Here at Diginate we love to discover new uses for our products and, after seeing a few Augmented Reality projects around, we were inspired to create one of our own using Aurasma.

Augmented Reality (AR) is, according to Wikipedia, “a live, direct or indirect, view of a physical, real-world environment whose elements are ‘augmented’ by computer generated sensory input such as sound, video, graphics or GPS data.”
In other words taking a physical object and bringing it to life on screen.

Aurasma is one of the world’s leading AR companies and, after launching in 2011, currently have over 15,000 partners operating in over 100 countries. Their vision is to “enable an augmented world, where every image, object and place has its own Aura”. They are always looking for people and companies to work with so we decided to register as a partner, which gave us access to Aurasma Studio, their online Augmented Reality software where you can easily create your own Auras (although you can create simpler Auras using the Aurasma app).

After becoming an Aurasma partner, we decided to create an animated poster, which actually turned out to be a lot easier than we imagined. We created this layered design of different coloured triangles in Adobe Illustrator and then animated it in After Effects. After that it was very easy to upload and ‘link’ the image and animation in Aurasma Studio (we won’t bore you with the details, but it’s really very simple).

We printed our design as a Satin Poster, but any of our materials are suitable. You could for example make a tour poster come to life with a music video, or have labels that demonstrate your products. Have a look at the video below to see how the whole thing works and get inspired!

The video should be fairly self-explanatory, but in case you were too lazy to watch it, here’s how it works: First you have to download the free Aurasma app from iTunes or Google Play and follow the Diginate.com channel (open this link on your phone or search for Diginate in the app) Then simply launch the app and hold your phone in front of the picture (it will work if you point it at the picture in this blog post) and it should automatically start the animation. You can double click it to go full screen and single clicking it will take you straight to our website. Clever, eh?

It works!

Here’s a video showing just the animation, in case you can’t use the Aurasma app. Maybe you are a smartphone-less hipster (“I bought this Nokia 5110 on ebay for £30. It’s 15 years old and it still works!”), in which case you’re so “ironic” you’ve lost all track of reality. Get with it!

The geometrically abstracted animation was inspired by London at night; all the lights around the city blinking, bleeding into each other and fading in the dark.

For more information about Aurasma and Augmented Reality, visit aurasma.com.

Follow the Diginate.com channel by searching for Diginate in the app, or by opening this link on your phone: http://auras.ma/s/GcxRx.