Focusing on Furoshiki wraps, explain how to do it and encouraging people to post their Furoshiki creations
Sending in personal photos of Uniqlo styling
Customers could design the graphics for a Uniqlo key chain with red, white, and black. Then people could vote on their favorite and that would be produced
Incorporating a hashtag in the design of shirt which would make an interesting graphic while advertising Uniqlo
Allowing users to design mannequins on their website in an interesting way on a flash website. The winner would be able to style the mannequins in the store
Photobooth in the store that will upload to a large wall of screens in the store
We decided expand on the first one, encouraging users to wrap packages and presents in the style of furoshiki. This is a fun, eco-friendly way of wrapping gifts or packages which a Pinterest audience would love. Users could also take photos or videos of their furoshiki creations and use the #uniqlo to make it searchable.
Lou demonstrated a Furoshiki wrap and posted it in on Instagram. Here is her creation:
Mameshiba is a cute personified bean or nut that comes to life. In these short, Japanese animated blips, he offers unsolicited trivia to the nearest person, seemingly unaware that his strange knowledge puts people off.
We chose to use Mameshiba for a short video as a spokesperson for Uniqlo socks. Our idea was to have a businessman put on an old sock with a hole in it. His big toe sticks out of the hole and becomes Mameshiba who exclaims, “Did you know… your feet are very stinky. Uniqlo’s Heat-Tech will keep your toes cozier and stink-free.”
This is a fun way to interact with their audience, which is very much what Uniqlo consistently does. It also brings a Japanese character into American culture. We love the way Uniqlo takes chances on advertising and we wanted our short video to reflect that.
Uniqlo is a fun and trendy Japanese clothing company, reflected in their quirky and innovative ad campaigns. They are masters of social media and interact with their audience through fun but cutting edge technologies. Some projects include online games you can play to win discounts or prizes: (also see my last post)
a pinball type game to win a discount or special prize
They are always using technology in fun ways like putting a Magic Mirror in their stores — people trying on outerwear can digitally change the color or pattern of their jacket, for instance, saving them time and giving them a new experience.
Magic Mirror
They also use new social media like Pinterest and Tumblr to reach their young, tech-savvy audience. This is the niche Uniqlo is filling. They leave traditional advertising to more traditional clothing companies and instead blur the lines between advertising and games.
Uniqlo’s customers’ challenges are finding affordable, high quality clothing that speaks to the millennial generation. Uniqlo is solving this problem through their unconventional campaigns which set them apart from competing labels such as H&M, Forever 21, and Zara. Their global and social responsibility also differentiates themselves, whether genuine or not. Forever 21 in particular went under fire a few years back for forcing their LA workers to suffer in sweatshop conditions. They have since moved manufacturing to China where it would be surprising if conditions were much different. Uniqlo acknowledges that the youth of today are more socially and environmentally aware of the impact manufacturers are making, while still realizing that they can’t afford boutique, made in USA prices.
The content their audience consumes are definitely social media and digital applications, probably even more than television. They even created an calendar app that you can download on your iPad, other mobile device, or even view in your browser. The tilt / shift video on the calendar changes depending on your location. It is a sort of passive, subtle advertising which explores how to be present to their audience without obnoxious tactics.
Uniqlo creates interesting yet consistent content that attracts new customers through their use of different digital media. Even though they use many different venues to be present to their audience, they are all in the same style and contribute to the Uniqlo personality. It is also with their ever-changing techniques that they keep themselves fresh, retaining existing customers and encouraging adoption of a Uniqlo lifestyle.
Of course the main objective a business wants is sales. But Uniqlo appears to want more than just a bottom line. They are creating an experience unique from other clothing companies. They have built and are still building a Uniqlo global community, evoking friendship and fun instead of distance with their potential and existing customer base.
Uniqlo is a clothing store chain from Japan that was promoting the opening of their store in San Francisco. To do this, Uniqlo created an online game featuring a youtube-famous fat cat named Maru. Maru is loved by both San Franciscans and Japanese, so they chose him as a sort of spokesman. San Franciscans could go online, click on a box and watch Maru jump in it. If you picked a winning box, you could receive a free Uniqlo jacket or even ride in the Uniqlo blimp.
The target audience for this is young, mostly females but also males in their teens or early 20’s. Basically a demographic interested in trendy clothing and also up on viral youtube videos.
The story they are telling is that they are a fun and current company, interested in reaching out to their new customers in a different way.
The emotion they are conveying is definitely more lighthearted and fun-loving. Also, a little quirky and accessible.
Using a cute cat, Maru, is a sure-fire way to connect emotionally to their younger youtube loving audience with this game. It shows they are interested in their customers and willing to thing outside the box (pun intended) to engage with their audience.
Interaction design is one of the reasons I chose to come to SCCA. It’s important to me that Seattle Central is so in tune with emerging technologies and what is valid in the real world now.
