The Eco Zoo

McCann Erickson has created a fabulous Flash website called Eco Zoo. It has a nice eco-friendly learning experience. The impressive part is the approach to the website. It's organized as a rotatable pop-up book. Very nice.

HEMA Online Advertising

I enjoyed this little animation advertising HEMA stores. It adds some personality to the world of online shopping. It takes a minute to start, so be patient and restrain your hyperactive mouse finger.

BBC's British History Timeline

The BBC's British History Timeline is a (insert best British accent here...) gorgeous (...end accent) way to brush up on your British history. It's a simple but sophisticated interactive timeline that lets you explore significant events in British history from 862BC to today.

CDX Game

CDX is a interactive video adventure created by the BBC and the always inspiring Preloaded. The game was designed to accompany the BBC mini-series Ancient Rome but it's a fabulous stand alone piece. The game is educational in a very subtle way. It reminds me of a modern, adult version of Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego. Preloaded used a combination of Maya Renderings, video, and Flash to create this online adventure. CDX won this year's Flash Forward Game category.

Diesel Style Lounge

A new online Diesel store recently launched featuring this mesmerizing Liquid Space Style Lounge. It has the same dark underwater feel as their amazing holographic fashion show did. The clothes are shown on floating models. To add to the effect they have also changed the behavior of the users cursor in the lounge so it feels as though you are pulling it through the water. Great combination of effects. On a side note, this is supposed to be one of the most complete online Diesel stores ever, including items from the runway not available in most stores. (Found through The FWA).

Filippa Smedhagen Sund

I like the portfolio of Swedish Makeup Artist Filippa Smedhagen Sund. It contains some gorgeous photography of her work. What I like most about the site is the interface. Upon entering the site you get quick instructions on how to navigate, and then off you go. The interface is simple enough that you could probably figure it out yourself but I like the courteous idea of just showing people what to do up front. It makes users much more receptive to new interface styles. The site was designed by the Berlin based company, Mocoro.

Pattern Game

I was looking for some Flash examples last night when I came across this Pattern Game. It is mesmerizing to play with and a nice example of some mathlete style Action Scripting.

Sharad Haksar

I was fabulously entertained by the portfolio of photographer Sharad Haksar. It is a witty collection of photography and advertising, including this Sorti ad. (Found through Computerlove).

What's Bubbling Up?

I've been playing around today with What's Bubbling Up. It's a promotional site for Unicel, created by the brilliant minds at Kelliher Samets Volk. The site focuses on the idea of making connections by allowing users to create and post messages. I always enjoy sites based on user content, especially when they invite people to share something they might not normally. I also really enjoy the thought of unspoken conversations being these lingering speech bubbles - it's a cool visual. This site reminds me of one of my favorites, the Hope Garden. (Thanks Jackie!)

Anymails

Anymails is a fun and informative visualizer for your email inbox. It represents email using the natural metaphor of microbes. Different species of microbes represent email from different groups of people (i.e. Family, Job, Spam). The size and color of the microbes show the age of the email and the hairiness indicates the email's unread, read, or responded to status. Anymails was developed as the thesis project of Carolin Horn with coding by Florian Jenett. Great use of Flash and Processing ladies! (Found through Josh Spear).

HBO Voyeur

HBO's amazing new Voyeur website allows you to peak into the windows of five New York apartment buildings. It's a stunning Flash website created by the Brooklyn based Big Spaceship that combines video, music and colors to great dramatic effect. At each building you watch the story or stories unfold over a matter of days. There is something disturbingly captivating about watching people through windows. The site is part of a larger experimental 'Hyper Media' advertising campaign by HBO.

Vitamin Water Website

The Vitamin Water section of the Glaceau website has been making me laugh. They have come up with funny 'Try It' sayings for each flavor to attempt to explain the effect of the drink. For example 'Try swimming the Atlantic when you've just swam the Atlantic. Try Revive. Try it.' or 'Try kissing a poison dart frog until it turns into a prince. Try Endurance. Try it.' You can also create your own sayings using the Try It Creator and then post the custom advertisement to your blog or myspace page. I find this very interesting because on the one hand they are giving up control over what their advertisement says, but on the other hand the ads that people come up with are probably even more relevant to the readers.

