Hard Rock


CA taps D/C

Posted in News, Interactive, Hard Rock | 3 March 2010 | by D/C

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In a well-deserved tribute to the agency’s interactive team, Duncan/Channon is being honored in this year’s Communications Arts Interactive Annual for the Hard Rock Booth Interactive.

Judge Rachel Pasqua pretty much hit the nail on the head when she described the interface, created for the new generation of Hard Rock Cafes, as “an innovative combination of social and touchscreen technology with a tactile twist on the old restaurant booth jukebox that lets users thumb through the memorabilia and cast their vote for the next video.”

Also honored in the CA Annual is the Rock Wall™, a sister project designed and developed by Obscura Digital which, like the booth interface, builds on the D/C-created Hard Rock memorabilia website.

Big ups to them, to D/C’s development partners at Vertigo, and especially to Joe Tenczar and the Hard Rock team.

More Hard Rock interactive here.
The complete Hard Rock rebrand story here.

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Who spiked my appletini?

Posted in News, Hard Rock | 18 February 2010 | by D/C

Hard Rock runs a massive video system to coordinate the displays throughout its cafes, hotels, casinos and live venues worldwide. Duncan/Channon collaborated with artist Erik Natzke to create a series of trippy, dynamically-generated animations to display when music other than music videos is playing (live bands, a DJ, etc.). Animations are paired randomly with whatever music happens to be playing at the time and each resolves into a specific visual revelation. Here’s a six-minute sample (you’ll have to supply your own mushrooms).

Music: Yeah Yeah Yeahs, “Mysteries” / Cut Chemist, “(My 1st) Big Break” / Manchester Orchestra, “The Only One”

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Sin City gets first “out-of-box” memorabilia interfaces

Posted in News, Interactive, Hard Rock | 5 September 2009 | by D/C

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It all started with a groundbreaking little Deep Zoom website, conceived and designed by Duncan/Channon, that enabled rock fans to get extremely up-close-and-personal with Hard Rock’s memorabilia collection without having to travel. The site, now featuring 1,100 priceless pieces of rock history (en route to thousands more), was an immediate popular success – and a critical one, too, winning D/C two Webby honors.

But even as development continues on still more amazing editions of the site and its widget, Hard Rock management threw down the gauntlet: get the technology “out of the box” and into the properties, starting with the new flagship cafe opening today on the Las Vegas Strip.

Working with Hard Rock’s crack technology, property-development and memorabilia teams, and our friends and software development partner Vertigo, D/C designed three new interfaces for the cafe. These include two apps for Microsoft Surface – the multi-touch, multi-user, interactive tabletop – as well as a touch-based interface for the restaurant’s 38 booths, where guests can manipulate memorabilia, peruse merchandise and vote on what video plays next in the cafe. The agency also consulted with Obscura Digital on the Rock Wall™ – a massive (18 x 4 ft.), interactive display that enables six simultaneous guests to explore Hard Rock memorabilia with their fingertips.

There’s more. And more to come. But, honestly, isn’t that enough?

Many thanks to everyone at Hard Rock HQ, the indefatigable Vertigo, Coleman Technologies, Obscura Digital and Technomedia Solutions – everyone who made this impossible project, well, possible.

Videos and links to more images after the jump.

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New ways to explore and share Hard Rock memorabilia

Posted in Found in the tubes, Interactive, Hard Rock | 4 September 2009 | by Lemme

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Along with our partners in crime at Hard Rock and Vertigo, we just launched a few new features on the Hard Rock Memorabilia website:

1) A search box. What?! Yes, I know. Here’s a search for “yearbook”.

2) Share your favorite items on Facebook. Zoom in on any item you like and click on SHARE in the info panel to post that image and story back to your Facebook wall. Facebook?! Connect?! Yeah. I know. Friend my pal Watermelon Gum to see it in action… or go to the site and try it for yourself.

3) The Facebook Connect stuff is aided by a lightweight (invisible) Facebook app. Click the Fan button at the top of the page to keep in touch.

