John Lewis: Please Let Me Get What I Want – Adam & Eve “I do like the idea of a really good song by a really good band being played in Middle England’s living rooms,” – Morrissey

2012 Olympic Posters: Fiona Banner, Michael Craig-Martin, Martin Creed, Tracey Emin, Anthea Hamilton, Howard Hodgkin, Gary Hume, Sarah Morris, Chris Ofili, Bridget Riley, Bob and Roberta Smith, and Rachel Whiteread.

The Comedy Carpet: Gordon Young, Why Not Associates

The interactive Periodic Table of Swearing: Modern Toss

Wedding Plates: KK Outlet

The ‘Killing Jumpers’… and the TV series

That cake is hella done:

Excellent point, Steve Hughes:

Great video by Carl Burgess for Ratatat:

Japanese people are either very polite or very devious:

Jimmy Carr tells an awful, awful joke:

Not particularly funny, just lovely, Grizzly Bear perform a memorable black cab session:

Little kid is awesome at doing the dishes:

This is me:

The inimitable Louis CK punches a dog:

I often dream of hippos enjoying aromatherapy in living rooms too:

A sticky tape situation:

What I’ll be doing with my weekend:

Chris Conlan sent us back a video report of what he’s up to in China:

Mr Chips, the star of Catchphrase, gets inappropriately hella frisky:

Dog (quite rightly) terrified of Julia Roberts:

The legendary Colin Mochrie is the only man who can make the equally legendary Ryan Stiles laugh:

Russia continues to be the best worst country in the world:

Classic baby monkey on a pig:

I’m totally down with this guy’s life philosophy:

Russia’s coolest band goes on tour:

Paper plane of destiny:

Young man who sounds exactly like Freddie Mercury:

Aziz Ansari on the sublime weirdness of R Kelly:

We felt that last year’s Mandatory Team Building Exercise, including a fringe action sport and baking contest, was far too wholesome.

So, here’s the opposite of wholesome, Ed Hall…

Sarah Corlett takes her true form:

Why are children afraid of Michael Jackson’s ghost? He gives them the willies. © Phil Skegg
Giving me the willies, Rory Sutherland:

You’re Rich Higgins’s prize inbred cattle now:

Mike Hughes and best costume award winner Chris Jeffreys (who created a model of his head to carry around) just hanging out:

Darren Hughes takes things to the next level with the detached head of Chris J:

Bram Stoker’s Dave Palmer, who spent the entire two days in character, did a lot of looming:

Really don’t know what to say about this:

Happy birthday us!

It’s basically an experimental storytelling platform that uses Twitter to drive the narrative, making for some interesting character developments and plot twists.

Anyone with a Twitter account can contribute by tweeting the next line of the story along with the hashtag #LOVEdff, so what are you waiting for?

From 9am today the boffins at Manchester University will be taking an experimental thermometer to your mood’s ass.
To make this a less painful and more fun process, we helped them out with this lovely website*.

As the BBC put it this morning, “it’s an online experiment aimed at measuring the mood of people in Manchester…”

Offline, there’s some more hands on way to mark your mood in Albert Square today. Plus, the results will be beautifully interpreted at a concert at MediaCity:UK on Friday 9 December.

* Not only is it a lovely website, it’s also what they call in the biz “responsive”, meaning the content and layout will respond according to the device you’re using. Now that makes us very happy.

We’ve persuaded ourselves to get in to the swing of things by offering up a not-very-regal banquet of bunting, in bookmarklet form. Whether you’re tuning in to the big show, or keeping it alternative and local, these should help you celebrate all things Blighty.

Drag, or save, the links below in to your bookmarks bar. Whilst on any website you can click the bookmark to apply a little of what makes this country what it is.

Chav Bunting

Emma Bunting

Food Bunting

Gurn Bunting

Pants Bunting

You could even send us a screenshot or two to show us where you hang it, that’d be nice. Tweet it to @ehupLOVE #bunting

From the mind of Ste… who needs an iPad when you could carry around a bag that sort of resembles a desktop icon?

Group 1 — Dogs dressed as other animals

Group 2 — Celebrity

Group 3 — Food

Group 4 — Global

Group 5 — Sexy

Group 6 — Sport & Leisure

Group 7 — Superheroes

We wanted to refresh our branding without moving away from the original, so we decided to collaborate with some of our talented artist friends to create some fresh interpretations.

The brief was simple: create something fun and engaging whilst retaining the original design and dimensions.

Yuko Kondo

Deana Halsall

Scott Balmer

and some from us…

If any talented artists fancy having a go at one of these then please get in touch (no love hearts accepted).

Chris Gray if you are reading this in a coffee shop somewhere in Europe we’re still waiting for your contribution…

They’ve been fly posted around Manchester and London, so if you spot one, make sure to scan the relevant code and check out what’s behind the door. There’s an online version too, which involves good old fashioned clicking instead of scanning.

While it may lack nativity scenes, impenetrable foil and delicious tiles of cheap chocolate, we’ve loaded it with prizes, exclusive promotions and other Christmas related goodness. It should be a lot of fun, so check out today’s surprise, and follow the action on the LED cam (tweetable on #LOVEqr).

It makes for a neat combined sitting and storage solution.

We will sit on this bench, while searching for stationery, and remember the good times.

More on that to follow, but for now, a mouth-watering image
mmmmmmmmmmm

We travelled there in style, though obviously the 2009 and 2010 coaches of the year were slightly beyond our budget. We can affirm that 2008 was truly a vintage year, though.

Once in a very wet Coniston, we were briefed over lunch on the details of our impending doom. Appetites round the table noticeably shrank as we were informed that the rapids were the fiercest they’d been in months.

After squeezing into our wetsuits, we strode out to brave the thunderous gorge, carefully avoiding eye contact in case it forced us to acknowledge that we’d all just seen each other naked. Ultimately, we all had an awesome and nearly totally safe time thanks to our lovely instructors.

Nobody even almost died, apart from Steph, who managed to lose her balance, tumble down about eight waterfalls, beyond the safety rope, emerging at the bottom of the river mostly unscathed, but with a strange faraway look in her eyes that said she had faced the abyss and would never be quite the same again.

This goat looked unimpressed about the whole thing:

From gorges to gorging, we finished up the day with a feast, a barrel of real ale and a pudding competition. Some of the entries:

Dark chocolate truffles with dulce de leche filling. Sounded better than it tasted. A bit pretentious and the cocoa dust was a legitimate choking hazard.

Bought from a shop. Shameful.

Millionaire’s shortbread. Little bit sickly. A good effort.

The winning entry, Ed’s semi-crushed-in-a-car-boot sticky toffee pudding. Just the right balance of stickyness, toffeeness and puddingness.

So project manager Ed set up a breakfast club as an out of office space where we get together and have a proper chat about the inspiring things we’ve seen and consider how new ideas, technologies and mechanisms might apply to our thinking in the future. Those of us that found the relevant email made our way to the charming North Tea Power bright and early this morning.

Some highlights:

Philips Versus, by Tribal DDB. Simon the rooster helped wake us up.

Wieden + Kennedy’s campaign for the Nokia N9. Check out the packaging that you have to hack to unbox if you haven’t already.

We also enjoyed some projection mapping on toast and croissants with iframes. A good way to start the day.