102b paper

Funny Garbage Design Studio


Upon receiving the requirements for this assignment, I researched all four firms to see what company would be the most interesting to write about. After reading about all of the firms’ growth and success, Funny Garbage stuck out the most. Their website was bright and not overwhelming, with informal and almost “warm” friendly blurbs about their processes and their values. The pictures for the employees are light, casual, and modern. Established over 15 years ago, Funny Garbage has created a very positive reputation surrounding their product and service offerings.

The company has four main sectors that they are involved in: Entertainment, Websites, Applications, and Digital Business. All of these divisions are different, however fundamentally are very similar. Funny Garbage is a multiple-award winning firm, and it is because of their strategic approach at creating a project. Unlike traditional web design firms, Funny Garbage focuses on market demand as well as the psychology of perception and aesthetics. Their management style is also quite unique, because their design team is able to create and implement concepts without being stifled. This combination of an expert team and a new approach to design concepts has produced groundbreaking platforms. The company’s about us states it best:

‘Although Funny Garbage is best known in the industry for its award-winning graphic design, we have a world-class technology department that has been instrumental in establishing the company’s reputation. Design and technology are inseparable processes at Funny Garbage. We design for functionality, economy and scalability first, and then make a site look compelling and feel engaging.”

One project that stood out to me was their collaboration with Japanese Company Dentsu. The website Willing-to-try.com was created in 1999, and has won numerous awards (Flash Film Festival 2000 Award, ID Magazine Interactive Media Design Awards 2000, and New Media Invision 1999 Award (Best of Show). The website looks simplistic, with the flat linear drawings. At first glance, I didn’t notice anything particularly innovative. However after playing around on the site for almost half an hour, I was intrigued by the ease of use and the sophisticated interactive system the website has.

Dentsu wanted to create a program that would be captivating, simplistic, and educationally stimulating. Funny Garbage provided all of the research and concepts surrounding the project, presenting a new way to incorporate active learning into everyday life. The platform of the website involves user interaction; the visitor chooses certain words that most associates with the simple abstract shapes shown on the screen. These words then change the image to produce a different abstract scenario. The concept behind this simple website truly is innovative and groundbreaking, especially because this came out in 1999! The Internet has evolved and morphed so drastically over the past ten years, that a website like Willing-to-try.com is well beyond the technology at the time. Funny Garbage has continued to create groundbreaking media and graphic design, and has continued to use a very methodical and logical approach towards their concepts. This unique business model has and will continue to ensure success for Funny Garbage in the years to come.




Works Cited

www.funnygarbage.com
www.willing-to-try.com
www.hoovers.com