Well it has been pretty hectic with me recently as I have just crash landed into the Big Smoke AKA London 2 weeks ago and have been trying to find my bloody way around the city. However armed with my A-Z and mostly luck I am now finding my bearings! I have been doing a couple of weeks in an advertising agency called Hicklin Slade & Partners carrying out account handling on the Direct Marketing for Honda. This has been a massive insight for me as it is really showing me what is actually involved in running an agency and the day to day jobs of account handling; basically a LOT of admin!
Anyway found a spare minute to get a new post in and I have decided to just do a collection of some of the best visual pieces from the last couple of weeks as my brain is frazzled and cant think of a single intelligent thing to write!
So first up we have a a refreshingly honest Ad campaign from London agency BBH. Lets face it Terminal 5 was an absolute disaster on opening; in fact so bad I recently have heard someone being described as a Terminal 5 (stick that in your banter book!). However BBH have decided to utilize this, as seen in the print campaign:
Next up is a piece that has actually been reported in creative blogs elsewhere a while ago but I had completely forgotten about. Glue society has smashed paradoxical on the head with a cracking sculpture of a melting ice cream van:
Glue Society are well worth checking out and their site is very nicely laid out: www.gluesociety.com
Ok now onto film. This Is Real Art has been working for the charity Reprieve to raise awareness of the horrors of Guantanamo and how it is Bush who is the guilty party not the ‘terror suspects’ held in tortuous conditions.
The video was made using an old school suspect profiling kit used my the American Police used around the 1970’s. A simple concept with a profound message. Check out Reprieve here: www.reprieve.org.uk.
Right guys that is about all I have time for today but keep checking back as often as you can to massgae the creativity in your cranium!
Hot off the press is the new video for Radiohead’s single ‘House of Cards‘. Already, most of the more concerning music video fan will have noticed that Radiohead have had rather astounding videos and have completely broken the mold with no fear. Even their album “In Rainbows” was sold on their site by a ‘pay what you want’ system which was the first time an album had been sold in this way.
Preview of the new video:
(Director: James Frost; Director of Photography: Von Thomas)
This video was made entirely without the use of a single camera. 2 different technologies were used; For the close up’s of Tom Yorke’s face a scanner was used that could relay the real-time 3d images as data into a video. For the more panoramic shots of the cul-de-sac LIDAR was used. LIDAR is similar to RADAR but uses much shorter wavelengths so it can capture data from smaller objects down to an atom and aerosols.
This technology has never been used creatively especially for a potentially commercial use. “They would probably be the only band to take the risk” says James Frost talking about how he sent it to Radiohead’s agency to see whether they wanted to pursue the idea in ‘House of Cards. Music video, behind the scenes.’
(The making of video)
Typical with Radiohead’s philosophy of ’share everything’ fans can get their grubby mits on the original data used to create their own takes at the Google code page. Enjoy!
Well I have really abandoned this blog for the last couple of months and apologies to all for this fact. It has been a pretty hectic and amazing time for me recently. 3 months ago I was busy revising for my finals at the University of Exeter and now I am the last one in my student house doing the last bit of cleaning and pawning anything and everything before leaving uni for good tomorrow morning.
The last months have seen me complete my finals, get a 2.1 in Biological Sciences, graduate with Sir. David Attenborough who gave an amazing speech and made it sound like you were actually watching him narrate the Blue Planet and lastly I have been offered a Scholarship to continue on and do a Masters in Marketing at Exeter.
My plans at the moment are to hit London in the hope that I can get my size 10 (uk) foot through the door in Advertising or Design Agencies to become an account handler which is what my mind is fully set on. Thanks to the recession, however, a lot of less forward thinking companies seem to make advertising cuts in the first instance. On the face of it this saves them money in the short term however the more ‘ballsy’ and clever companies will be delving into their pockets more to out compete others in gaining that all important brand awareness especially during a time when brits are tightening the belts on spending. So with that in mind I am starting off with trying to get into online media and advertising which is, for obvious reasons, far more accountable than traditional display advertising such as Tv ads and Billboard displays.
So as you can see I am holding off on the Masters as I feel and have been told by some of the industries professionals that it may be more beneficial for me to continue trying to get placements and experience rather than another year of being a student bum; rather depressing but hey ho onwards and upwards.
Now I actually have time to scour the internet and design columns please check back regularly for some of the coolest ideas, technologies and new paradigms to change our environment and lifestyles.
The street art was carried out in Buenos Aires. The level of detail is pretty amazing considering it has been done frame-by-frame, I dont even want to think how long it took to make. This is pushing street art to new creative levels by now combining ‘animation’ with other media. Hopefully this is not the last we see from BLU!
Apparently it is the 30th anniversary of the first recognisable mass marketing email. The company who sent it was DEC (a computer company no longer in business) and it was sent to roughly 400 people.
Spam has grown out of all control nowadays with a supposed 80% of all e-mail being spam, that equates to roughly 100 billion spam messages sent daily.
So happy birthday Spam and hopefully we will be drinking at your funeral in the near future
OK so slightly off topic but definitely worth it. I have just ‘acquired’ the new feature of family guy. It is basically a double episode and is an absolute comedy take on Star Wars. I have not had time to actually watch the whole thing but from the clips I have seen it is well worth getting your hands on! Should be easy to find as it has been out for a while and is now on DVD in most shops.
So whilst browsing around the internet a while ago I stumbled across Swedish based design agency - North Kingdom. At first thought so ok some of the work looks like but how big are they? Then I realised these were the guys that bought us the legendary Cadbury’s advert with the guerrilla doing the drums to Phil Collins “In the Air Tonight” and more recently they did the new Cadbury’s advert in the airport with the futuristic vehicles which is not nearly as iconic but still quite cool.
Not the original but shows how much hype it caused
I think one of the coolest showpieces they have on their portfolio is a new web page for Toyota entitled ‘On Toyata’s Mind’ which has a ridiculous amount of subtle animation used in a pretty quirky fashion and is really engaging!
Robert Lindstrom was one of the co-founders and still showcases his portfolio at Design Chapel which was his original freelance design company and is also seriously worth looking at for more conventional print media, photography and graphics. He has been commissioned to do work for Computer Projects as well as designing poster for Two Faces illustrator competition.
Ok so I have now found another amazing designer who really is the top of his game right now. This guy is Australian born Marc Newson. He has been around for a while but only really got noticed with his innovative Lockheed Lounge, which was so fluid and organic it stood out at the time (1986). This piece of furniture is now valued as priceless.
Marc has been involved in all sorts of design and he loves to use his big experimentations of methods, materials and techniques on a smaller, more consumable level for example he has been re-designing simple households objects with startling effect such as the bottle opener and even soap holders but the main thing is the attention to detail he places on not only aesthetics but functionality as well.
Marc also created the Pod watch but and avid collector of his work bought out Pod watches and collaborated to create ikepod to create some of the most exclusive timepieces seen on the market with Marc’s original flair for a twist in the design to break away from mainstream watches we see.
Marc is now the head creative director for Qantas Airlines and is currently completely re-designing the interior of their planes to increase comfort through colours and ergonomics to increasing functionality.
So just set this blog up as I have been hunting around the web and have seen some pretty cool ideas and free resources people are creating and wanted to try and give something back and something a bit more constructive than a lot of the crap on the internet. Basically I want to update this site with interesting stuff ranging from design, news, technology and other interesting stuff happening out there!
First up I was pretty amazed by the new designs that have been commissioned by the Royal Mint in Britain for our beloved and out dated coins (the full article is here):