We have had many weekly assignments but our final project is a 5 week redesign of the Seattle Library iphone app.
The first day, we redesigned a Toshiba remote control which was fun to nerd out on — especially since I designed a couple audio remotes when I was doing graphic design for a speaker manufacturing company.
What the balls is the “Recall” button anyways?
Another assignment was a sitemap. Our instructor provided us with a bunch of terms that were pages on a website and we had to organize them in a way that made sense to us.
sitemap
Yet another assignment was to redesign the iTunes homepage. As our instructor would say iTunes has become “bloated” and is used for so many things other than music. The design has not seamlessly upgraded with the added functions.
Here is my iTunes redesign
Another assignment I enjoyed was taking a wireframe and designing a “look and feel” for it. It was a general “photo sharing” iPad app.
top is what was provided for us, the bottom was what I designed in Photoshop
At first I was a bit crabby pants about designing vector graphics in Photoshop since I was always taught they should be done in Illustrator, but the reality is a lot of people design in Photoshop. Also, I feel a lot more comfortable designing and editing within Photoshop.
In Jill’s design class, we have had one graded assignment. We had to use a 2″ x 2″ design we made and duplicate it many times to create different shapes. We had to create a stable piece and a dynamic piece. Then we had to take either one and use it to inspire us to make something inspired by Gestalt. You still with me?
stable // dynamic
Gestalt inspired by dynamic composition
I did enjoy the absence of the computer. This was all done with a good ole fashioned copy machine.
Here are some more Gestalt examples:
An easy way to put it is you are indicating something is there that is really not . . . if that makes sense.
In an effort catch up on the school year, I going to do a class by class run-through.
In Jason’s Production class, I’m pretty sure I learned more in one class than I have in 5 years.
Our first graded assignment was to take abstract terms and distill them down to the simplest possible solution. The pairs I chose were near/far, slow/fast, and organized/chaos.
near/far slow/fast organized/chaos
Our second assignment was a graphic translation of any object of our choosing.
Typewriter
I wanted to do something mechanical and intricate — I knew that it would be difficult, I just didn’t realize how difficult. The hardest part was knowing how much to simplify it. I’m happy with the final product despite how long it took.
I watch Netflix often and absolutely hate the browsing “feature” on the homepage. It seems they are trying to recreate the video store atmosphere, and while I miss the video store for its browsing specifically, the Netflix experience is slow, clunky, and honestly hurts my eyes.
When you hover over the left or right arrows the images slowly scroll which is laborious. There seems to be no way to make them scroll quickly. Also, the choices they have will sometimes seem random. Many times, they will have the same movies in different categories which is not helpful.
This option should be available for all the genres
If you click “My List,” which is the first section on the Netflix homepage, it takes you to a list of everything on your Instant Queue. This is much faster to navigate; you can scroll up and down and see your complete list instead of slowly scrolling right or left. It would be very helpful if they had this available for all of the genres.
instantwatcher.com
Also, I tend to use a 3rd party website, instantwatcher.com which has all of the Netflix content listed and is specifically for browsing Netflix titles. There was a need for this website because the Netflix browsing experience is so bad.
Netflix doesn’t even have to design a new experience because someone else has already done it for them. Granted, they could polish the instantwatcher design, but having this list view as an option would be extremely helpful. Also, instantwatcher’s “New & Noteworthy” section is especially helpful. It is much better than Netflix’s “New Arrivals” because I have actually heard of the titles and they may be something I would like to watch. All of their genres are at the top, which are easy to find and clear to read. Netflix has so much content that it can be daunting. A better browsing experience would really help users take advantage of all of the amazing content they have.
Jason Guerra, born on tax day, is a photography student at Seattle Central. What stood out to me was his undeniable enthusiasm and commitment to this program which he has been planning on attending for 3 years.
Jason grew up in Seattle and upon graduation up and left to go traveling with money that he saved up. He meandered around the country and visited places like Florida, the Dakotas, Chicago, and New Mexico. He snapped photos with disposable cameras the whole time of anything and everything, including New Mexico landscapes from the Greyhound bus to the Colorado fires. In fact, he almost exclusively shot with disposable cameras and a polaroid camera until four years ago, when he actually bought a camera.
After his return, he became involved in the Seattle BMX scene and photographed his friends riding rails and stairs. Some of the BMX parks have cool, ominous names such as “the dungeon” and “the wooden whale.” His friends recognized his talents and urged him to consider photography more seriously. So, he did.
His dream job would include traveling around he world. As for what he would like to photograph, he is open to different paths. He is excited about learning in-studio table-top product photography and in the field photography.
We decided expand on the first one, encouraging users to wrap packages and presents in the style of furoshiki. This is a fun, eco-friendly way of wrapping gifts or packages which a Pinterest audience would love. Users could also take photos or videos of their furoshiki creations and use the #uniqlo to make it searchable.
