Figure 1. The site’s main page sets the stage for a topsyturvy experience. All art elements float by continuously, allowing visitors to click on various graphics to launch adventures.

Figure 2. Inside the flying anteater is a Jimi Hula animation in which a giant wave and a skateboarder collide, producing music that’s both House and Hawaiian, demonstrating the site’s theme of hybrid music.

Figure 3. Flashing around the swimming blue hippo are bubbles containing “Aiwamals.” These creatures can help guide visitors or are simply there to play with. Each Aiwamal has its own unique sound bite. A winged globe leads to Aiwa corporate websites worldwide. While the Aiwa logo always appears in the lower left of each screen, it doesn’t scream “Logo!”.

When Aiwa became a subsidiary of Sony Corporation, the consumer electronics brand repositioned itself to create stylish and innovative audiovisual products specifically targeted to youth consumer markets. To express that vision, a website was created as an online channel filled with content based on the theme of “hybrid music.” It was designed to be a portal for a highly exploratory interactive experience to draw in young visitors and allow them to absorb—and, in a sense, create for themselves—the Aiwa brand personality.

Aiwa, and its advertising agency Weiden+Kennedy, decided that an effective way to market the repositioned company was to create a buzz by developing Aiwaworld and later, Aiwa TV. Under the creative direction of Eric Cruz, both London and Tokyo offices of Weiden+Kennedy worked together on the project, collaborating first with the design collective The_Groop and animation studio Ocean Monsters for Phase 1: Aiwaworld. Then, for Phase 2: Aiwa TV, they collaborated with the interactive agency Hello Design. The three latter design firms took on the project with a creative brief that requested they build a unique online environment that offers a “new topsy-turvy experience.”

Creating the unexpected
As a result of this effective collaboration, several creative teams were successful in creating a wacky animated world as visually rich as it is surprising. Jose Caballer, creative director of The_Groop, proclaims that Aiwaworld is “a place where rules don’t apply, from gravity on.” Hello Design’s creative director David Lai adds, “We focused on creating the unexpected. There are a lot of hidden elements waiting to be discovered.”

Because Aiwa is a global company making products that cross cultures, the site needed to do so as well. Very little text is used. Instead, colorful graphics of sky, trees, houses, people, and creatures—inspired by Japanese pop culture—are coupled with sound snippets from a variety of musical genres. Sounds and sights can be mixed and morphed in an interactive world that demonstrates the idea of creating hybrids.

The_Groop and animators Ocean Monsters (led by creative director Jack Peng) created Aiwaworld’s look and feel. Ocean Monsters developed the “Aiwamals” and “Sonics”—the unique creatures that populate the world. Hello Design then worked to seamlessly flow the content from Aiwaworld into the second phase, Aiwa TV, a world within a world developed to create a space for additional content. Weiden+Kennedy commissioned two illustrators, Mumbleboy and Tokyoplastic, to create the work that exists in Aiwa TV.

Pushing Flash technology
There is complex technology and programming behind this enchanting world. The site is all Flash based, and contains an e-mail application and parallax engine, both designed by Hello Design specifically for Aiwa. The parallax or depth engine allows for 3D animation on more than one level. It lets users roll over an item that then zooms forward. Objects like floating bubbles seem to come from nowhere in the horizon-less space, drawing users into the online world to play. This unique interface is also nonhierarchical, so users themselves choose what to explore by simply clicking around until some adventure takes hold of their imagination.