Beware, Spoiled Milk just launched our most recent website for the upcoming Swiss feature film ‘Pepperminta’.

The film, which opens in Septemnber, is about a “very special young woman. She knows no fear. And she loves the colors of people so much that she wants to help them, from the prisons of their existing fears.”

In the official synopsis it is further stated that what “Pepperminta does and thinks comes first on incomprehension. However, the intrepid will find unwavering allies, and the great mission begins. Now, nothing is hindering the others, and the lives of the people whom they meet will miraculously change.”

Behind the film is the acknowledged artist Pipilotti Rist, who has devoted her time since 2005 to writing and directing the Pepperminta universe.

Spoiled Milk did the official website and helped style and set up the additional social media platforms, incl. Facebook, Flickr, Youtube and Twitter.

iYoga, our second application for the iPhone has been reviewed by Apfelcenter, a blog based on news from the Apple world.

The review in English:

“
Inner calmness with iYoga

Spoiled Milk ApS brings with iYoga an iPhone application that helps yoga fans practice yoga in an iPhone moderated way. iYoga offers high quality training videos and detailed descriptions of how the individual exercises are performed. And for newcomers the software even explains what yoga is and what goals can be achieved with this trainings style. iYoga is available in the App Store for the iPhone or iPod Touch at a price of € 2.39.

“

Link to post

iYoga in App Store

A couple of days ago I was posed with a dilemma in a design I was doing for a client. Since we work with international clients, these usually request a language option on their website. I never go with language options being displayed as flags since 1) languages are non-location based anyways 2) they usually ruin the look and feel of the website by their colours, since using black & white is not an option because i.e. the Danish, Swedish and Norwegian flag look too much alike when used in greyscale. I have gathered my solutions to two dilemmas I’m usually posed with when working with projects that require a language option.

Two options solution

What seemed easy to implement, wasn’t easy at first in another website project we had. It took a few tries before we realised which option was indicating it was active and which was a link. We implemented a simple solution where the one picked is clearly indicated with a coloured background and white text. The other poses as a regular link, using the specified link colour which is consistent through-out the website. Lesson learned here is that remember what you’ve already specified as links if you decide to use the same link colours in your language bar when only having to display two options.

Go to the implemented version: http://www.stressmusic.com

Multiple options solution

Eventhough I’ve never been much for using drop-downs, I’ve concluded that to have 4-5+ options on a website, the most usable function is to put them all in a drop-down box and make the option link active (so you don’t need a “go” button). In this solution I’ve entered a title “Select language…” in the dropdown instead of just showing the current language used. One could argue whether this should have been left out and just indicate the active language, but in this case I’ve chosen to show a title.

This project is not yet online, so I’m unable to show you the implemented version.

I hope this post will spark a good discussion about what other usable solutions are out there. I invite you to post some examples and explain why you think this example is either good/bad.

The needs for virtual organizing are increasing rapidly these days. Companies continue to go global.  There is an unprecedented economic crisis so we do not travel anywhere for a meeting. People have an ever higher awareness of environmental impacts, so the ability to work in virtual teams is in high demand.

Things have certainly developed rapidly for Spoiled Milk and many situations are new. The challenge of building a strong team feeling when working from two different locations on a daily basis is really interesting (+ we also had Andreas sitting in Stockholm and participating in the workshop).

The idea for this virtual workshop with Spoiled Milk was to create the same experience of a team workshop, but without being in the same location. Simply to have a fun team experience while doing something valuable and relevant for the company. Those things can easily be combined.

The challenge I gave Spoiled Milk was to find the words that describes the core values of the company, seek objects which represented those words and ultimately create a short video of the results. The main part of the workshop, however, was the virtual interaction between CPH and ZRH office and to talk about the things you usually don’t have time for during busy working hours. Those meaningful conversations build relationships - regardless of the divide between physical and virtual settings.

Screens from the event

And how did it go? Of course we have saved some screens for our blog readers.

Initial briefing (as seen from Anders’ screen) with - from left - Stockholm, Zurich and Copenhagen.

Grand overview - Anders facilitating the virtual workshop.

Local creativity - each team moves into creative mode.

Presentation time - Copenhagen screening the visual output.

Evaluation -  group discussion about how to improve the virtual settings in the future.

Goodbye - both offices rounding off.

A few more photos on the Spoiled Milk flickr account.

Creative output

Copenhagen’s video

Zurich’s video

(Anders Fredsø Olsen is temporarily working in Spoiled Milk as a strategic consultant mainly focused on writing a grand report about the “core of Spoiled Milk”. He will be finishing his studies at The Kaospilots in Århus in June)

We have a new guy in the office. Tim Day is our new Creative Intern in the Copenhagen office, replacing our last intern Isabel. Tim was born in Bristol (of all places - where Spoiled Milk was based in its baby years) but later relocated to Kent. He finished his diploma in Graphic Communication at Kingston University in Surrey and after a few jobs with various design agencies, quickly moved to Kolding in Jutland with his danish girlfriend, Mette.

