The core concept was that in a convertible, all your senses become more stimulated. – the scent of a BBQ becomes massive, the sound of a radio becomes all-consuming. Taking visual cues from the campaign TV spot, we created a completely immersive world where you can literally “rediscover your senses”.

With no set navigation, the challenge was to communicate product points in a way that did not impede the experience of driving around the world. Sound was used to deliver this product messaging as well as generally aiding immersion. With the roof down the sounds come alive and the graphical objects get larger. With the roof up however, sound is dulled and the graphical objects shrink.

We also wanted to give the user complete customisation of their experience – the ability to choose the car colour, the upholstery and the wheels. Rather than do this in the traditional 360 / photo gallery way, we decided to integrate this functionality directly into the core interaction.

Launch Rediscover Your Senses

Volkswagen UK partnered with 4 illustrators across Europe to create a series of de-cals for the New Beetle. Apart from a microsite, it was decided that VW actually needed a new brand to best communicate the concept behind the project. After many proposals, ‘Art’ was (unfortunately) chosen. From this point it was a small, logical step to use the gallery metaphor for the microsite.

Launch Beetle Art

Concept and art direction of TribalDDB London’s Summer 2006 showreel. After Effects by Isaac Bell.

Concept and art direction for TribalDDB’s motion identity, to be used as a bumper for all motion graphics produced by the company. After Effects by Isaac Bell.

This was a speculative project at TribalDDB for TUI (Thompson), the aim of which was two-fold: a). to show the breadth of TUI’s global coverage and b). to simplify their overly-complex search system. The concept was to replace the bewildering array of dropdown menus with a map and 3 key questions: how much? when? and how long can you handle in a plane?

Each question had a slider, which would affect the map in realtime, thus very quickly creating your perfect holiday. This visually intuitive system of searching connected emotionally with the user, allowing them to search by global location and even desired temperature. Users would also be able to leave their feedback on local restaurants/bars/clubs/hotels.

By completely re-defining the way people search, we created a tool that was both engaging and extremely powerful. However due to inertia from the TUI’s in-house web development team, the project never went ahead. This was extremely unfortunate because this could have truly set them apart from their competition.

Leveraging the heritage of the UK’s best selling small car, the launch strapline for the Golf Plus was “A Golf. Just a little bit bigger”. We translated this concept online into a series of experiments an obsessed owner does involving the car and his (seemingly) shrinking dog, Roscoe.

Launch VW GolfPlus