World History Episode 15: The Crusades

Jump to this episode’s Thought Bubble on The Crusades.

We’re the graphics team for an ongoing YouTube-funded series, part of YouTube’s Original Content Channels for the year of 2012. We create a 1-2 minute Thought Bubble each week for John Green’s World History episodes, delving into everything from the Agricultural Revolution, to China, to The Dark Ages, Rome, The Crusades, and beyond. We also create the illustrated/typographic elements on-screen throughout each 10-13 minute episode, and we branded the show; including the logo design, overall look and feel, YouTube, Facebook and Twitter pages.

Read more about our involvement with Crash Course here.

To learn more about the Crash Course World History series, or soak up some history for yourself, check out the playlist on YouTube and subscribe!

China’s Race to Power

The Mozilla Story

Sound Design and Music Composition by Allan Levy

More info on this Thought Bubble.

Ecojustice Talks About Source Water

Sound Design and Music Composition by Allan Levy

Illustration and Animation by JinKyung Myung

http://theaquaticview.com/

More info on this Thought Bubble.

Unicef Canada Gifts of Magic (Part 1: Girl)

Unicef Canada Gifts of Magic (Part 2: Boy)

What do spacemen, mythical creatures and a jungle have in common?

What we hope is a fun, awesome demo reel.

It’s to show the work of our studio in combination with our sister company (who we literally share a studio space with), called Trouble and Maker New Media. You might remember this company through some of our past collaborations: TEDx Vancouver, our Thought Bubble promo 2010, and City of Vancouver’s Greenest City project.. We’re separate entities, but when we fuse our talents together, we’re like a happy marriage. This reel represents our combined creative introduction to the masses. Since we assume you already know a lot about us, here’s a link to Trouble and Maker’s website if you’d like to learn more about our friend: http://troubleandmaker.com.

We’ll be putting a reel out a couple times a year to highlight our work, but until then, enjoy our Smart Bubble + Trouble&Maker 2010 edition!

Illustration by Mike Mitchell

Here at Smart Bubble Society, we firmly believe in the prospect of a greener future, so we were pretty excited (no, ecstatic actually) to partner with an organization like Greenpeace; a pioneer in the world of eco-activism. Collaborations like these give us a chance to meld our expertise in the field of communications with our desire to inspire change. Not just a generic sense of change, but in this case, a call to action to shift our perspective and dependence on oil.

In Canada, we’ve got a hefty problem on our hands because we’ve got the Tar Sands. Not only that, we’ve also got a slew of offshore drilling projects both in northern and eastern Canada (including Chevron’s new oil rig off Newfoundland, one of the deepest offshore oil wells to date). All those things are not synonymous with less carbon emissions (which might be why we didn’t commit to anything reasonable at Copenhagen last year), nor do they support any hope for a greener Canada (remember when Canada used to pride itself on being an environmentally-minded nation?).

Greenpeace’s Go Beyond Oil project is working to demonstrate how we are implanted in a system directly tied to the to the consumption of oil. In fact, the team shut down a Cairn Energy offshore drilling rig located in Greenland on Monday morning by climbing and fastening themselves to the rig.

Unfortunately, we’ve become pretty accustomed to hearing about oil spills, offshore drilling, human rights violations in oil-rich countries, and damage to wildlife and our planet in general. It’s another day of headlines. But with Greenpeace, we hoped to remind our audience that the measly fines these multinational corporations pay, often just to tidy surface damage and quiet people from making an uproar, can never truly repair the damage already done. Nearly twenty years after the Exxon Valdez spill, 26,000 gallons of oil remained in Prince William Sound’s sands and water. The effects of these disasters typically last much longer than they are expected to, which is important to highlight given the recent spill in the Gulf of Mexico. In fact, oil that is spilled into bodies of water never truly disappears; it forms deposits near the bottom of the sea, evaporates as gas into the atmosphere, and in smaller particles, gets absorbed into various aquatic life. You’ve heard about the dispersing agents, right? All they really do – with their undisclosed, secret concoction – is speed up the process of breaking the oil down to those smaller particles. Bottom line, the oil doesn’t go away.

But don’t walk away slumping yet, we’re happy to report that we did find a glimmer of hope, in a little publicized piece of legislature called The Climate Change Accountability Act or, Bill C-311. This bill could very well be the government’s chance to put Canada on par with the rest of the world, and make up for its shameful standing at last year’s Copenhagen Climate Conference. It’s important that our country picks up the pace, and breaks up with its longtime, climate trashing boyfriend the US.

No matter how redundant the news seems to get, we ask you to do one thing; and that’s to stay on top, stay informed, and don’t lose hope. Read about C-311, about Greenpeace UK’s actions to help us Go Beyond Oil, and think about ways that you, yourself, can start to get there. It could be as simple as walking to work tomorrow, boycotting petroleum-derived products (plastic bags), or buying your first, electric car (make that second, if you’re one of those people from Who Killed the Electric Car).

To check out the Thought Bubble we created for Greenpeace’s Go Beyond Oil campaign, click here.

“We are a global network of artists, activists, writers, pranksters, students, educators, and entrepreneurs who want to advance the new social activist movement of the information age. Our aim is to topple existing power structures and forge a major shift in the way we will live in the 21st century.”

Their magazine opened up my mind to the possibility of ‘junk thought’ (as Micah White describes it); the pollution that advertising was creating in my mind. Like Jon, I always felt that as visual communicators we could, and should aspire to more philosophical and educational pursuits. We have a blog post that Jon’s written about this very topic if you haven’t had the chance to read it.

As you all know by now, Smart Bubble Society embraced this alternative mission and strives to prove to the world (and those naysayers) that it is possible to be a conscious design studio.

I first came across Micah White through his incredibly eye-opening article, Screen Addiction, and after that, his challenging call to Facebookers in Commit Facebook Suicide. Once I read his more recent article entitled Death By Advertising, I knew I had to reach out to him and cover one of his inspiring ideas. It was that article which first introduced, to me anyway, the concept of Junk Thought, and gave way to Micah White’s Thought Bubble. Here it is, and if you feel inspired by the end of it, please visit junkthought.org for information on how you can challenge the mental pollution in our world, and in your mind.

The link again, Micah White’s Thought Bubble: Junk Thought.