cashface

Saw this on Facebook the other day. A new Sleeveface game perhaps? Entries welcome.

worth the MON-E?

Don't know about you, but I am very excited about the summer release of WALL-E.

I just found out (here) that a real WALL-E robot will also go on sale. It's tempting isn't it. But it just wouldn't be the same. Years ago someone bought me a Buzz Lightyear (Jesus, why am I telling you all this?) and it was a bit rubbish. It didn't run around, make amusing facial movements or deliver charming one-liners in the voice of Tim Allen. Bastards. It was just a toy. Do I want the same disappointment with WALL-E? I think not.

i'm banksy

Nice. Inspired by Kirk, posted by Fimoculous.

wanderlust video

Bjork's latest. Wow.

nike takes it to the next level

Fantastic. I want to not be injured any more.



From Angus

mansinthe

Ha.

when degrees become kinds

The other week I suggested that we sometimes hear something that seems fresh, but familiar and falsely assume we knew it already. This, from the much-publicised Clay Shirky pretty much explains what I was trying to say. Excuse my crude paraphrasing to alter the context of his point about 'sharing':

"Philosophers sometimes make a distinction between a difference in degree (more of the same) and a difference in kind (something new). What we are witnessing [...] is a difference in the degree of [articulation] so large it becomes a difference in kind."

walk to work day

On Thursday it was Walk To Work Day.
As it happened, I was walking to work (sort of) from London Bridge station to Shoreditch as I passed the street teams promoting the event. They were handing out flyers to a hoard of us that were walking over London Bridge as per usual.


A couple of observations:
First, advertising Walk To Work Day to people that are already walking to work - and ON Walk To Work Day - is a bit daft.
Second, I snapped the chap across with my (rubbish) Blackberry camera. He appeared to be promoting WTWD but he's clearly running. Assuming he was a protester - and, frankly being subjected to enough ironic messages in Shoreditch - I beat him to death with his own sign. ithankyou.

plasticine dreams

Just found this US Creature Comforts video at Swiss Miss. Love it.



Even though I think the originals were even better:



I just used the word genius several times and my girlfriend asked why? Cute, yes. But genius? So I tried to understand why I love these so much. This is why:

My love for animation is based on escapism and its ability to make the unbelievable believable. The more easily the viewer moves past the illusion and empathises with a character as though it were real, the better. So when genuine, unscripted dialogue is channeled through a blob of plasticine or collection of pixels, it's as though you're filling this fictional thing with a real soul.

A wordy (and perhaps obvious) explanation. But it's something I'm really passionate about. We want to believe. Thank you to Aardman and the other smart people out there that make it effortless to do so.

carrot mob makes it rain

Brilliant collective action idea.


Carrotmob Makes It Rain from carrotmob on Vimeo.

Posted by Dino

world wide seb

My good friend, Seb (artist & illustrator) has just launched his website. That's him below. Well, it's a picture of him. You get the idea.


Seb took part in my Early Designs project, of which he said: "Thanks for making me put embarrassing work on the net. And my old stuff too!"
Don't mention it mate.

50 ways to save the planet

Wire and Twine present 50 ways to save the planet.

I scored 21 out of 50. Yes, I shower with your partner.
How did you do?

Recycled from Swiss Miss

Christiaan Postma's Clock

Genius.

"Christiaan Postma's "Clock" is a cunning arrangement of hour- and minute-hands on a black background. As the hands swing around, they spell out the name of the present hour."

From Boing Boing

i want you to want me

Wonderful. What happens when a good, simple idea and a beautiful interface come together. Shame it's restricted to the MoMA at the moment.



Cheers Nathan

damn it London

While I was walking through London this morning I found myself (as I often do) wondering why it felt so different to New York. Today, I was struck by how quiet everyone was. People in the street, people in cafes, builders overhead; they were all just getting on with the day, head down.
I miss the yelling from New York. I swear that from the minute you get up, there are loud voices everywhere. Builders yelling to one another, people chatting loudly on the phone, a guy in a cafe screaming orders over his shoulder - and probably someone singing. Like it or hate it, that gives you energy. It makes you want to yell too.. a little bit. The collective mood in London on a slightly grey morning is one of mourning. Maybe we could arrange a kind of flash-mob where we all yell a lot. Not just for a few minutes but as a general rule. Maybe it'll perk us up a bit?

ffffriday

just ffffound and liked.

more or less

When things stop being engaging, they become average. No one likes average. So you make a choice: Put a lot less energy into that thing OR a lot, lot more.

Is the "billboard" dead? BMW would argue, not.

sleeveface live

Sleeveface hits the, umm, streets/galleries tonight in London.

I can't go. So do fill me in if you manage to catch it...

showering pigeons

Umm. So I saw these pigeons having a communal shower today under a drainpipe. I feel a bit weird about posting it really. But I don't think I've ever seen pigeons showering before. I started to think of that scene in the baths in Eastern Promises. No mafia-style killing here though.

the superest

Two artists battle against each other, each creating a superhero to defeat the last. This is great.

Taken from Lauren, who has the power of seeing red! I defeat her though, with my blue and green splashes that she just didn't see coming.

improv everywhere - best game ever

Awww.

Nabbed from Noah

contains violence

Last night I went to an interesting piece of theatre at The Lyric, in Hammersmith, London. Basic premise: We sat on top of the theatre roof and the 'play' unravelled in the offices across the square from us. Now that's voyeurism.

We were given headphones so we could hear everything that was going on in the rooms opposite. It was also very cold - hence my stupid hat. Although it doesn't explain why my girlfriend, Wrisley is doing Judo-hands.

And we all got binoculars so we could peep properly.

So we didn't miss important bits, like the inflation of pink balloons.

Or the murder of a man in his pants.


