Of course, we love dipping in to all of the ‘we love’ list of links over on the right.  But all we’ve done for our LOVE Blog is copy the links from Russell, or WKLondon or Gareth etc, which probably makes us a bit ‘planning’ heavy.  That’s no bad thing, but I think we sub-consciously write about similar stuff as a result. As an attempt to break out a little, can anyone suggest some useful new links?  As LOVE is all about ‘ideas that make the world less ordinary’, I guess our interests are quite broad - just anything that is fresh, funny, interesting etc in design, digital, science, technology, sport, events.  Anything really. Maybe we’ll all discover something new.  Thanks for your help.

Posted by Jonathan Rigby

Many thanks to Jo for providing a double whammy of Chocolate and Banana cake for LOVE’s starving masses. The proof of the… errrr… cake is in the eating:

Before:

After:

Graham posted recently about the chap he spotted in Manchester spreading the Free Hugs idea.  We just love the original (from Oz?) so here it is again. PS - you can contribute to the Free Hug global challenge here.

Of course us LOVE-sters have never had problems flirting with the opposite sex (honest), but we’re keen to have a look (just out of curiosity) at Icebreaker.  It’s a "new interactive mobile phone game that allows you to chat, flirt and meet your kind of people wherever you are just by texting PLAY and icebreaker 89665."  We’ve always been convinced of the massive market opportunity in location-based mobile games and it’s great that Icebreaker have chosen to launch in Manchester. Why more companies don’t choose Manchester is beyond us considering the demographics, vibrancy, size and contained geography of the city.  We’re going to try and blag an invite to the launch party at Tiger Tiger next week, so we’ll report back.

Posted by Jonathan Rigby

For some reason, I’ve been inundated over the last couple of days by the same email telling me to invest in a company called Cana Petroleum. It’s not just one or two emails - ‘Lacy’, ‘Darcy’ and ‘Christina’ are clearly under the misapprehension that I need to be told the same message many times over.  I haven’t the slightest interest in petroleum or share prices, so why they think I need to know is beyond me.  So if anyone is interested, it is trading at $2.20 somewhere in the world and we’re all being encouraged to "ride it to the top" - all the way to $10+ - no problem.  Maybe this our ticket to riches.  Maybe some divine intervention has landed this big opportunity on our laps.  If only I had a spare $2.20 to buy a share.  The emails are addressed to mobiwh (j.rigby is so similar that I can understand the mix-up.)  So if anyone knows Mobiwh pass on the message -  "get in there now. this is the big one. win BIIG (sic) with CNPM!". Don’t you just HATE spamming.

Posted by Jonathan Rigby

There was a time when adbusting consisted of lagered-up students creeping out under cover of darkness with a spray can and a witty thought. Not so in 21st Century Leeds. These design-conscious guerrillas have gone to the trouble of creating a stencil for their graffiti to match Matalan’s typeface. I believe it’s Avant Garde.

Posted by Simon Griffin

We were fascinated by the post on Brand Republic this morning claiming that Nintendo has re-shot ads for the UK launch of Wii to make them look ‘more like ads’.  So what makes an ad look like an ad?  Does Honda ‘Choir’ look like an ad? What about Sony Bravia?  I’m sure the guys at Leo Burnett are as confused as we are.  Hopefully the originals will find their way onto the web so the world can decide whether they were ad-worthy.

Posted by Jonathan Rigby

Once upon a time four guys from Manchester went out for a beer. By the time they’d ordered the first round, they’d agreed to start their own agency.  By the second drink LOVE was born.  5 years on, LOVE is going gangbusters so we’re going to do something else as well.  We’re going to back a new agency start-up which will sit alongside LOVE in our happy house in the Northern Quarter of Manchester (possibly with a satellite office in London.)  So we’re looking for the dream team to back.  And what’s the new agency going to be about?  Well, unsurprisingly, loads of our creative work nowadays involves greater and greater amounts of digital, interactive, web, viral, microsite, blog, online, flash, e-commerce etc.  At the same time, we’re starting to open up new opportunities in the area of digital content generation, production and distribution (often working with celebrities looking to take their content online).  And finally, we’ve noticed that clients are not being given the strategic advice they need when it comes to their online activity.  So the new agency will have all of the spirit of LOVE, but it will aim to build its reputation in the areas we’ve just described.  It hasn’t got a name yet (that’s up to us all to decide), but we know we can launch something exciting and new with the help of some brilliant talent. So if you’re out there somewhere, you truly believe you have what it takes and you share the same dream as we did to build something fresh, new and different on your own two feet, why don’t you get in touch?  Starting an agency is the best thing you’ll ever do and we can’t wait to help you. Email j.rigby@lovecreative.com or a.sim@lovecreative.com, give us a call on 0161 907 3150 or write to us at LOVE, 3rd Floor, 65 High Street, Manchester, M4 1FS.

