A few months ago I was contacted by AdLounge, an organization in Toronto, about an event they are hosting on June 16th called "Art from the Unexpected." The idea is to have 20 leaders, not formally known as artists, create pieces to be auctioned for charity. In this case, the charity is SKETCH, an organization that works with homeless and street-involved youth to engage in the arts.
The idea sounded fun and I was happy that I could contribute to a charity event. So, I began work on my "Unexpected Art" piece - something that came to be known as "the art project" here at Common Craft HQ. I had been thinking about a way to take the style of our videos and apply it to something static and came up with a way to use foam board to create depth and texture.
Here's my contribution to the event.
Toronto in Paper
It comes framed in a deep, 3 inch frame and is made from paper and layered foamboard.
I'm so excited to see how the piece does in the auction. If you live in Toronto, or plan to be there on June 16th, I hope that you'll attend the event and take something unexpected home with you.
It's true. Two years ago today, we posted our very first video, RSS in Plain English. We had no idea what we were doing, or how that video would transform our lives.
We had a tripod, camera and a whiteboard, and that was about. The video was lit with bedroom lamps and I was speaking directly into the microphone on the camera as I moved around the pieces of paper. The video was edited with Windows Movie Maker. It was inspired by a blog post from 2004 with the title "RSS Described in Plain English."
Of course, the technical quality of the video clearly shows that we had many, um, many opportunities to improve:
We posted it about 10pm on the night of the 23rd and by noon the next day it hit the front page of Digg, partially thanks to our first comment by Rob Cottingham, minutes after it was posted. We were both blown away by its popularity. Here are a couple of tweets from that day:
This blog post (which makes me smile) captured some of the initial buzz:
It's been 24 hours since the video was posted and we've seen 15,000+ page views, 800 Diggs , 350 Delicious bookmarks and 50 comments.
Of course, the big question for us became, can we do it again? Soon after we started work on our second video, Wikis in Plain English. Once that was complete, we started to feel confident that this was something we could do.
Looking back at the RSS video, it's a bit painful to see how rough it is compared to our work now. However, I'm struck that the roughness didn't matter. It was the message, the script, the communication that mattered far more than the bad lighting and sound. While we feel good about technical quality now, we still focus the majority of our attention on what made that first RSS video work: a simple and clear explanation.
We've re-thought our website from the ground up and soon you'll see the all the changes we're making. For now though, I want to highlight a few things that make a big difference.
1. A Focus on the Business. This may be the best way to explain how the focus has changed:
The current Common Craft site says "WE HAVE A BLOG - and we sell videos"
The *new* Common Craft site says "WE SELL VIDEOS - and we have a blog"
It's true - the new site is more closely aligned with the goal of finding, viewing, purchasing and downloading videos.
2. Simplified Video Organization. Our videos used to appear in two places, depending on their version: "free" or "presentation quality." We've consolidated the display of videos one a single page. This means:
No More "Common Craft Store" - Instead of trying to attach a video store to the site, we're integrating the purchase experience into the pages where the videos appear.
No More "Common Craft Show"- The "Common Craft Show" was simply a way to organize the free versions of our videos. Now higher-quality versions of the videos will appear in a single place on the site.
3. Videos in 5 Languages
We're taking a big step to internationalize our videos. For the first time, 10 of our videos (including the Social Media 9 Pack) will be available with voice-overs in 5 languages (English, French, German, [Brazilian] Portuguese and Spanish.) These videos will be available for viewing, purchase and download.
4. Organization by Major Topics
Our video library will be organized into four major topics, which outline our direction in the future. The topics are: Green, Money, Society and Technology.
5. Overall Look and Feel
Our goal was to make the site look and feel like our videos. We've integrated our artwork, used a white background and tried to make the experience as focused as our videos.
Of course there are many more changes, but I think these points capture some of the big ideas that drive the new design. More soon...
Our very own Sachi LeFever is the "Geek of the Week" on the Big Blog at the Seattle PI. The Geek of the Week is a series of short interviews that highlight local Seattle geeks. Last week's geek was Bryan Zug.
My favorite answer:
When did you first know you were a geek?Describe that moment: My first grade teacher scolded me for finishing too many Schoolhouse Math worksheets, so I began sneaking them until I finished the entire box.
I've been wanting to tell that story for a while. It's sooo Sachi. As it turns out, Sachi is a geek in some ways, but not the sci-fi-loving kind. Read the interview.
