Be a Genius
9 minute read
I met Catherine in early 2011. She was looking for someone who could create a motion graphic video for an educational campaign. Her company Energy Source (now The Source) was handling the Intel EA PR account and they reached out to me at ARK.
I was immediately interested. Intel, the microchip technology has always intrigued me. When I went to college and we did microprocessor design, that is when I grasped how sophisticated and just how hard it is to design microchips. If you are interested in one of those activities where chemistry and physics meet, it is in microprocessor manufacture.
Intel became the first embedded brand to earn global recognition with its Intel inside campaign. I was in the "assemble-your-own-computer" phase of being techie in the early 'naughts'. I have been continually impressed. Intel has grown to the point of controlling more than 80% of the core microprocessor market. Recently though, their main competitor has re-emerged in the rear view mirror, AMD.
We lived and ate “brand” at ARK. I learnt a lot about what goes into a brand and what a designer needs to be thinking about when working with big brand companies. Certain brands are so synonymous with life that the reason for advertising is no longer to inform, it is so that the public simply “glance” at it. Coca Cola is a perfect example. You don’t need text, just a picture representing the “feeling” you should have of the brand and the brand mark. Kwaisha.
Intel is one of the few companies I have worked with who take their brand seriously. Intel even had their own font then – Intel Neo Sans and recently commissioned a new custom one, Intel Clear.
Intel starts off with a blue. Intel is “cool”. And then the play on the name, “intel” – intelligence, superior, an almost “007” level of gadget thrill. The “Intel Inside” and the recent “Intel. Look Inside” emphasise that you should stop and take a look at Intel. And then, the images of silicon wafers with the multiple colours produced by light, refracting and reflecting on etched silicon wafer. Stuff that only use to excite geeks is now mainstream. Wow!
The “Be a Genius .... Explore. Play. Learn.” campaign tapped into this new, less intimidating, tech world. The parents who were now using this computer technology needed to think about their young children and their future. Did you know that some of the current top earning jobs did not exist five years before? Parents still need to answer these questions.
As we worked on the script, Catherine, her team and the client would give feedback on what they wanted to communicate and especially provoke the audience to think around the questions. The clear "call to action" had to be delivered by the motion tied to a fast paced track. I edited the audio as well to make sure we hit the beats with particular visuals. The client was happy with the final result, giving me an excellent review and more importantly, I enjoyed this campaign because I learnt a lot and it touched on something I thought about constantly, considering everything I did on the job was self-taught. I still think about it.
Education delivery in the 21st Century
We need to figure out how to do deliver knowledge easily through technology, now more than ever.
- Can you imagine how schools and learning material will change as technology becomes ubiquitous?
- Do you know what the work landscape will look like in 10 years?
- How do we equip the next wave of youth who must be tech-savvy to thrive in this new reality?
We cannot answer these questions here and now conclusively, but we know that a number of things are changing. The era of “Industrial Revolution”, permanent and pensionable jobs is over. We are now squarely in the “Gig economy”. The Gig economy workers must be knowledgeable in a number of fields and go deep in one or two. Working remotely will become the norm especially in countries where fibre optics and mobile communication towers spread out faster than roads. Their access to learning will all be technology enhanced. The only questions left are whether one has the ability to learn and how fast.
How we explore, play and learn is changing all the more as Virtual Reality offers alternative spaces, Augmented Reality comes into direction finding and advertising. Mixed Reality is appearing in the enteprise market especially in medical procedures, engineering and manufacture. These computer interactive technologies are pushing hardware, requiring the delivery of necessary information in real time. Continuous Learning is already mandatory. Delivery of learning is going to be mobile and constant. The mode of teaching as we look down the technology road will increasingly have these enhanced realities.
As we continue to investigate what kind of devices will be required to deliver knowledge, these virtual reality technologies have already appeared in mobile consumer devices. Now it is up to designers and developers to create applications that use these technologies in ways we cannot yet imagine. Intel has already committed itself to pursuing Artificial Intelligence and Augmented Reality for the next 10 years.
We at Afroshok have been pondering on these events and are looking at how User Experience Design is going to change – again!
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