INTERVIEW - DAVID
MOSKOVIC
President, ImageVisible
Q. Give us a background of your company.
imageVisible is an Interactive Agency.
We focus on online branding and marketing efforts
through user interaction strategy and design.
We’re a small firm with six in-house collaborators
and a network of about a dozen freelance partners.
Q. What is your
approach to developing interactive media solutions?
Our approach involves a lot of the familiar
processes in the industry.
Discovery, Research, Analysis. Strategy, Architecture,
Interaction design. Creative Development, Technical
Development, Measurement, etc.
What defines us is how we intertwine our architecture
work with our creative development through an
iterative process. We try to let the creative
process define the architecture of a project
just as much as the other way around.
Q. What was
the creative inspiration for your winning project?
We had 5 winning projects.
R&D Thinktank – Doug Rucker co-founder
of R&D Thinktank puts it this way: Stemming
from our logo’s identity (Jacques the
diver): being in water was a given. And then
a desire for a feeling of movement as well as
having a clear delineation of all our content
drew us to a collection of fishbowls that you
would navigate in a 3D space.
Stephen Arnold Music – We didn’t
have to go too far for inspiration. Stephen
Arnold Music’s production facility, a
mid-century-rustic ranch house, pretty much
gave us all the inspiration we needed. We wanted
to bring an organic feel to match the gritty,
rock’n’rollin’ musicians’
crash pad style of production house.
QRS Music – Our inspiration came from
a blend of music and technology. We wanted to
show how QRS Music really creates magic by blending
the two together. We worked closely with Benoit
Emery (our Art Director on the project) creating
evocative backdrops that would blend musical
imagery with “sparks” of technology
– and in the process - leave room for
an uncluttered and functional white space that
would contain all the marketing content and
shopping cart functionality.
HeartOne – Our inspiration came from
Hospitals. Avoiding the obvious and gimmicky
props to evoke a hospital environment we wanted
to focus on what makes any healthcare visit
a truly positive experience. We thought creating
an interface that put people front and center
to deliver the message was all we needed to
do.
Technisource – Our inspiration came from
a combination of a Rolodex and a Calder mobile.
The idea was to invoke a sense of movement at
every point of interaction, as well as having
everything within easy reach. We wanted to reflect
Technisource’s efficiency, technology
and precision brand identity.
Q. What technologies were involved with making
the project?
R&D Thinktank – Flash 8, PHP, MySQL,
XML
Stephen Arnold Music – Flash 8, PHP,
MySQL, XML
QRS Music – ASP, SQL
HeartOne – Flash 8, Flash Video, PHP,
MySQL, XML
Technisource – Flash 8, ASP, SQL, XML
Q. What were the
biggest challenges to making the project and
how did you overcome them?
R. HeartOne – Technical challenge: Having
multiple video hosts on the site that needed
to load quickly, start playing instantly, and
be of great quality was a bit of a challenge.
We tried several approaches until we finally
settled on a combination of moderate compression
and streaming video with an optimized buffer.
Q. Did the project
achieve its goals?
R.
HeartOne – The project was widely successful
with a 75% approval rate among an interviewed
sample. Because the offline effort was poorly
integrated to the website (against our recommendation)
it was hard to tell how the program fared at
driving foot traffic to the nine participating
Dallas/Fort Worth HCA hospitals.
QRS Music – QRS Music exceeded our and
our client’s expectations. The new website
has achieved a 100% increase in the average
user session length compared to the previous
website and has doubled online sales as well.
Q. Where do
you / your team turn for creative inspiration?
R. Pretty much anywhere. We try to have as
many sources of inspiration as possible. All
of us here have hobbies and other passions that
fuel our interest. Some of us are musicians,
others painters, movie buffs, gear-heads…
We try to source every area of our lives into
what we do. We also scour the web on a regular
basis, always looking at what others have done
well and learn from that.
Q. What trends
do you see in interactive media production today?
R.
Better integration of offline marketing efforts
with online efforts.
More user centered design. Less of a homepage
centric web design approach.
The merging of community and business interests.
Less technology for the sake of technology.
Which is good.
Design wise: minimalism – less is more…
Q. What are some
of your favorite websites?
R. Facebook, Digg.com, last.fm, YouTube, BoxesAndArrows
Q. What projects
are you working on now?
R. An incredible new type of online community
of which we’re not at liberty to discuss
at this time. Please stay tuned…
Q. What is your
overall feeling about the Horizon Interactive
Awards?
R. The Horizon Interactive Awards are a great
opportunity to get recognition for our work
- on a platform that we feel puts us, the little
guys, on equal footing with the big agencies.
The Horizon Interactive Awards truly reward
innovation regardless of how impressive the
client is.
Q. What does it
mean to win the Horizon Award?
R. A great sense of accomplishment and pride
on behalf of our clients - knowing our peers
have validated our work.
