The future of information01/08/11

The world is a rapidly changing place, in the last 15 years alone the internet has changed the way people live their lives and transformed world wide communications. No longer are we slaves to Ceefax or left eagerly awaiting a handwritten letter from the postman. Here we are in 2011 and the world is undergoing yet another huge information migration, the age of the computer is transitioning into that of the smartphone. Find out what TJ are doing to stay head after the jump.

If you’re reading this, it should come as no surprise that we’re interested in imagery, of all kinds. Still, motion, digital, interactive; we turn our hand to anything and everything,in the pursuit of both business and pleasure. In 1999 when Glen Taylor first opened our doors the world was rapidly undergoing massive changes as was the way we consume images. Everything from art to advertising was opening up to people the world over with nothing more than a few clicks of a mouse. The Internet revolutionised all forms of communication, allowing people to expose themselves to whatever forms of entertainment they wished and equally allowing advertisers to reach right into peoples homes and deliver targeted adverts to relevant consumers.

Skip forward 11 years and everything is changing yet again. Mobile devices are now so prevalent in out society that a recent study performed by Google unveiled that there are now 20 million mobile Internet users in the UK, thats 1/3 of the entire population. 2010 also marked the first year where there have been more smartphone sales than PCs. Its undeniable that another huge change is underway, people want quick mobile acces to information on sites developed specifically for mobile browsers. New technologies such as HTML5 and WebGL are taking huge leaps forward in allowing people access to flash-like content without the usual trappings of high processor demand and large file size. Sites such as Vimeo and Youtube are in the process of converting their content to HTML5 to allow native support on mobile devices, the effects of this can already be seen with YouTube reaching 200 million mobile views in the past year. With the iPad, Apple essentially invented an entire new window through wich people could consume mobile content, having sold over 25 million to date thats 25 million more mobile users browsing on a format that 3 years ago did not exist.

These are all very impressive figures, and certainly proof that we are moving into a new era of mobile information but what does it mean for the creative industries? At TJ we always try to keep abreast of modern technology, from the build of our new website 2 years ago we understood that all our content must be accessible on mobile devices; we moved our entire library of videos and Step by Step guides to Vimeo, enabling us to utilise the HTML5 technologies as well as build a community of likeminded professionals to critique and interact with our work. To receive impartial feedback like this is an incredible boost for the artists who worked on the job, praise from ones peers is seldom unappreciated. We also utilise QR codes on all our print advertisements to give readers quick access to all the information surrounding a job, this allows us to show much larger, full bleed images without weighing the page down with reams of text as well as giving potential clients quick access to our contact information.

So what does the future hold? Mobile views are rising year on year, and certainly showing no signs of stopping. With only 17% of companies offering an alternative mobile website or mobile friendly content; the industry certainly has some catching up to do. Rest assured that with our creative marketing department and our research and development team, we will always be striving to push these emerging technologies forward. With our research on 3D printing, NFC and controller-free interfacing well underway, it looks like the next decade is going to be as exciting as the last!

You might recognise the image used for this blog as a modified version of our work for Citrix. Citrix are a great example of a company prepared for the future of mobile browsing, they provide desktop virtualisation across multiple mobile platforms allowing for seamless workflow between the office and remote locations.