It was a really interesting experience, but as The Guardian points out, the story didn't back up the novelty of the medium. Still, I enjoyed it. The script - while odd and unsatisfying, was very amusing at times. Digging all this immersive/novelty theatre at the moment. Just waiting for someone to create a narrative that these intriguing formats deserve.

more moto movie madness

I heard about this a while ago and just saw it for the first time. AMV's ad shows the progression of moving image through cleverly editing together footage. Although not as good as I had been imagining it. (isn't imagination a wonderful medium)




And this, is something I did with my previous agency, three years ago - in conjunction with Nexus Productions. Also for Motorola. Also showing the progression of moving image. I prefer the original ;)

travis louie

Fuck yes.
I like these a lot.

Thank you Mr Doctorow - and for explaining it all for me...

tear-off ideas

I saw this tear-off label on an Oxford Landing wine bottle in Sainsbury's a month ago.
Since then, I've seen it here, here and now here.

More proof that the small things can make a big impression.

get shorpy

I like old photos.
Shorpy has lots of hi-res ones.

got wood

The Brazilian government has begun producing condoms using rubber from trees in the Amazon.

Yes, I linked to this, just to use that pun

I articulate, therefore I am

I was reading Clay Shirky's Here Comes Everybody this morning. Shirky manages to say things that you "know" in a way that makes them feel like fresh insights. I love that. My favourite bloggers are people that do the same thing.

It got me asking myself this question: When someone tells you something you "know" in a way you could have never explained it, are they actually telling you something new?

After all, it's very easy to 'know' things in a vague abstract way. Articulating them in a common language is when they move from abstract to concrete. Easy to think. Hard to do. The best (I.e. real) ideas are simple and expressing them with a tool as blunt as human language is surely a fine test for the simplicity of an idea.

In On Intelligence, Jeff Hawkins dedicates many of his own words addressing the question: What does it mean to 'understand' something. You can understand something in silence, in the dark, so how do you prove that you understand it without action? He goes on to explain that 'understanding' is based on predicting events or information based on our own model of reality. Simple, when it concerns a blue cup in a room, but a bit different for more complicated, less tangible ideas.

So, this morning, when I read something Shirky wrote and nodded wryly, did I really already know it, or did it merely flicker in my brain as relating loosely to several thoughts I may have toyed with but never actually mastered?

Discuss. (Or nod wryly)

china design now

I went to China Design Now on Friday night, at the V&A. Well worth the visit. I applied my usual exhibition technique and walked around fairly quickly, jotting down names for further research later.
There was some wonderful photography there, which I thought I'd share (below). And some very interesting sustainable living projects documented. There concludes my analysis. Have a dig around yourself. Happy Monday.

Maleonn (Ma Liang)


Wing Shya - Awful website, so try this too


Xing Danwen - Nice models with people comped in

monday arrives with a bump

Brilliant. Before I even sat at my desk I walked into a high shelf and now have a small rectangular bump on my forehead. Off to a meet a client shortly.

If I could play God this is the sort of thing I would do. None of that epic stuff, just small, annoying things that play on people's minds.

Yahoo! Easy Listener

I've just been playing around with Yahoo's Easy Listener widget. It's great. Choose a URL and it sources all the mp3s from there and creates a player. I made one for Nothing But Green Lights, a blog covering new British music. Down there on the right under my Feedjit stats...

Brawndo - the thirst mutilator

Brilliant. Fake product, sponsoring real events? What's the story? Either way, I don't care. This video is worth whatever conclusion we witness or completely miss.

The Ramp

BMW campaign.
I'm a little ambivalent towards 'viral' campaigns that ask you to care about anything for more than a few seconds, but I do absolutely love the simplicity and fantasticness of the image above. More here.

sea pig

You heard.

Borrowed from Boing Boing

question

when people that hand out free newspapers are off duty, and they have free newspapers thrust at them, do they also think: "c*nts." ?

death star canteen

Two things:
1. I can't write clever things when I'm ill (I struggle when I'm not)
2. When over 3 million people have seen a YouTube clip before I have it makes me feel old. I used to be an early adopter, man.

let's just be friends

Recently, a lot my thinking and reading has been pointing to similar things. Not being one to ignore coincidences, I ummed and arred for a few minutes and out popped a thought. Here it is, from the beginning:

In January, I posted some thoughts on brands acting as accessories, rather than trying to be the centre of people's worlds. In March, Adrian wrote a great post on subtlety, arguing that we are "moving from a period of big, dramatic statements towards an era of modulated or qualified statements."
At a similar time, I whittled down everything you might come into contact with into eight categories, four of them being positive. Those four were inspiring, pleasurable, useful and interesting. And it's clear to me that it is the latter two that the marketing industries are more and more keen on as we move further from simple 'engagement'.

While all this was going on, I had been thinking a fair bit about the life cycle of memes (I refer to Richard Dawkin's definition of a meme) and what happens when that cycle is drastically condensed. I.e. Bands that are born, loved and forgotten in a matter of days. Throw attention scarcity into the mix and you have quite a cocktail, but with closely related ingredients.

I like to reduce all communication down to a fundamental human level. When I did this for the above, I realised that this underlying shift can be assimilated to a change from seduction to friendship.

If you try to be the love of someone's life in a world with many options, you risk becoming a one-night stand. If you offer them friendship you have a much better chance of still being important to them in years to come.

I see this same transition everywhere. Utility instead of entertainment; services instead of big messages; companionship instead of promises; interest instead of shock.

Like a song that's too catchy too soon, do brands risk flopping when they try to be loved? Perhaps they'll come to the realisation that for all the drunken one-night-stands they can muster, close friends often turn out to be the best lovers of all.

That last line was awful, but for the life of me I can't bring myself to delete it...