Pod1 Blog

This months .net magazine profiled us in their regular spread showcasing creative agencies around the globe. Our founder and regular industry pundit Fadi responded to questions on how we go about engaging with brands and deliver great user experiences.

Thanks to to all at .net magazine for publishing some of our recent work as it is always nice see in print.

We did however supply a bit of moody shot (apparently my fault) of some of us who work here, and wanted you to know that we are not normally that miserable! So here we are, kind of smiling.

Get your self a copy at your local news-agent, or keep posted on www.netmag.co.uk to read the full article.

The Village microsite for Westfield London is designed to promote the 40 luxury designer brands housed in the largest urban shopping centre in Europe. It was also launched to coincide with the opening of the hugely anticipated Louis Vuitton store.

The unique high-end retail concept establishes The Village as a premium destination within Westfield London and Pod1 were enlisted to reflect the same positioning online.

See all that the Village has to offer at: http://uk.westfield.com/thevillagelondon/

Last week saw the launch of a new transactional site for fashion designer Matthew Willamson. Like the the flagship store the online boutique carries exclusive items designed to compliment garments from his catwalk collections.

As quoted by Matthew on Vogue.com “The web design was very important to me, I wanted to convey the same level of luxury and attention to design that you would expect when walking into one of my stores.”

Check it out for yourself at www.matthewwilliamson.com/shop/

After getting off at Edgware Road tube station on my way home from work last Tuesday, I couldn’t help noticing a big purple spot on the pavement outside the station. I guessed it was part of some viral / environmental installation. It must have worked as I was left so intrigued I wanted to find out more.

Visiting http://www.brilliantspots.co.uk/ prompts you to a blog format website that showcases user submitted pictures taken from different locations around London, where more of those purple spots are located.

The following video shows how the spots were (supposedly) placed around the city in a “guerrilla” style, as well as the first reaction of passers by who find the aforementioned spots.

This Yahoo campaign may not be the most mind blowing campaign,  but placing such a bold element in a populated area is going to drive lots of traffic to the  website. I was interesting enough to capture my attention and wonder “wtf?”.

Google launches its new ‘Search Options’ tool just watch the video below for more info….

Google launches its new ‘Search Options’ tool just watch the video below for more info….

Amazing showreel from motion graphics superstars Stardust

A few weeks ago, the Prada Transformer, a portable, shape-shifting cultural pavilion designed by Office for Metropolitan Architecture/Rem Koolhaas, opened to the the public in Seoul, Korea.

The Prada Transformer consists of four basic geometric shapes – a circle, a cross, a hexagon, a rectangle – leaning together and wrapped in a translucent membrane. Each shape is a potential floor plan designed to be ideal for the cultural programming unfolding over the next three months: a fashion exhibition, a film festival, an art exhibition, and finally a Prada fashion show.

Walls will become floors and floors will become walls as the pavilion is flipped over by three cranes after each event to accommodate the next. opened to the the public in Seoul, Korea. The pavilion, a pioneering temporary structure that will be picked up by cranes and rotated to accommodate a variety of cultural events.

I visited the e-consultancy round table for User Experience yesterday and we had some interesting discussions about increasing conversion rates. To my surprise the round agreed with me that optimised copy is the best way to drive conversion or put more correctly, lower returns and maximise profits.

Embracing Personas and writing copy specifically for the types of user you have on your site is an exercise well worth doing. We see clients that go through this process to have the lowest return rates in e-retail and the happiest customers. Happy customers will become brand embassadors and word of mouth is still strong, especially in times of social media and true Web 2.0.

We may be about to embark upon a new era for the Internet Search Engines and despite what you may think it’s not all about Google. New search engines are popping up across the Web with the aim of making searches faster, smarter, more personal and more visually interesting.

Some sites, like Twine and hakia, will try to personalize searches, separating out results you would find interesting, based on your Web use. Others, like Searchme, offer iTunes-like interfaces that let users shuffle through photos and images or ’stacks’, instead of the standard list of hyperlinks. Kosmix bundles information by type, from Twitter, from Facebook, from blogs, from the government, to make it easier to consume.

Wolfram Alpha, set to launch Monday, is more of an enormous calculator than a search engine. It crunches data to come up with answers to queries that may not exist online until you search for them. Sites like Twitter are trying to capitalize on the warp-speed pace of online news today by offering real-time searches of online chatter or Tweets, something Google is likey to replicate.

Read the full article