Bear 71 blurs the line between the wild world and the wired one. Audiences explore the bear’s natural habitat, which is expressed as an abstract landscape constructed by thousands of stylized data points. A 3D particle engine was custom-built by Jam3 to bring this nature grid to life. As users tour the grid, they can peek into the multiple surveillance cameras placed around the preserve.

The bear’s story speaks to how we co-exist with wildlife in the age of networks, geo-location and shared digital information.

While exploring the chapters of the film, users are even turned into animals. If a users accepts, the film will use your webcam to observe you and broadcast still shots of you to other viewers by posting them to a “surveillance wall.” This multi-user server also generates users as clickable moving points on the grid so you can chart your own path and track those of other users.

Bear 71 highlights how our increasingly heavy dependence on technology separates us from nature even though it allows us to keep closer tabs on it. It also forces us to confront how we view ourselves in relation to technology and nature, and makes us question the validity of surveillance both in the wild and in human society.

Since it’s launch this past weekend the site has been attracting up to 30,000 visits a day without any paid media directed at it.

Watch the interactive documentary Bear 71.

CREDITS:
Produced by Loc Dao, Dana Dansereau, Bonnie Thompson and Rob McLaughlin at the National Film Board of Canada.

Bored with the commonplace/typical “Process” or “How We Work” sections found in most studio or agency websites, our creative intent was twofold: To defy convention and to demonstrate our process in a way that is creative, amusing and downright unique.

Jam3 is known for work that is elaborate and visual, so collaborating with the very talented Dean West to transform our process into a series of over the top, epic photos was natural. Each person depicted in the Process collection is employed at Jam3. This is an important representation, as our people are the most integral part of the wonderful work that we produce.

Our Process collection aims to attract the people who understand the concept; who get our creative style and who want to be a part of the worlds we create.

Last Thursday, we invited a couple hundred of our clients and industry friends to launch the collection of photos and consume some alcohol at a sweet event space on King West. (Photos and video of party to come soon)

Check out the whole series in higher resolution here.
(Be sure to click on the photos to zoom in and see them in full detail).

We’ve never spent a dime on advertising and we continuously rely solely on our own SEO techniques and word of mouth referral to elevate ourselves to the top of search results rankings. The result? Jam3 is the number 1 Google search result for “Flash Development Toronto” and “Flash Web Toronto.” We can also proudly tell you we are on the first page of results for “Flash Toronto”, “Web Design Toronto”, “Web Development Toronto.”

This is no accident. We practice what we preach when it comes to SEO; we know what and how often we need to update content to enhance traffic and drive viewers to our site.

While  there is no silver bullet in SEO, you can create hundreds of “meta shrapnel” embedded in your site both on the surface and within the meta layers of the code. Since we’re not knowledge hoarders, we want to share our findings and tips with you. Below you’ll find common causes for poor search result rankings and six tips for turbo charging your SEO.

Common Errors:

• Keywords not being used properly in page meta titles and copy structure.

• No or even miscoded image alt tags as well as missed opportunities for photo caption text and unrealized organic search potential.

• Poor usability, information architecture and misleading web copy that can also in turn create user confusion and lead to ‘bounces’.

• Missed opportunities to communicate one thing: bad design, poor writing.

• Site credibility factors: little items such as terms and conditions, legal and up to date copyright years.

• To make matters worse, many web sites simply are not doing the basic ‘passive’ search engine optimization techniques.
• Having a non-existent site map to facilitate crawling and navigation.
• Overdoing anchor text. You don’t want all your inbound links looking the same, because it looks like automation. Google isn’t kind to automation.
• Depending on Twitter and Facebook alone to boost inbound links. Google robot ignores them.

SEO Tips:

• Use WordPress as a blogging platform. Google loves WordPress.

• Take the time to employ best practices in page optimization – adding captions and permalinks for pages.

• Recommend verbose folder and page nomenclature to improve click-throughs and semantics

• Be sure to name your images accurately and use natural keyword placement. Just don’t overdo it keyword stuff. That’ll get you red flagged in no time.

• Add opt-in RSS feed onto the main page for all consistently-updated content.

• Make the effort to review site activity quarterly to monitor analytics and make necessary changes to keyword, meta-data and media feeds.

Hopefully these suggestions help you beef up your search results ranking, and if you’ve discovered any tricks we didn’t include, share them with us. We love to learn.

Jam3’s looking to invade SXSW Interactive in 2012, and we have more ammo and explosive content than a Michael Bay flick.

There’s plenty of methods to our madness at Jam3 and we want to share some of that with you at the SXSW Interactive conference this coming year. Give them some love and support their initiatives in the talks they aim to present.

The smörgåsbord of topics range from design to tech to production. We’ve got mouthwatering material on creating tools to implement a creative team’s vision, and theories on how “less code is the best kind of code.” We’ve got an in depth look at audio responsive visualizations, and a little digital storytelling production guidance for you broadcast/film folk to cap it all off.

