Denuo - denuology.com

The Swahili people thought of it as a soul-stealing machine, but we just call it a camera, the magical tool that captures life as it happens. Nowadays, everyone has one in some shape or form, and in the digital age we all have a favorite way to share our photos with each other. With such great accessibility to the technology, it seems we are all photographers, by habit, and by no means are we all good at it. We even use filtering apps that make our technically-deficient pictures interesting and “cool”. Photo albums we grew up with are now kitsch and old-timey. Social streams and photo feeds are now the timeline and portals to our memories. But, when it comes to making memories, has technology taken the soul out of photographs?

A couple of weekends ago I was traveling with a buddy of mine to Lake Tahoe, CA for a bachelor party weekend. As we set out on our road trip, my friend pulls out his phone to show me this ridiculous, free app called Waze that he’s using as our turn-by-turn navigation guide. I was skeptical at first; the data that the app utilizes is completely user-generated by the other people using the same roads as you are. What are the chances someone else would be using this app and be on the same route as us?  I would soon find out.

Over the past few decades, yes decades, the controller has been our connection to the gameplay experience. With the boundless progression of technology, there has always been an analogous evolution in the way we play. This visual timeline takes us through the advancements in the way we manipulate our virtual worlds, from the very first console to the next generation of gaming platforms. Don’t get mad if you don’t see your favorite, just know that these were more important.

Convention Virgin

The first panel I arrive at has been canceled. First panel of the day, SXSW, what the hell!? Regardless, “Brands as Patterns,” my second or third choice I’m pretty sure, had been substituted in the same room. The panel consisted of a couple of creative directors, a strategist, and a composer. They described the importance in “consistent inconsistencies” when telling the story of a brand. Way over my head, but I stayed till the end hoping for some intelligence by osmosis to occur. My next talk of the day, “We Made This and It’s Not an Ad“, gets at an important piece of why and how we operate at Denuo. This one was a solo performance from a San Francisco company, Duncan/Channon, a group that’s creating products outside of client work; obviously for their own benefit, but also for the benefit of those of us who are hungry for more “stuff“. Creating something from the ground up, anything, regardless of its success intrinsically creates valuable knowledge as well as that “thing”. If you learned from the process, it was a success.