If you employ some designers, How do you hire them or decide for collaboration?

As our combined experience in digital media has meant we’ve worked on many different projects and with many talented people, these contacts have a broad range of skills across all aspects of new and old media. Through linkdup we also have access to and communication with some of the most talented people in the world. If we feel the needs of a project are best met by using people who aren’t full time employees of Preloaded, we engage specialists for the duration of a project or for particular areas of a project.

For example, in our recent project for Coca-Cola, we commissioned the sound designer Nigel Harris to create the full audio experience. We work with people we know and trust who are accomplished and professional experts within their respective fields, and it means we can tailor the best team possible to work on specific projects. This is a definite advantage we have over larger agencies, which we explain to our clients up front as a positive working practise.

Explain about the (technical) process of making your works, distinguished clients from yourselves.

As the number and size of the projects we take on grow, we are constantly developing our ways of working, implementing processes to make things run better – it’s something that not all companies do, which is incredible on reflection. This means that we can work to these systems and can constantly learn from both our mistakes and our innovations, and constant improve the workflow and work itself. Technically, as far as the software and hardware tools we use go, these vary. It has turned out that most of this year we have worked on Macromedia Flash based web sites. We have found that for us, working on the functionality (the programming) of a project either before or at the same time as the graphics is the best method. This means that even if form doesn’t follow function they can meet happily somewhere in the middle.

Tell me about your recent works. Any special works or ongoing project?

Preloaded have created the new on line habitat for quirky film and video producers Hammer & Tongs. They are best known for their music videos for Blur, Moloko, REM and other music artists, and are currently moving towards feature film production.

The concept behind “Tongsville” is a simple one. It’s a strange place, a city that’s shady both sides of the street, intended to visualise the strange things going on within the ideas and works of the Hammer and Tongs team. We have been responsible for the creative concept, design, and build.

The main city is Flash based and is a microcosm of life. The weather in the city is set to be the same as that in London, using a backend system that regularly collects accurate satellite weather reports of London, so if it is raining in London it will be raining in Tongsville. The length of each day and night and even the phase of the moon is calculated using the longitude and latitude of of the real Hammer and Tongs’ offices. It’s like an online version of the old game Populus or Sim-City, but connected to the real world.

You can watch or interact with the city and citizens in this normal mode or enter if you can enter “God Mode” and start playing with time and the elements. The site rewards those that spend time in the city, with a host of random events taking place according to the time of day and what the user interacts with. Investigating the buildings will take you to sub-sections where the public can talk with Hammer and Tongs, see their latest videos, catch up on news or buy branded merchandise.

Besides the front-end, there’s a browser-based admin system which allows Hammer and Tongs to update all key aspects of the city and it’s buildings from anywhere in the world, a useful facility for Hammer & Tongs with their jet-set life-style. This means they can update content in the cinema, the newspaper and many other areas of the site whenever they like.

The concept of the scrolling city allows for expansion in the city in the future. This maybe funded by partners and third parties who can buy space currently under construction and commission a new development from us, the architects, or or move into one of the existing empty buildings.

This project shares values with all of Preloaded’s work in that at first the site might appear to be simple, but the complexity underlying the Flash and the back-end for the project is busy doing things but is always transparent to the user.

Another recent site was created to develop an online brand presence for Alive, a new soft drink from Coca-Cola. The site, which is part of an integrated campaign targeted towards 12 – 16 year olds kids, focuses on providing immersive interactive content featuring competitive games and toys, created to measure how “Alive” users are. The games were created to be fast and frenetic and designed to appeal to adults as much as the target youth market. If you’re familiar with the game “Bishi-Bashi” you’ll get the idea…

One or two player games make up the core of the site, where users can compete against the computer, or a friend using the same keyboard. Games can be played individually, or users can enter the tournament section, where random games are thrown out in quick succession.

The site is essentially a mini OS, generated entirely using Macromedia Flash, with a back-end high-scores and user tracking system developed specifically for the project.

We’re also working on the branding and design for an European “interactive” television channel, and there’s another project for a music-related company out in the States but they are all top secret at the moment.

Could you describe your workspace? Environments and circumstance? Are there special habits when you work in office?

Our office is on Hoxton Square a green oasis on the edge of the city square mile. The Square is a meeting point for lots of people who eat sandwiches together on the grass when the weather’s nice, it’s friendly like that. We all regularly go to lunch together, as our numbers increase it is harder to find tables big enough for us all to sit around so the Square helps. Also, since the DOTCOM collapse, companies seem to have more time to share ideas and thoughts rather than being as competitive as they used to be, and being so close to so many other new media design companies it’s good that there’s a good community vibe. This is obviously helped by the fact that there are lots restaurants, cafes and bars nearby to “work” in. 🙂

Our office is a large open plan white wooden floored space, which is usually full of gadgets, gizmos and toys. Just past the Atari Dunkshot arcade machine is a small kitchen area and a shower so we can keep clean and fed. If you walk past all our desks and computers at the far end of the office is a large old white leather settee that sits 8 people that we have affectionately named “the porn couch”, a punch bag for stressful days and wide-screen TV with pile of video game consoles from the late ’70s through to present day.

Most people’s reaction on entering our work space is “Wow – nice office!”. We like it very much, though we should really spend more time out of it.