COMMUNICATION ARTS INTERACTIVE ANNUAL 23
Amanda Ringstad Five Hand Letterers North Matchbox Studio Marcos Chin Student Showcase Exhibit
March/April 2017 Twenty-Four Dollars commarts.com
AMANDA RINGSTAD BY CLAIRE SYKES
Y
ou never know what you’ll see, looking through Amanda Ringstad’s eyes. Follow her around her Seattle neighborhood, and it could be as simple as the way two colors bounce off each other or as lucky as a great dumpster-dive find. It’s all inspiration for the 36-year-old, who says, “I notice things that are a little off or unique. A lot of my work has to do with taking an object and reconstructing it in a way that lets you see it in a different light.” Stalks of asparagus ride a caster wheel against a pale pink background. Tape dispensers balance themselves like acrobats. Blue sunglasses, a single pair, and their noonday shadow lounge in an orange heat. The subjects that “pose” before Ringstad’s camera express the curiosity and sense of exploration she brings to every shoot. Spare, yet elegant, surprising and often humorous, her still lifes and product shots have appeared in Bloomberg Businessweek and Fast Company; online at Refinery29 and Sight Unseen; in Starbucks and Amazon promos; and on designers’ and artists’ websites —to name just a few of her clients. Seattle-based glass artist John Hogan is another. “Amanda is an artist who offers her unique and creative approach to anything she’s shooting,” he says. “She treats products as props for making art photography that’s completely unexpected. You ask, ‘What is this thing?’ It’s abstracted. And that
adds a creative legitimacy to the object’s design—because of the creativity she’s putting into the shot. Her work is more experimental than any other photographer’s that I’ve seen.” Ringstad photographs mostly inside her modern, 1,000square-foot loft, where she lives and works. In her kitchenette, a small table does double duty for eating and working. A larger one—with multiple C-stands, studio lighting and various shooting surfaces—is where she stages most of her shoots. Across the room, her computer sits on a wheeled white table, with a chalkboard behind it and fashion magazine pages tacked up nearby. Dried mesquite, a bird’s nest and rocks rest on the gas fireplace’s mantle, along with geometric wood and brass blocks scattered about the space. She climbs a ladder to sleep, but could easily be up all night, too. “It’s nice to work when I want. I like thinking about my shoots, always problem solving,” says Ringstad. “But it’s sometimes a challenge because I can never completely distance myself when I’m here.” It’s one reason she loves hiking and kayaking with her boyfriend. Wearing blue denim overalls and white sneakers, she sits on an orange couch beside a small bookshelf that holds a mix of titles, on topics ranging from the arts to physics to food. Behind her, an east-facing sliding-glass door opens onto a small balcony with potted plants. Just beyond, pressed against a flawless blue sky, a yellow tower crane stands over a half-built condominium building. You could say Ringstad is also a work in progress. Like Seattle and its current boom in population—and in design firms—she has come into her own as a photographer. She was born and raised in the city’s suburbs. “It’s a conscious choice for me to live here,” she says. “I know I’d get more work in New York, but I’m growing in the place I’m growing. There’s a lot of opportunity.” What about the competition? “I don’t bog myself down with that. I’m focusing on what’s true to me.” For Ringstad, this means letting her own nature take its course, and it’s an experimental one. Ample time with a project gives her room to explore ideas. Graphic design, especially Bauhaus and mid-20th century, inspires her. So do art deco, children’s book illustrations, and the art of Douglas Coupland, Irving Penn and Josef Albers. As for those fashion magazine ads on her wall, she says, “It’s always good to see things I admire, and if it’s what companies are hiring photographers to do, it reminds me of what’s successful.”
Right: “From a series that involved shooting desks and stationery for industrial designer Tom Dixon’s promotional purposes. These kinds of objects are a dream for me to work with. Given the freedom to choose my own direction, I wanted to show the products in a somewhat dissociated manner. Since the products are geometric and colorful, I decided to play up those qualities in an exaggerated, but soft way.” Luke Fenech, art director; Tom Dixon, client. 52
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INTERACTIVE ANNUAL 23: WEBSITES/MICROSITES
Arc’teryx Winter 2016 Lookbook “Intelligent interactions and gorgeous photography make this lookbook a pleasure to browse.” —Ben Hughes
Overview: Winter apparel brand Arc’teryx wanted an online experience that emphasized how it keeps people both warm and fashionable in rural and urban environments alike. This online lookbook, created by Vancouver, British Columbia–based digital creative agency Pound & Grain, highlights adventurous travel stories by showing Arc’teryx’s products in their natural habitats. Instead of the usual lookbook design driven by e-commerce, Pound & Grain designed a scroll-driven experience that places a strong importance on digital storytelling. • The site features fifteen outfits; each outfit displays one large hero image, seven outfit and story shots, and three photos that show its three layers. • Visitors can click on products to open pop-ups with more product information and the option to purchase. • Pound & Grain built the site with the ASP.NET framework and used HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript for the front-end design.