We’re excited to have a native Englishman in the Copenhagen office again and obviously also excited to put Tim’s already excellent skills to the test. You can reach Tim at tim@spoiledmilk.dk.

We will be powering both offices down for Easter break from Thursday-Monday and be back for Spring action on Tuesday next week. You can still reach us all by email, if you have urgent requests or questions.

In good keep with traditions when we leave for a short holiday, the Copenhagen office spent the afternoon with various Easter delights such as chocolate bunnies, marcipan eggs and Easter beers (also called ‘Påskeøl’ in Danish).

On another note - as announced a few weeks ago, we held parties both in Zürich and Copenhagen recently. We’ve gathered a couple of sets of photos on Flickr to show you how that went down.

More photos from Zürich party #5

More photos from Copenhagen party #2

If you want to know when the next parties are on, please sign up as a ‘fan’ on our Facebook page and you’ll get all the dirty details.

We wish you all a happy Easter, whether it’d be spending it with your family, friends or foes.

The benefit of having two offices is that they will consistently try to overdo each other in fancy colours, rare posters and ingenious lighting solutions.

Now, Copenhagen has officially taken the lead. One Saturday, a bulk of pizzas, X litres of Coke and a key to our basement was what it took to get our Copenhagen office up to a shining level.

See more shots here.

Disclaimer: The author is located in Copenhagen and may not have an entirely objective viewpoint.

Copenhagen
What: Spoiled Milk / CPH #2
When: Fri. 03/04/09 - 2000-0200.
Where: Street Shop, Nørrebrogade 32, Copenhagen.
Sign up here.

Zurich
What: Spoiled Milk / ZRH #5
When: Thu. 26/03/09 - 1900-2300.
Where: Salento Gourmet, Zurich.
Sign up here.

(illustration by our gifted Creative Intern from Germany - Isabel Seiffert)

We sent out our Monhtly Digest in the morning every second Tuesday of the month. This March edition went out just a few minutes ago, so in case it’s not already placed in your mailbox, be sure to subscribe here in order to receive the next edition in April.

Our aim is to cover the following:

* Goodies about our latest projects
* Updates on our innovative efforts
* Insights into who we are and how we work
* Our views on the evolution of the industry
* Plus monthly surprises

And why we have chosen to do something as old-fashioned as sending out an electronic newsletter? Firstly, you can’t complete a full-scale revolution by preaching only to the crowds of RSS-subscribing like-minded. In other words, you need to include the actual crowd of today when sharing your view on tomorrow. Secondly, e-mail newsletters are quite nice for highlighting news pieces, generating an audience and measuring the readership.

Sometimes all you need to kickstart a foreign branch and light up the pipeline is a simple dashboard, 140 character status updates and immediate interaction. This is the story of how Spoiled Milk fell in love with Twitter.

Exactly one year ago Spoiled Milk was a small, vibrant 5-person new media agency situated in inner Copenhagen. Our trademark was bringing analogue real-life elements into the ever-present digital media formats to produce a combination between the classical artistic expressions and nowadays language referred to as new media.

One evening the three partners – Russell, Casper and I – stepped inside a small restaurant to do our weekly strategy talk. Here Russell dropped the bomb: “I’m moving to Zurich in 2-3 months”. His girlfriend Lucy had been accepted to conduct her Ph.d. studies in Zurich and the dissolution of our company structure as we knew it was inevitable. Quickly, it was decided to continue running the company and aim at establishing Spoiled Milk in Zurich – possibly to reach a similar 5-person team within three years.

In the end of March ‘08 Russell opened a Twitter account - joining the existing 1 million Twitter users - and in late May ‘08 he moved to Zurich – twittering: “Grüße Zürich. Ich bin Russell.”. Only two days later the Zurich-based media professional Gustavo Salami twittered his half-joking message: “stalking @russellquinn”. A relationship was born, though neither Russell nor Gustavo knew where this would lead.

During the following weeks a tech-related conversation grew between Russell and Gustavo and one month later Gustavo hired Spoiled Milk to deliver a customised iPhone application for CITYGUIDE. In early July, Casper and I visited Zurich and met up with Gustavo plus two of his CITYGUIDE co-workers – David Luisi and Christian Vollenweider. The atmosphere was high-spirited and as we rounded off the night in a club Russell, Casper and I whispered to each other: “We’ve got to hire these guys”.

Only two months later (September ‘08) the strong trio was part of Spoiled Milk. Counting the concurrent addition of developer Andreas Zecher Spoiled Milk had formed a 5-person branch – not in three years – but in four months.

Twitter’s role in our evolution is not to be underestimated. Since Twitter helped us form our Swiss branch, the social networking tool has brought us several projects of significant value, Twitter has connected us to qualified employees and freelancers – and generally Twitter helps us spread the word about who we are and what we do.

And how a tool as simple as Twitter can do all this? In my view, because Twitter removes all the communication filters typically applied to professional industries and instead focuses fully on simplicity, user-friendliness, spontaneous interaction and democratic access to all people and all information.