Our People and Talk Titles:
Mikko Haapoja’s “Less Code More Cool”
Aaron Morris’s “Teaching Laziness: Coding Efficiency for Beginners”
Salpy Kelian and Cole Sullivan’s “Audio Visualization: a DIY Guide”
Adrian Belina’s “Producing Digital Narratives for Brands or Film”

Come vote the shit out of this and support your fellow digital peeps in Jam3‘s epic takeover of SXSW’s 2012 best Interactive Conference Ever.

http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/index/10/company:jam3

Producing interactive that is non linear without the need for an “end”.

Earlier this week I wrote an article for Mediapost Daily but thought we’d bring it into our blog and also gussy it up with a sweet,sexy image.

“Digital narratives” is a term mainly used by people in the entertainment industry who create longer, immersive and interactive content online. I want to point out that if you’re coming from the advertising world this post is equally applicable as we continue to see the rise of some fantastic microsites with high budget video experiences.

If you’ve heard me speak at events or programs on the topic of producing digital narratives (aka interactive storytelling — or any other creative combination of the two buzzwords) in the past year, you would have heard me refer to something I like to call the “2 / 20 rule” – which deals with the fact that every visitor is different and that their attention spans will vary considerably. To compensate for this, the idea is to design your site and narrative so that the content can be consumed effectively by people who are going to spend 2 minutes on your site, or 20.

Every site has a goal. Whether the focus is advertising, entertainment or documentary, each site has an intended message that visitors are meant to take away. Since time is precious and another site is just a click away, it’s important to remember that users shouldn’t have to go through an entire site to get the overall message. To allow users to see the content which interests them the most, remember to segment content into smaller sections by creating a narrative that is non-linear. In a non-linear setup, visitors don’t have to go through A-B-C-D to get to E allowing them to “direct” their own experience instead of holding their hand and dictating the flow.

Some of you who produce, direct or design might find this ideology a bit off-putting, especially a film director who is used to creating 90 – 120 movies. However, you must keep in mind that even though a visitor loves your site it doesn’t mean that they’ll go through the entire site and see everything. The reality is that a larger number of them won’t. A site with a lot of depth and content available gives fully engaged people with more available time the opportunity to see as much as they like, but its also equally important to design the site so that the user with limited time can also enjoy the experience. This concept is equivalent to the ‘short chapter’ approach in books — If the content is split into smaller chunks and you know it will only take 1 minute to go through it, you’re more likely to click to subsequent pages than if each page takes 5 minutes to consume. By presenting your site this way, you ensure that all visitors to the site will quickly get to the point – and regardless of which page they exit from, they’ll have gotten the message.

Take the multi award winning interactive documentary “Waterlife” (http://waterlife.nfb.ca) we created with the NFB as an example of the non-linear approach. We started with a homepage interface where visitors could essentially click anywhere to enter one of the 23 sections. The site was designed without a beginning or an end in terms of content. Each section would begin with an unavoidable and poignant message in the preloader, and then a section of the site would load featuring beautiful background footage, overlaid by voice overs, music and plenty of textual information and facts. The narration, short clips of video and large headlines appeal to the speediest of users who will absorb only the essential information, while those taking their time can continue to read through all of the research and consume the full breadth of informational content.

There will always be those who can cite examples or cases of amazing sites told in a linear fashion that amassed millions of visits where the visitor payoff may have been in the end, or the entire experience may have taken 40 minutes. I certainly recognize that there are a million ways to skin a cat and the “2 / 20″ rule may not be the definitive key to interactive success, but it is a great way to communicate messages effectively to a variety of different types of visitors. It is important to realize how wide the differences in your user base can be, and to be able to tailor the experience for everyone regardless of how much time they can or want to invest.

This position is open to those outside of Canada and willing to relocate to Toronto.

Super sweet bonus points awarded to:
- experience with After Effects or 3D programs
- experience in other design fields (art, illustration, print design, branding)
- those who create personal works in spare time

You will be:
· Collaborating with creative and art directors on concepts
· Assisting senior designer in complex interactive designs
· Designing smaller websites, promotional artwork and logos.
· Creating style frames, branding guides and mood boards
· Communicating ideas by means of pencil sketches, wireframes and mockups
· Always advancing your skills and learning new ones.

You already:
· Understand composition & typography and colour theory
· Have an eagle’s eye for attention to detail
· Have a rock solid knowledge of Photoshop & Illustrator
· Know and understand Flash
· Know about new technologies like HTML5, Unity and Molehill
· Are driven to push yourself, your work and aren’t satisfied with mediocrity

Jam3 Offers:
· Benefits (Dental, Medical, Long Term Disability, etc)
· Opportunity to work on advanced interactive projects outside of just advertising microsites (interactive documentaries, tv & music industry, motion graphic videos & applications)
· Non repetitive work through a varied client list and collaboration with top agencies at the international level
· An office filled with awesome people who can do unbelievably amazing things in digital
· A vintage Coke fridge stocked full with imported beers
· A standup arcade filled with 150 classic games (including every version of Street Fighter ever made)

Send an email to workwithus@jam3.com with a link to your portfolio (or works) and an explanation outlining why you think you’d be the right fit for us.