Graham MacInnes, interface designer/creative director Kanitha Player, developer Cameron Lee, technology director Dano Pendygrasse/Angela Percival, Arc’teryx, photographers Tara Steinberg/Kelsey Westbrook, producers Pound & Grain (Vancouver, Canada), project design and development Raluca Axente/Julian Kenchenten/Dano Pendygrasse/Angela Percival/Alex Sutcliffe/John Wootton, Arc’teryx, clients 112
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arcteryx.com
“Taking the paradigm of vertical-scroll web pages and using them to reveal layers of clothing is both elegant and appropriately informative for a technical clothing company. The excellent content and photography make this a class-leading experience.” —Nathan Moody
Comments by Cameron Lee, Graham MacInnes, Jackson Murphy, creative director at Pound & Grain, and Kelsey Westbrook: What was the most challenging aspect of the project? “Although we had previously worked with Arc’teryx, we had typically focused on product experience. This was the first time we tackled an entire lookbook. The biggest challenge was crafting an experience that would ensure that users were engaged with the journey and could interact with and view the products. We accomplished this by creating seamless transitions, so users don’t have to rely on traditional navigation.”
What was the thinking behind the navigation structure? “The content for this site is defined by two locations: Revelstoke, British Columbia, and Oslo, Norway. Because of this, we wanted to create access to either of these locations at any point in the experience. The location switcher enables this by instantly loading up the other destination in one click. A custom system for fluidly loading content provides a seamless transition between individual pages and the two main locations—content is always loaded dynamically with AJAX. We accomplished this by linking the page’s scroll directly to the navigation. When users reach the bottom of the page, it automatically loads the next activity.” Describe some special interactive features. “There was a concerted effort to keep the experience clean and the content as the primary focus. We developed custom interactive tools that enable users to explore athletes’ layering systems. We also developed the ability for users to fluidly explore locations and activities through scrolling. We paid close attention to the transitions between pages to develop a motion and transition framework that seamlessly aligns with the brand.” Communication Arts | commarts.com
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INTERACTIVE ANNUAL 23: MOBILE
Shop with the Force “The attention to detail in every aspect of this site was beautiful.” —Harold Jones
Overview: With the release of a new Star Wars movie amidst the throes of the 2015 holiday shopping season, clothing brand Stance wanted to get people excited about its Star Wars– themed socks. An immersive mobile experience turned the tired product carousel into a Star Wars fan’s dream come true. Mobile users could tilt and shake their phones to shop, and the experience was equally compelling on desktop, where users could enable their webcams to navigate via hand gestures. So strong was the force that the socks sold out in less than two weeks. • The underlying technology was a mixture of HTML5 and JavaScript. The custom framework, Hydra, was used for front-end development. • The site has had 66,493 visitors since its launch. • From concept to completion, the project took six weeks.
Chris Rutkowski, art director Jack Collier/Ben George, writers Sean Jackson, designer Nick Rodgers, creative director Josh DiMarcantonio, executive creative director Andrew Gage, producer Sean Carnage, digital producer Ricardo Diaz, digital production director Alex Cohn, executive producer Screen Novelties, production company Zambezi (Culver City, CA), project design and development/ad agency Active Theory, development partner Stance, client 128
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“Fun is horribly underrated; it can be incredibly powerful and open minds to new possibilities. Simple sensors and sophisticated computer vision help make this brand come alive while making playful references to the original films.” —Nathan Moody
Comments by Sean Carnage: What was the thinking behind the navigation structure? “We took visitors right to the product—Stance’s Star Wars character socks had such personalities, we made them stand-ins for the original trilogy actors in re-creations of classic scenes. The ‘force’— touchless accelerometer control on mobile and responsiveness to hand gestures on desktop—also brought a huge amount of magic to the user interface. The experience is ‘on rails,’ only progressing in one linear direction. This kept production and development costs down. It also reinforces the Star Wars narrative structure: a roller-coaster ride that always moves forward.” Are there any other technical features you’d like to call attention to? “Unlike the webcam-enabled tracking algorithm used on desktop, on mobile camera, access via native web proved
impossible. The mobile site accomplishes the force effect through touchless accelerometer controls that link a user’s accelerometer to a visual feedback loop—‘force particles.’ The motion tracking is stable, reliable and tolerant of 180 degrees of tilt at any angle.” What would you do differently if you could start the project over? “Hide an Easter egg in the experience. If a user failed to defeat Darth Vader, it would populate a special Stance gift bundle in her or his shopping cart named ‘I’m for your father.’”
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FRESH KATE O’HARA
Ask any naturalist, and she or he will tell you that nature is as brutal as it is beautiful. Reno, Nevada–based illustrator Kate O’Hara imparts that same paradox of beauty and brutality in her illustrations, for which she finds inspiration from her time spent in nature. “I’ve always been drawn to scientific illustration and work from artists like John James Audubon and Ernst Haeckel,” she says. “I love how they breathed life into their illustrations of animals.” O’Hara often captures animals at their liveliest—and sometimes most gruesome—moments: a crane wrestling against writhing snakes, a dog carrying a dying hare in its mouth back to a hunter. These dark themes, combined with her vibrant realism, compel you to closely examine the fine point of life’s exquisite claws. “The disconcerting elements that I infuse in my work make you look twice,” she says. “I love making dark and disturbing things beautiful.” kate-ohara.com
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