Jamie, one of our super talented Flash developers, has recently been working on an exciting little art project for the Southbank Centre. Part of this involves the development of an interface that captures images via a webcam, following a certain user input. Nothing revolutionary about that, but whilst doing some R+D for the project Jamie inadvertently took a couple of thousand pictures of himself throughout the course of a day. When edited together you get a fascinating time lapse film of his entire day (wonder what happened at about 32 seconds…some sort of ‘Computer says No’ moment I think. I’m not getting good vibes from that body language).

Do people still bury those time capsule things to be dug up years from now? It would no doubt baffle a future alien race to see how human beings, once they’d mastered the whole hunter gatherer thing, harnessed fire and invented the wheel, progressed to sitting still all day and staring at a screen.
Sedentary though Jamie’s day may have been, come back soon and we’ll unveil the mind bogglingly clever stuff he’s been working on.

It’s awards season again and we’ve been busy sending off entries to the usual suspects but one we’ve neglected recently is The Chip Shop Awards (work that didn’t/won’t ever get published or was done for your Aunt’s best friends dog). We don’t know why we don’t enter anymore, maybe because there so many of these things that some just get overlooked. But one thing about them, unlike some others, is that it’s always entertaining to look at all the nominated/winning work.

Anyway, we’ve had a dig around and pulled out some oldies from the past for our own Chip Shop Show 2010.

Of course we’re not saying that you should eat paint, that would be foolish idea and make a complete mess of your cutlery.

…there again eating paint may not be such a bad idea.

Best use of Tomatoes over 20 yards.

Surely any ad with Eric and Ernie deserves an award.

I think we came up with this one in a bar, drinking Blacksheep, at the bar.

Tim, is that you?

Can’t beat a good old ‘Knob-Ambient’ gag.

For decency reasons we had to delete the name of this famous ‘Chocolate Ice-Cream’ manufacturer.

And finally, good luck to all those entering this year…

Late last year we were invited to design the cover for the Global Design Resources’s Global Report. We like working on global projects, so globally we said ‘yes.’

And here it is. Based on a theme of ‘positive transition in difficult times’ -
a subject close to our hearts, we came up with this fetching rainbow motif. It symbolises that magical moment between storm and sunshine (credit crunch to economic recovery) that we all hope we’re in.

If you’re a global brand, you can contact the GDR and sign up for one of these reports. If you’re an agency or other, you can’t. Them’s the rules and we didn’t make ‘em.

Oh and well done to Bossprint for a good print job.

The Brew.
Honest, reliable, friend.
An ice-breaker.
A comfort.
An all-round good egg.
Yep, we like brews… But do we? … Really?

There are strange fancy boxes in the office kitchen. Spotted them next to biscuit crumbs left over from 1998. Brew-rounds are being infiltrated with foreign goody-goody hippy teas and decaffeinated substitutes. There is no substitute for tea! Is this the beginning of the end? Are we loosing the need for caffeine? Why does tea need to be green… with jasmine…. and picked from the right side of the tea-plant every second Monday of the month?

A quick office survey later and a big sigh of relief shows that we have an average of 3.125 cups of tea per head per day.

Good.

Nice.

Reassuring.

….

So why are there colourful boxes in the cupboard? Shiny silver foils open and pessimistically more than half empty?

Another hit of number crunching shows that:
Coffee is our second favourite tipple. Acceptable.

Peppermint Tea and Decaf Tea. Third. No comment.

Horlicks, Hot Ribena, Ovaltine, Hot Chocolate and Andrew’s Liver Salts. Anomalies.

But not a threat.

An indulgence.

A treat.

An occasion.

Phew.

Yet… how far have alternative brew solutions spread? Is there a chance that we’re in a minority? That this is just the start of brew selection change?
Send your reassurances and end this internal torment.

If you’re familiar with those great Sci-Fi films of the early 1970’s like Stepford (not the crap remake but the one with Nanette ‘Mild Green Fairy Liquid’ Newman) Wives, Demon Seed and Westworld, where minds are controlled and technology run amok, then you’ll find this book a reassuringly discomforting read. “You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto” by Jaron (Wired) Lanier warns us of the dangers of Web 2.0, a world where our individuality is constrained within a sea of mediocrity. People are saying that it could be the most important book of the year… (or Coleen Nolan’s ‘Mum to Mum’).

This is what one review says about it:

“Something went wrong around the start of the 21st century. Individual creativity began to go out of fashion. Music became an endless rehashing of the past. Scientists were in danger of no longer understanding their own research. Indeed, not only was individual creativity old-fashioned but individuals themselves. The crowd was wise. Machines, specifically computers, were no longer tools to be used by human minds – they were better than humans. Welcome to the world of the digital revolution. Yet what if, by devaluing individuals, we are deadening creativity, endlessly rehashing past culture, risking weaker design in engineering and science, losing democracy, and reducing development – in every sphere? In You Are Not A Gadget, Jaron Lanier, digital guru, and inventor of Virtual Reality, delivers a searing manifesto in support of the human and reflects on the good and bad developments in design and thought twenty years after the invention of the web. Controversial and fascinating, You Are Not a Gadget is a deeply felt defence of the individual from an author uniquely qualified to comment on the way technology interacts with our culture.”

You have been warned.

(Ah well, back to Twitterville then, “I’m having cheese on my sandwich today”)

I’ve been seeing this video all over the place for a week or so now, and I just can’t get it out of my head so thought we’d give it an airing here too. It’s absolutely nuts… I can’t work out if it’s stupid, clever, or clever pretending to be stupid (which, after a bit of googling, it would appear to be). Whatever it is, it defies description, so hats off to Die Antwoord for that if nothing else. If you haven’t seen it, prepare for an interesting couple of minutes…

Rumours abound that this is all an elaborate marketing ploy by Puma – fascinating to see if that’s true in the year South Africa host the World Cup.

After T-Mobile murdered ‘Hey Jude’ in probably one of the worse Television Commercials of all time (yes, it probably sounded like a good idea in the strategy meeting), we thought we’d show some examples where artists have done justice to the classics…

and I’m sure John and George would approve.

It seemed like a great idea at the time but sank without trace after only 8 months. Here’s what Wikipedia had to say about it…

‘Headvertise was a subsidiary of Kapust-Allen Enterprises (now defunct), responsible for guerilla advertising campaigns up and down the east coast of the United States from October 2003 through May 2004. Headvertise was noted for bringing body advertising mainstream, hiring college students to wear temporary tattoos on their foreheads. Forehead advertising became mainstream once the press got hold of the Headvertise staff to run stories on what they were doing. Several people auctioned off their foreheads and bald heads to the highest bidder.’

Now totally derided, we’ve discovered some great examples of this unique and creative form of media.

The Brand Experience.

Market Segmentation.

Direct Response.

And our personal favorite, Social Media.

Has Mr Steve Jobs of Apple Inc been keeping an eye on LOVE created advertising for PSP….’Your Whole World in Your Hands’ anybody…?