Anyone who uses Twitter extensively knows that the amount of content and information coming through can be daunting and overwhelming. Yesterday we launched a beta version of our mobile app called Tweedless that will help power Twitter users sift through their many tweets and view the content they want to see in a quick and efficient way. Right now it’s available on the brand spanky new BlackBerry Playbook tablet and it’s a full featured Twitter client that includes a range of tools and filters that allow Twitter users to better manage their feed. So the idea as we like to say is that you “Read less with Tweedless”.

Check out some preview images here

The beta version of Tweedless includes a number of capabilities all designed to make using Twitter easier. We’ll be adding all sorts of new filters shortly but right now BlackBerry Playbook users who download Tweedless and link with their main Twitter account can immediately:

• Quickly set or disable filters that are extended from the main feed through to mentions and direct messages
• Isolate multiple users to easily follow conversations with simple taps
• Toggle content filters to determine what types of tweets (links, images, videos) and messages are in view
• have messages sorted based on who you interact with most

So if you’ve got a Playbook try Tweedless out for free via the BlackBerry App World. We have lots of plans for the future with additional filtering capabilities in the months ahead and will be extending the app to the Desktop, Android and iOS devices.

www.tweedless.com

Jam3 Creative Director Pablo Vio has been invited to participate on a panel at the Saskatchewan Motion Picture Association’s (SMPIA) Multi-PlatFORUM 2011, a day-long event in Regina focusing on creation of digital content across multiple platforms.

On April 14 at 9:30 AM, Pablo will showcase 2 Jam3 works. The first, ’Autotopsy’, a series of online films that takes the viewer through the events that lead to a devastating car wreck — www.autotopsy.ca/. Autotopsy is a great example of how content created uniquely for digital can complement and enhance film and video. The second, ‘Baxter’, is the online site for a “Glee meets Saved by the Bell” themed kids series. The site, hosted on Family Channel, www.family.ca/baxter plays on the theme of ‘making things your own’ and allows users to customize all levels of interactivity throughout their experience. Kids can decorate any page of the site, create custom levels for games that can be shared with friends, vote on possible outcomes for upcoming webisodes, implement their name and face into videos and more. Baxter was an instant success with tweens (over 400,000 visits) and shows how the ability to edit and interact with digital will keep kids coming back for more.

Pablo and fellow panelists will take questions from film and TV executives in the audience eager to learn more about how digital content can support marketing efforts for movies, documentaties and TV shows. Other speakers and guests includes representatives from the National Film Board of Canada, DHX Media and the Canada Media Fund.

Courtesy of TheVoiceThatSaid

From the typography blog For The Love of Type

Today we won our sixth FWA for the production of the Lexus IS Series microsite. What’s really interesting about this site in comparison to a lot of automobile sites today is that all of the video is live action and not CG. The decision to shoot the cars was based on one thought — How can you truly convince someone of a car’s performance if ultimately they know that car is not real? With CG we can make our car do amazing things, speed from 0-60mp/h in 1.2s, take hairpin turns at lightning speeds, and even make them fly if should we choose to. There’s something to be said for doing it “real” and that just what the folks at Dentsu decided to focus on.

Our shoot took place in a beautiful private airport in Miami and was handled by Sons & Daughters who produced the accompanying broadcast commercial. It should be noted here because it’s awesome, that the site was not an afterthought which is so often the case in digital. We were involved early on from the story boarding phase of the broadcast spot with Dentsu’s creatives which allowed us to ensure that both the commercial and site worked together as one. It also allowed us the luxury of adding a production day for interactive and to piggy back on a very big shoot that would have normally been out of budgetary range for most of us digital folk.

Another stand out was that the site’s footage wasn’t clipped together out of edits from the commercial they were specifically shot for the site with each of the 3 models showcasing one specific feature of the 2010 Lexus IS Series. The lightning fast IS F guns down the strip from 0-100km/h in 4.8 seconds while, the 250 IS cuts through turns in a pylon test and finally the hard top convertible shows us its ultra sleek transformation.

Now while “keepin’ it real” can lead to some amazing footage, it doesn’t always allow the creative flexibility and forgiveness you get with CG. Since we couldn’t do effects with the actual car we came back to Dentsu with a plan to spice up the video segments by including some sexy motion graphic work over top of the demos (which I love especially on the IS F demo). We’re also firm believers that “interactive” should actually be INTERACTIVE, so we made sure to add as many little details to the site while keeping in mind that our target market is older and not to get too experimental. Two simple yet effective things we did with our footage was the mouse controlled 3D angling of the cars as well as the draggable hard top roof.

When in the hot spot sections and users move the mouse left to right the perspective of the scene shifts along with it including the car. It’s a very neat trick where with only a still photo we are able to produce a 3D effect that allows us to rotate the car approximately 20 degrees giving our users the illusion that they’re actually seeing more of the car. In the convertible scene we allow visitors to drag open and close the roof much like a zipper… it sounds really simple, and that it is — but for an older demographic it was pretty cool and it’s a part that we’ve heard many times that people love.

Many of you reading this who work at agencies have heard it from every digital shop before. “Get us in earlier, get us in earlier…” This site is one of my favourite’s because it speaks to true collaboration between agency and interactive and the end result, dare I say it, was awesome.

Check out the Lexus site here.