Please give us a brief bio of yourself.

I work as creative at DinahMoe, which is a digital production company 100% dedicated to adaptive music and interactive sound design. I have a background as music and sound producer, mainly for TV commercials. After that, I started and was the driving force in several internet centered ventures. This gave me invaluable experience in application and system development, web technologies, complex project management etc. Since early Flash days I thought music and sound on the web was badly mistreated. Now I had the experience needed to do it right, which was the reason why I started DinahMoe in 2008.

What do you do for inspiration?

Anything that makes me happy. Ideas just come from nothing, that's the beauty of it!

Please list 3 of your favourite sites.

www.realitycarnival.com

www.ted.com

www.neatorama.com

What do you regard as being your biggest achievement?

Taking DinahMoe from concept to where it is today.

What's your favourite part of your job? What's the hardest part of your job? What do you do when you get stuck?

I really love challenges on all levels: conceptual, technical, processual(!), whatever.  In every project we do things that never has been done before, if it's not there naturally we invent one, just for the pure joy of solving it.

The hardest part is the work process in interactive projects. We are always squeezed between deliveries that we need to do our job and a fixed deadline. I have a very clear idea about what I want to achieve, and sometimes there is simply not time for that. The web is very young so I think this problem will disappear when all actors get more experience.

How many projects does your company juggle at any one time?

Normally between 3 and 7. But the projects varies greatly in size, from 10 to 400 man hours or more. We have both in-house production and uses external producers so we can adapt to the work load.

What area of web design lacks the most?

Music and sound, both creatively and quality-wise. But we and others are slowly changing this.

Apart from that I would say Linear Experience. Although interactive media is non-linear the user experience is still linear. Many designers tend to forget that. They spend a lot of time creating beautiful sections but completely forget the transitions between them. So the user experience is more like zapping channels on a TV-set, which is not the best way of telling a story. We always design the music and sound to bridge these gaps, but there is for sure a lot to do with the visual and functional flow.

Are there any websites that have shone through as being pioneering in the last 5 years or so?

Doritos Hotel 626 (B-Reel / Goodby, Silverstein & Partners) is really one of my favorites. The use of webcam, microphone, mobile phone is not just a gimmick but adds a lot to the experience. The whole site is so well executed, B-Reel did a marvelous job there! The sound track was done in a completely new way, we kept all sound elements separate and did the mixing it in real-time, this had never been done before on this large scale.

Has winning FWA awards helped you in any way?

We work with some of the world's best production companies, getting credit at the FWA for our work means a lot to us. We are still quite unknown to most, but now and then someone that we never have spoken to knows exactly who we are and what we have done. I think we have FWA to thank for that.

The web is getting out of the web. Do you find that thinking in digital solutions alone hinders you? Do you feel the urge to solve the problem using all mediums necessary?

When it comes to communication the keyword is interactivity, not only digital, but in its broadest sense. An impression in one medium could generate an action in another. To limit communication to a single medium, is to, … well, limit the communication. I would love to work with music and sound at the largest scale and to make all channels work as a whole. 

Looking 10 years in to the future, how far can websites go?

Ten years is a very long time, just look t the last ten years, I mean YouTube started five years ago! The Internet is in its infancy and we - agencies, artists, producers and users - are still trying to figure out what it is and what it should be used for. There is a trend from the open web towards closed applications, which is all about utility. Then there is the social aspect which makes us spend more and more time of our life interacting online. And then there is to experience something, to get entertained, which is what we do through the arts, in entertainment, and in advertising. It is in this last category most FWA entries are.

The need to be entertained in ten years will probably be as big as today. People are still spending lots of time watching TV, and I think the reason is that does not require anything of you, it just entertains you, perfect after a day's hard work. It is also a social medium, everybody can watch at the same time and share the same experience. Digital interactive media has the potential to create a much more immersive and engaging experience. But used in the wrong way it becomes an obstacle that gives the opposite effect. So I think one of the major lessons the next ten years is to learn how interactivity actually should be used.

Of all the websites you/your company have produced, which one are you most proud of?

I am proud of them all, even the smallest site has some creative quirks that makes it more than just an ordinary production. But there are some sites we have done that have changed the game in some way, and then I need to mention two sites.

I mentioned Doritos Hotel 626 (B-Reel / Goodby, Silverstein & Partners) before, it was the first time we had the chance to test our theories about interactive sound design and post production. Our goal was to create a seamless sound track and never interrupt the linear experience whatever the user did, I think we succeeded :-)

In SAAB Change Perspective (Acne Production / Brindfors) we used the site music in a totally new way. We left the linear thinking behind and created a interactive remix of the song. And everybody, not only the professionals, noticed it in a very positive way.

What was the toughest thing you ever did with Flash? How long did you spend on it? Is it still online?

The toughest part is not in Flash itself but the concepts behind. We always think in a generalized way, structuring a site's specific needs into generalized behaviors, so that we can reuse them and do more advanced things in the next production. I cannot count the number of times that we have scrapped something just because we think it should be done differently. So we spend a lot of time doing, redoing and redoing again just make everything right. 

There is perhaps a shift in web use these days. We are seeing a decline in the purely experiential sites in flash with huge production efforts, to a relationship with clients based on tools and services, that many times have simples interfaces. How do you see that trend developing? Will Flash suffer?

Some stories cannot be told with three buttons and a scroll bar :-) There will always be a need for productions that communicate on a deeper level. 

How difficult do you find employing the right people in a world where everyone calls themselves a web designer?

In our case, very difficult. We need people with two very different talents. Music/sound production and software development. There are not a lot of people with this combination out there, and so far no educations for what we are doing so we need to educate everyone working with us.

What country excites you the most in terms of innovation?

Little Sweden seems to have an unproportional share of creative digital companies if you look at the FWA Hall of Fame and Most Awarded Top 100. So we are happy to use Sweden as our base for exploring the world.

There must be a project that you have always dreamed of doing, what is it?

We have been close several times to do interactive remixes/music videos for global artists, that would be a perfect project for us.

Also, any project that combines the motion picture experience with true interactivity and realtime control would be great fun. Lexus Dark Ride (Stink Digital / Skinny) was such a project, and there is so much potential in that kind of productions. 

What does the future hold for your company, or you as a person?

Magical things I am sure, I am excited :-)

What are you excited about learning next and is there a long term challenge you are considering tackling?

There is so much interesting stuff to explore.

Linear experience, using music and sound to create an emotionally seamless interactive  experience.

Realtime control of music and sound has such great potential, really interesting to see what we can do there.

Mulit-user experiences are not just for games, this could be used in any interactive application to create a larger-than-life feeling. 

And if we integrate the personal life, e.g. social media, into the interactive experience, then the border between inner and outer world starts to blur…

Wicked!

Any parting shots or pearls of wisdom?

I feel privileged to work with the nice and talented people at Acne Production, North Kingdom, Stink Digital and all our other clients.

They give us the creative freedom to do our best and hopefully create something that is better than anything done before.

Thanks!

It has been a privilege, thanks very much

My privilege, thanks!

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