Art, Design, Diversity, Creativity, Journalism and Community would result in a major award, the Knight Batten Award for Innovation in Journalism. It beat CNN, Newsweek and the BBC.
The judges said: “It foreshadows the future”. It got played at dozens of creative events and was promoted by the organisers. Everyone in the online publication was a winner, because we were all getting seen.
There’s a fifth entry I’ve left until last. Scale.
Something so arresting because of its scale demands attention, even if it is eventually disliked. Artists from Michelangelo’s Sistine chapel to Monet’s Lillies knew about delivering scale. And that scale comes also in ambition as recounted in this interview with Jude Kelly CBE talking to me.
In 2006, Apple captured that iteration of physical scale in an article about what the magazine could become in the Outernet. Years later the Olympic committee would invite me to their meetings inspired by the magazine and its display.
Since then I’ve been working with companies e.g. FT.com and scortes of students and clients realise their goals. working with a friends we’ve produced
- The Leaders’ List — A Multiplatform display of the UK’s 57 leading producers who are Black or Brown.
2. Representology — is a media diversity journal which I came up as an idea and co-founded with colleagues from different universities.
2005 was a lesson well learned. What happens when Tech, Art, Design, Diversity, Creativity, Journalism and Community re-collide. What happens going forward when richer media pushes out others?
Where next for podcasts as we will no longer know them and the Metaverse as it’s being realised. Because as I write this, I’m back in that vortex of 2004, looking at something that could create the same radical feeling.
I’m a creative technologist and cinema journalist/ filmmaker. I can be contacted on david() viewmagazine.tv, gyimahd@cardiff.ac.uk or Linkedin