I recently came back from a break in Copenhagen - liked it a lot. It mixes the rum seediness of the old harbour town, with old european charisma, and very
cool modern design.

Autumn seems to me to be a good time to go, yes it’s pretty cold, but the Danes seem to have turned the simple pleasure of staying ‘inside’ on a cold dark night into something of an art form. 

The restaurants and bars are irresistibly lit with a kaleidescope of lamps, lights and candles which ever so subtly invite you to come on in and have a brandy…

Once tempted inside, more often than not you’ll find an equally eclectic collection of young folks, old folks and generally odd folks all happily mingling in a heady bohemian atmosphere of smoke and schnapps fumes…

After a few hours of such intoxication it inevitably all goes a bit Kafka and before you know where you are, you’re being followed back to your hotel by a sinister looking cormorant and his midget…which is really just a subtle nod to lay off the absinthe tomorrow evening…

In the daytime it’s the ‘design’ that really catches your eye…before this trip, if i thought of scandinavian design, i’d think Ikea…hmm….can i really be arsed to find a parking space? and pretty much leave it there.

The reality is much more inspiring; the shops are chock full of imaginative and innovative design, lights, clocks, jewelry, knives and forks, glasses, gadgets, furniture. The thing is whilst you can always see that a particular design object will work, look and probably feel great, its sometimes harder to guess how exactly they came up with it?

One explanation might be that in general collaboration, cross fertilization and people working outside of their usual discipline seems to be a pretty big idea in Danish design -

architects design chairs, graphic artists design hotel bedrooms, shoe makers get together with bicycle makers, lots of different people get together to do ethical branding..and it all seems to go on in the spirit of thinking about how they can make the business of everyday living as engaging, communicative and ‘human’ as possible…

which got me to wondering who might LOVE collaborate with and what might we make? what would a LOVE chair, table, bicycle or shoe look like? What’s would a LOVE hotel room look like? What’s a LOVE lamp when it’s at home?…anyway, where was i, oh yeh, Copenhagen; kooky, spooky and v.nice to look at, in a word ‘wonderful’ mate.

p.s. a nice shop

posted by Dave Bevan

5 minutes after arriving at the Nike Xmas shoot, I was in workmans gloves, and along with four other men, lifting the biggest piece of perspex you’ve ever seen onto a wooden frame.

You see this shoot was all about angles, and our photographer, Antony Crook did a superb job for us. The box was constructed so that Antony could lay in it and shoot up and through the perspex while the dancer danced on top of it .

Antony reassured us that it would never break, and even did a little ditty himself to prove the point. When Antony thought he’d got a couple of good shots (these normally happened shortly before a joyful clucking noise from within the box), I put them onto my laptop and spun them into snowflakes. That way I could go away from the shoot sure we had some great shapes.

Day 2 was runners, and I arrived to find a slightly panicked Antony. Antony had been let down. The idea was to build a big scaffolding tower and get some amazing shots from above whilst the athletes sprinted on a treadmill big enough for a horse to exercise on.  The treadmill hadn’t arrived.

Interestingly, it was when we did the ‘dive for the line shot’  that I observed a beautiful contrast in the studio. We have the fastest white man in the Commonwealth over steeplechase, and a fantastic up and
coming 200 metre runner. All the steeplechase guy does each and every day is eat breakfast, 10-15 miles run, lunch, gym, and just before tea he trains on the track until he’s nearly sick. As he runs between the scaffolding pretending to dive for the finish line, 25 feet above him is Antony, cigarette in one hand, camera in the other, taking a swig of full-fat coke between shots, occassionally clucking like a chicken. Antony climbs down to show me some shots. ‘Look at your calves!’ I say to the steeplechase guy.

They resemble two cornish pasties (another contrast - I think in pastry, he probably thinks in terms of isotonic sports drinks). ‘It’s the way I’ve lit it - mine would look like that,’ jokes Antony.

In lieue of the treadmill Antony has an ‘inspired solution’. A couple of crash mats up against a wall. You just run as fast as you can and to stop, just run into them. This is one of the most important shots, and at that moment in time I’m kind of shitting it. We keep going until 200m girl misses the mat and hurts her wrist("you should have looked where you were going", we didn’t say). Miraculously we get a great shot.

Two long days was followed by 10 even longer days producing the graphics. The trouble was, we got too many great shots.I remember saying to Dave Simpson ‘I’ve got it down to 60 now.’ We needed 12!

(This blog doesn’t really do the shots justice, but click on them and wait for a little while and you’ll be able to see them a little bigger)

Posted by Adam Rix