Skip the movie, watch the titles!

"Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" Title Sequence by Blur from Motionographer on Vimeo.

In an alternate life, I would have grown up to be a movie titles designer (or more accurately, both a movie titles designer AND music video director). Imaginary Forces, the brainchild of one of my design heros, Kyle Cooper, blew my mind with the title sequence from "Se7en", back in 1995. Every since, I've always paid more attention to the titles than the feature film. Sometimes, I've skipped the film entirely if the title sequence is lacking. Yes, I admit, I'm a nerd.

When I stumbled upon the titles for "Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" Title Sequence by Blur at a friend's house, I literally ran home and put that movie in my Netflix queue. Mesmerized by the beauty of these 2 minutes, I watched it a dozen times before I watched the rest of the film. Check out these articles to get a more in depth look at Blur's process: 

An exclusive look at the making of "Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" by Jezebel
Oily Secrets of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo’s Title Sequence by Wired

Tremor Video and Ad Age Super Creative Video Ad Challenge

I normally don't share work related stuff, but I'm especially proud of this little tidbit. When I was at Scanscout, before it got acquired by Tremor, I worked really closely with the Product and Business Development team to create Super Video ad formats like the Super Pre-Roll. This ad format turns plain vanilla pre-rolls into a more interactive and engaging ad unit and makes it a lean-forward experience. The very first one I created was one for Unilever's Vaseline Sheer Infusion.

Other old articles about Super Pre-Roll:

ScanScout Introduces the Super Pre-roll Ad Unit
IAC Outstanding Online Video award for Scanscout Super Pre-Roll

Fast forward to a couple of years later and now this ad format makes up the majority of our ads at Tremor. What's even cooler is that we, at Tremor Video, have teamed up with Ad Age to create a competition for ad agencies to put together the best Super Creative Video Ad:

We know you're silently judging creativity every chance you get. Here's your chance to weigh in on some super star contenders who put their creativity to the Super Pre-Roll test in Ad Age and Tremor Video's ultimate challenge. See how they

transformed their pre-roll into a super experience that moves people to lean forward and interact.

How'd they do? Visit the Contestant Gallery to rate all the contenders for the People's Choice Award!

Check out the creative ads and vote! 

http://superadchallenge.com

Jildy: List-a-mania!

I love Jildy, the iPhone app. It's election day and the app is my gauge of social media sentiments within my own group of friends on who have voted and for whom - all in one nifty snapshot.

I admit it. I'm a Facebook addict. But as much as I like FB, it drives me insane when I see the same poster show up 25 times in a row in my newsfeed. This is why I was so excited to have the opportunity to work with Mark Drummond, the CEO and his amazingly talented engineering team from Jildy, a mobile app company that sorts your Facebook (and Twitter and Linkedin) friends and their posts.


When we first started out with version 1, the UI focused mostly on lists AND on PSI (Personal Social Infographics) which created on-the-fly infographics of your friends' age, gender, relationship status and Zodiac signs.


With the second version, Mark narrowed the focus to be all about lists, which really sharpened the value of Jildy and solves this common problem with feeds in Facebook. Jildy's main power is the technology of auto-magically grouping my friends with photos or by posts or by my preferred topic using algorithms, or manually, and also using lists that were set up in Facebook. Download the Jildy app now and take control of your Facebook/LinkedIn/Twitter

Jildy Mobile App

Jildy Website

NY Times Review of Jildy 1.0
Jildy
See more on my portfolio site

One super burrito, please

Please make my burrito, super. Apparently, my love for burritos has just gone "plush'. This genius, Lauren Venell, created the burrito body pillow. In my opinion, the best thing since sliced bread. I want to meet this girl.


If I truly became what I ate, this would be me frolicking around SF.

Buy your burrito body pillow from Bold Italic