Not sure how long we are going to stay there but TAK! are featured on the front page of the flagship Microsoft website Silverlight.net with their Art Collection Viewer from the new Pre-Raphaelite website for Birmingham Museum and Art Galleries.
I was very excited to find out that a trip to the Kent coast coincided with the launch of test runs of the new service linking St Pancras with the Kent coast. The High Speed One line was built to carry Eurostar in super fast times to Paris but, unlike on the French side, you were not allowed to board in London and get off in the same country which meant the only option was the super slow local service. The new line is something to be truely excited about as it's the first line to be built in the UK in... well ages. All investment usually goes into boring safety upgrades so it's nice to see something like this going ahead to finally bring Britain into the 21st century. I won't go on about this but France, Spain, Japan and China have been investing in super high speed trains for ages and their benefits are clear. Anyway here's the link to high speed one:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Speed_1
Anyway - about the journey - i filmed the whole 37 mins from London to Ashford but I won't put that here..
Quick first impressions:
- it's going to cost a bit more, but not loads - I paid a 4.40 surcharge on the 29 quid journey.
- The new platforms are lovely at St Pancras.
- You can feel the G-forces when accelerating and the leaning when turning in these Japanese trains (Hitachi).
- 20% of the journey is in tunnels as you exit London and as you go under the Thames near Dartford.
- We did make it to the olympic site in 9 mins as promised by the government
- The interior of the train feels cheap and rattles a bit.
- A can of beer makes the journey very enjoyable.
- High speed trains are the future of UK travel
Anyway thanks for humouring me - I'm not actually a train spotter...
This is what I really want though: roll on ultra speed: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UK_Ultraspeed
Created In Birmingham have written a fantastic piece about the recent Pre-Raphaelite project we have delivered for Birmingham Museums & Art Gallery.
They champion the Museum's brave approach to undertaking the project and the finer details within the site we crafted.
Noice!
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Neil Kinnish
+44 (0)121 288 2528
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DIGITAL IMAGE COLLECTIONS – FREEING ASSETS FROM ARCHIVES
Museum’s web app frees high-res images from database archive to be used by public, academics and educational institutions.
http://www.preraphaelites.org
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In today’s digital environment despite concentrated efforts,
many artifacts and artworks are still unavailable to the public and
educational institutions. Having previously sat in storage rooms, works
are now often found as redundant high resolution scans on private
servers. Some institutions have adopted powerful image databases to
catalog their high resolution images, ensuring artworks and artifacts
are correctly archived and accessible internally for curators. The next
progressive step for forward thinking institutions is to make their
digital collections accessible to all.
Understandably, there
are numerous challenges in achieving this goal; notably strict IT
access policies, file size issues (high resolution scans are just not
suited to standard html websites) and Digital Rights Management.
Birmingham
Museums and Art Gallery (BMAG) faced these issues when they decided to
publicly release their world-class Pre-Raphaelite collection, the
largest in Europe. They already had a powerful image database system
that cataloged previously unseen works but didn’t have a way to release
them further. Fortunately they had a clear idea of what they wanted and
the courage to pursue this goal. Together with assistance from JISC they appointed Birmingham-based digital agency TAK! Design after a five way pitch to design and develop a website application to achieve their goal.
Pete Nelson lead developer at TAK!
notes, “We are all aware of the value of high quality content and many
of the UK’s museums and art galleries are sitting on goldmines of
digitized images and artifacts that could be utilized by schools,
universities and the general public, but are simply not accessible.
There are many stumbling blocks in getting these assets to a global
audience, but if presented carefully they could benefit a huge number
of people, raise the museums’ profiles and also bring in more visitors
to see the artworks in person. It’s also about engaging users who would
not previously be switched on to art history or likely to visit these
institutions.”
Usability was a key issue–BMAG needed to know
that, once released, the collection would engage all kinds of users
with little assistance or technical knowledge.
Usability lead
Dom Murphy explains, “There was the potential within the sheer scale of
the site for users to easily become lost in process, never to return.
Our goal at TAK! is to offer simple yet
highly rewarding user experiences. We provided usability guidance and
conducted a series of paper prototyping sessions where academics,
students and everyday users were asked to explore a series of processes
to see how they reacted and interacted. The results shaped the site
into it’s current state. Improving interaction is an ongoing process
and as such we expect to fine tune certain aspects of the site over the
year.”
Key to the project’s success is the inclusion of a new
technology developed by Microsoft called Deep Zoom which runs on their
increasingly popular Silverlight free browser plug-in.
Neil Kinnish, Technical Director at TAK!
championed the decision to use this software, “Deep Zoom allows views
of artworks to be zoomed within the browser so that visitors can see
individual brush strokes on the canvas. In effect the visitor is
getting a closer experience of the work than in the gallery itself.
This rich user experience is highly valuable in use as a learning
resource. Deep Zoom essentially slices up the high resolution artwork
and scales it many times so that the work can be streamed effectively
over a standard broadband connection. In addition it means that, while
the image is accessible to the user while online, it cannot be saved to
their local computer which could present copyright infringments.”
The
project also made use of other leading technologies to provide an
engaging visitor experience. Lucene, a Google-like indexing engine was
employed to provide lightning fast and effective searches across the
entire catalogue, whilst .NET 3.5 and MVC
were used to deliver a robust site framework. Perhaps the largest
challenge was the importation of the data and re-processing it into a
usable format, custom importation routines were built to handle this
task specifically.
Kinnish adds, “This was pretty much an
ideal project in terms of design and development. The client had an
interesting brief and were keen to produce something above the
ordinary. They were not scared to venture into new territory to achieve
this end, and this has been key to the success of the site.”
JISC’s activities support education and research by promoting innovation in new technologies and by the central support of ICT services. Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery offer world class museums in the cultural heart of England. TAK!
Design specialize in Art, Design and Development. They are an
independent digital agency based in Birmingham, UK yet they work with
clients big and small from all around the world. Their previous work
within the cultural sector has earned several awards and recognition.
“TAK!
have helped us create the largest online Pre-Raphaelite collection in
the world” concludes Linda Suprdle, Project Manager at BMAG.
“It’s a fantastic resource and provides an unparalleled level of access
and quality to the works on display. Anyone with an interest in art
should visit the site and discover the importance of the
Pre-Raphaelites.”
If you would like further information about
this topic, promotional materials or schedule an interview please
contact Neil Kinnish on 0121 288 2528 or through the site.
Lovely piece of industrial design…
We've just added a bunch of new work into the Portfolio section of the site. Updates include the following…
3-in-1 Retro Arcade
Sprites for a collection of retro inspired games for mobile devices. Find out more.
Play With Pictures
Application icons, interface design and packaging for family orientated image editing software. Find out more.
Job Dunne
Animations demonstrating the creative thought process. Find out more.
In conjunction with St Bride Library and Type, Wallpaper asked designers – from students to superstars – to find the tart
hiding in every type and create their own graphic numbers. Along with a
selection in the magazine, all 450 cards can be viewed here. Great stuff!
Iconfinder is an icon search engine that fetches relevant icons depending on what type, color or size you're looking for. As they have around 70 thousand icons and it's overall nice and very simple to use I would definately say it will come in handy!
http://www.iconfinder.net/
Amazing concept for a retro-mouse, and not only does it look retro but it has a good deal of NES in it as well!