C-Class Website

I found this website for the new Mercedes C-Class kind of interesting. They have come up with some keywords to describe the C-Class; energy, simplicity, balance, space, interaction, confidence. To get across the meaning of each of these concepts they have created little interactive activities to allow you to experience the meaning of each word for yourselves. For example the 'Interaction' demo asks you to navigate an invisible maze. The maze is just trial and error until the navigation assistance kicks in, then it is easy. These simple activities are a very effective way of getting across the key messages. (Found through FWA)

Johnny Hollow Website

I just spent about an hour pushing blobs of green liquid around with my little bug self. That is thanks to the interactive Johnny Hollow website. They deserve some props for making a site that kept my attention long enough for me to decide that I actually liked their music. (Found through the FWA)

Musicrain

Musicrain is one of my favorite examples of a Flash based application. It is an interactive program that steps you through sheet music while playing the synchronized accompanying audio. You can specify the key, tempo and part volumes that the audio is played at. It is such a simple and effective use of Flash.

Evian Ballet

I never thought a ballet would be so fun to choreograph... especially in German. I guess when it involves knee high water, dolphins, diamonds, and giant cherries, it's hard to go wrong. Create your own here, care of Evian.

Hungry Suitcase

Ever wonder what your perfect vacation is? 50% Relaxin', 40% Adventure, 10% Culture? Try out this Vacation Fun-a-lyzer. Just pack the objects that appeal to you into the mouthy suitcase and out spits your perfect vacation (Uh... or at least your perfect Royal Caribbean vacation). Very fun site.

Amaznode

Looking for an interesting new way to search Amazon? Try Amaznode. It is a Flash based searching tool that visualizes Amazon's products based on matches to your keyword and information from Amazon's "customers who bought this item also bought" data.

Red Interactive Agency

I get very excited when someone does something unique with a website. There are so many awesome websites out there that it is hard to pull off something new and interesting but I think Red Universe has done it. Each user to their site becomes a character in their universe. You get to run around exploring the site and chatting with other visitors. You even get to fly about in a little superman pose. It is simple but also fun, interesting, and most importantly engaging. The site recently won a well deserved FITC award in the Self Promotion category and ultimately won Best in Show. (Found through the FWA)

OVX Studios

OVX Studios was Friday's Adobe Site of the Day. It is a cute little interactive site to test your skills as a movie director. You get to choose your storyline, cast, scene order, and most significantly, the product placement you want to allow in your movie. The site is actually part of an advertising campaign by the Vermont Department of Health to raise awareness among teens about the roll of tobacco in Hollywood movies. I liked this site because it's a well thought out approach to getting a health message across. It's fun, well suited for the target audience, and it involves the user's decision making process about the message instead of just forcing the message on them.

Paper Pilot

Paper Pilot cute little website that lets you design and test paper airplanes. Design your plane by using some standard models as starting points and then adjust the parameters to your liking. Test your airplane's performance on the practice field and then make any needed design adjustments. When you plane has been perfected, bring it to the challenge stadium to compete. Paper Pilot is a promotional site for SolidWorks DWGgateway (a converter to import AutoCAD files into Solidworks). I'm not entirely sure on what the connection between the two is, but who cares it's a fun idea.

Dreams of Flying

I enjoyed this set of photos entitled Dreams of Flying taken by photographer Jan von Holleben. They capture the idea of imagination very well. It is also a nice simple Flash portfolio.

Great Pockets

Henry Needle and Sons Hand Tailored Great Pockets Clothing is some pretty funny advertising on the part of Nokia. It is an elaborate choose-your-own-adventure style video site about a tailor who is making special clothes with huge pockets to put all your crap in. Of course the other solution is to just buy the Nokia N95 (small and all in one, apparently)... or just wait for the iPhone (oops did that slip out). (Found through Josh Spear)

Nikon Universcale

Universcale is a captivating Flash site done by Nikon to illustrate the extremes to which we can see using microscopes and telescopes. The scale shows silhouettes of objects that are measured using common units, such as meter, kilometer and light year. It captures measurements from the Extremities of Space (a hundred billion light years) down to the Great Primordial (one quadrillionth of a meter). If you click on an object it gives you information about that object and shows it next to something that is comparatively small and something which is comparatively large. This is a really fascinating way of experiencing size and the meaning of measurements.

