Hasta La Ideas

Sports is an interesting thing to be represented in media because it is extremely multimedia: In addition to the obviously desirable video footage, still shots can freeze-frame crucial performance details for scrutiny, graphics can be overlaid to reveal strategies a la John Madden, audio commentators can provide compelling analysis of on-screen action, and fans will pore over statistics presented in text form.

So Time Inc.’s forthcoming touchscreen tablet device mated to Sports Illustrated content seems like a great fit–and yet they have this awful, obscenely amateuristic demonstration video with terrible narration and a risible cut-and-paste hand:

It’s kind of shocking that a company with Time Inc.’s resources and the misleadingly named “Wonderfactory” design consultancy not only developed a video this hackneyed, but then actually saw fit to release it for public scrutiny. Hopefully this will turn out to be a groundbreaking product that just had terrible commercials, but time will tell, no pun intended.

(more…)