4) Filtering/searching via URL queries. No?! Yes! That’s what I’m telling you. Here’s an example of each of the link types we support as of today. Try ’em…

Search = submarine · http://memorabilia.hardrock.com/?search=submarine
Artist = Buddy Holly · http://memorabilia.hardrock.com/?artist=buddy+holly
Location = Chicago · http://memorabilia.hardrock.com/?location=chicago
Year = 1971 · http://memorabilia.hardrock.com/?year=1971
Video = yes · http://memorabilia.hardrock.com/?video=yes
Type = documents · http://memorabilia.hardrock.com/?type=documents
Genre = country · http://memorabilia.hardrock.com/?genre=country

5) Filter-based embeddable widgets. Shut up! This is a bit of an “expert” feature for those in-the-know, and may only be used by Hard Rock for now, but – for you adventurous types – here’s a how-to page for custom widgets. And here’s a sample – every item that mentions the word “autograph.”

And there you have it. As the man said, Rock is King.

PS: Hidden bonus feature, just for kicks… Go to the site, enter v in the search box and then zoom out from there.


Hard Rock collection collects Webby honors

Posted in News, Interactive, Hard Rock | 22 April 2009 | by D/C

Hard Rock Memorabilia, 2009 Webby Honoree

The groundbreaking, Deep-Zoom-able Hard Rock Memorabilia website and widget – conceived and designed by D/C and built by Vertigo – have been designated an Official 2009 Webby Honoree in two categories: Music and Best Use of Photography.

As the Webby folks explain, Honorees are the “top 15% of all work entered that exhibits remarkable achievement… with nearly 10,000 entries received from all 50 states and over 60 countries.”

See: Previous, related self-congratulations


Run-DMC, Kiss, Anthrax, Little Steven in home-run Yankees spot

Posted in Hard Rock | 20 April 2009 | by D/C

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Hard Rock has a cafe at the brand new Yankee Stadium, and, along with the prime real estate, gets thirty seconds every game in front of 50,000 fans on the hi-def Jumbotron. Not surprisingly, they tossed the opportunity to agency of record, D/C, which cooked up a modern mashup of the old chestnut “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” as sung by New York-area rock stars.

The spot was mostly shot at the stadium the day before it opened. And the musical cast included Darryl “DMC” McDaniels, en route to a plane to Cleveland for his induction into the Rock ’n’ Roll Hall of Fame; Bronx native and Yankees fanatic Ace Frehley of Kiss; Scott Ian of Anthrax; Little Steven Van Zant; the Bacon Brothers (Kevin and Michael); the Dictators’ Handsome Dick Manitoba, another Bronx-bred Bombers fan; and Bernie Williams, the retired Yankees star – and hot-shot guitarist – now making his own promising play for rock stardom.

In addition to the scoreboard, the spot will be aired on the TV systems at both the Yankee Stadium and Times Square cafes.


Call up Jim Morrison’s pants with your iPhone

Posted in News, Interactive, Hard Rock | 23 January 2009 | by D/C

Hard Rock Memorabilia via Microsoft's Seadragon app

Microsoft has officially launched a Seadragon app for the iPhone. Which means you can now browse high-resolution photo collections on your iPhone – including the Hard Rock memorabilia collection (as seen on the Hard Rock memorabilia website, conceived and designed by D/C and built by Vertigo).

So if you’re out and about and overcome by a sudden and insatiable need to see Morrison’s ripped leather pants, you totally can. Here’s how:

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Hard Rock launches memorabilia widget

Posted in News, Interactive, Hard Rock | 14 October 2008 | by D/C

Monday at midnight, Hard Rock International launched an online application that enables music fans to break off a favorite collectible from the Hard Rock Memorabilia website and place it on their own blogs and sites.

Conceived and designed by D/C (natch) and built by the agency’s development partner Vertigo, the memorabilia widget works much the same as a YouTube widget, giving users all the functionality of the parent site, but in a small portable app. The memorabilia widget allows fans to zoom in on images to an extraordinary level of detail – for instance, reading marginal notes in a handwritten Paul McCartney letter from 1964 or seeing the fingerprints on Bo Diddley’s custom guitar. It also allows them to open an information panel that recounts the history of the piece and play videos related to the item.

The Hard Rock widget was launched in coordination with the official release of Microsoft’s Silverlight 2 plug-in, the underlying technology for both the acclaimed website and the new widget. Look for it to migrate soon to a music or tech blog near you.

Update, Nov 25: A little love from Blender, Rolling Stone and Spin.

Duncan/Channon