They Rule(d)

They Rule was created by Josh On back in 2004. The information is a bit out of date but the idea behind it is still very relevant. The site is designed to provide a glimpse into the connections between the American ruling class. It allows you to create maps using the board members of the top 500 companies in the US. You can see who sits (sat) on what board and which other companies they are board members for. The more boards a person sits on the fatter their little icon is. You can create you own connection maps or view some of the saved maps (Apple vs Microsoft, Within 2 Phone Calls to Bush, If Women Ruled the World, and more).

Get the Glass

Today's FWA Site of the Day is Get the Glass. It is a very bandwidth intensive Flash site but it is worth the downloading time. The site is part of a Got Milk campaign. The main section of the site is an amazing 3D board game. The object is to help the Adachi family rescue a glass of milk before they get caught by the police. The game graphics are incredible. I particularly like the effect of rolling the dice. I'm not sure exactly who this game is aimed at. The concept is very basic but a lot of the activities along the way are challenging. I hope there is a lot of money in milk these days because this site must have cost them a fortune.

Life Size Whale

The UK's Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society has put together this effective Flash site that allows you to experience a life size whale swimming by. Turn on your sound for full effect.

Don't Click

The Don't Click website is an experimental look into a world with no mouse clicking. It explores our clicking habit by creating an interface where no clicking in necessary. The site includes some games and activities to explain, explore and practice the different click-less selection techniques. They collect and display statistics on how many accidental clicks were made on the site and whether or not visitors miss the mouse click. (Found through Josh Spear)

Monoface

The creative folks at Mono branding and advertising agency have put an admirable new twist on team photos. They have created a section of their website called Monoface which combines features from different employee's faces together to produce some pretty entertaining portraits. You can can shuffle the images to see random face combinations or click specific features (eyes, nose, mouth, head) to make your own creatures, I mean faces. There are a total of 759 375 possible combinations and you can't help but make a few. These guys are clearly brilliant advertisers.

Carla Collins Collections

Wow, I'm really impressed with this website. It takes a few been-done-before elements and turns them into something really unique and interesting. It is basically the Carla Collins Collections put into books that you can turn the pages of. The images are all variations of each other so that they effectively form a flip book. The real beauty of it is that you can play though the pages quickly to see the full flip book effect both forward and backwards and then you can rotate the whole book around and do the same thing upside down. This lets you see what was on the other side of the page in an entirely different way then you saw it the first time. Have I mentioned on this blog before about how much I like Flash websites (imagine my best innocent smile here).

10 x 10

10 x 10 is a website that aims to create a unique view of our time by collecting 100 highly used words and their corresponding images every hour, day, month and year. The content is gathered from a few news sources and sorted automatically with no human intervention.

This is a pretty interesting idea. It creates an illustrative historical record that is more about observation than interpretation. This site won a Flash Forward award a couple of years ago for its technical merit. (Thanks Heckman).

Heiwa Alpha

I have no idea what this site is about but it's absolutely gorgeous. It takes a long time to load but it's worth the wait.

Color in Motion

Color in Motion is a Flash site created by Claudia Cortes. It's a combination of short animations and interactive activities to educate the user about color symbolism and communication. This site is simple, effective, and most importantly fun. I originally came across this site a few years back when it was nominated for a Flashforward award. I still enjoy it.

Evil Nine "Crooked"

If you know me then you have probably been sent this link at some time or another. I never get tired of it. It's the music video for the Evil Nine song Crooked. Awesome Flash animation. Shhhhh, the baby's sleeping...

Ikea Dream Kitchens Site

The Ikea Dream Kitchens site is great example of why I love Flash sites. This sites features the kitchens in a freeze framed action shot that you can turn. One kitchen flows into the next. Very nicely done. Turn up the volume for full effect.