At the moment I’m working on my new site, but in the meantime some examples of my work are up at www.katherineaherne.com/currentwork

To celebrate the festive season I created a folding snowflake animation, and posted out little snowflake decorations, which I designed and had laser-cut from bamboo.

If I didn’t send one to you, I’m sorry, but you can still see the video here…

It’s been a busy couple of months.  I recently completed a placement at Pravda Advertising and, although it’s not exactly what I’m looking to get in to, it was more experience within a creative studio.  I also managed to get a number of ideas through to the pitch stage which was encouraging.

I’ve had quite a few meetings over recent weeks, with some positive feedback and good ideas on how to progress.  One of which came from me being shortlisted for the Northwest Vision and Media digital internship scheme.

Currently I’m in the process of designing / developing my Christmas cards, so if you’ve heard from me recently expect something soon!

Following on from advice at the i-design portfolio clinic, I began to explore how I could add emotional content to the site.  I had already considered that I would like to include user-input.  By creating a community side to the site, users would be able to rate venues, and add tags to describe their experiences.  These tags would be uploaded in to a section called ‘emotions’, where a stream of the tags would flow across the window, allowing the user to choose the sort of vibe they’re looking for.

I recently did a few videos for U Ram Choe’s Opertus Lunula Umbra installation at FACT in Liverpool, with Sparklestreet who did the exhibition design.

uramchoe

An animation of one of Choe’s technical drawings for the mechanics of the installation, this is one of the simpler ones as they were quite file-heavy!

Following on from Pixel City I began considering other problems I’ve experienced whilst visiting another city, and considered how a travel company could try to solve these problems as some sort of promotion.  I came up with idea of expanding the usage of the in-flight screens  which are now on all Virgin Altlantic flights.  I wanted to make the screens useful to what the passengers would need, as well as a source of entertainment.

Way-finding system to allow you to plan your journey from the airport to your destination.

Basic route map view.

Arrival map view, with nearby landmarks highlighted to help you recognise the location.

Sky Camera and Flight Tracking, viewable to side-to-side to enhance perspective.

The original idea for this came from Hi-Res!’ Meet Your City website for Nokia.  When I’m going to a new city I always trawl through endless lists on websites beforehand, to find out where to go out and where the good shops are.  Timeout guides are great for general information, but I’ve lost count of the times I’ve tried to go to a club they’ve recommended and its shut down.  The best I’ve found is superfuture, but you still have to go through all the links to find exactly what you want.  (They do have a new ‘megasite’ in construction though, so maybe this will improve things.)

The idea is that you select options from the submenu to specify which venues show up, for example you might what to find a moderately priced club that plays dance music and serves real ale (although I doubt there would be many results for that!).

Something that I am considering at the moment is how this could include user input, superfuture listings can be added by users.  The problem with this would be that it would rely on users inputting correct information in to all of the categories.  There could be a community side to the site, and some entries could be filtered through to the main page.