Social Media Abides

Well our old pal myspace seems to be finally accepting the dominance of facebook and has introduced Facebook Connect across the site. The service is called 'Mashup with facebook' (ironic as myspace is a bit of a mashup these days).

Not only can you now use myspace to publish updates to twitter and facebook (in a kind of teetdeck fashion) you can also opt to share information between the two services to allow myspace to create a customised page with your favourite music, TV shows, movies, celebrities etc, and also suggests related content you might like. You can expect to see that wee 'like' button spreading like a rash over myspace any minute now. This fits in with the new direction that myspace have taken, moving the emphasis from the 'friends' aspect it pioneered to a "social entertainment destination" sharing videos, music and games. To be fair the only people i know who still use it are people in bands and the more hardcore of music fans.

Whether this is going to lure users back to the ghost town of social networking past is doubtful. Some have speculated that the owners (News Corp) are getting ready to sell off the service. Would facebook be prepared to move in and buy the carcass? It would certainly create quite a monopoly in the social networking world.

Speaking of monopoly... (ahem, sorry)

In other news, I had always suspected that the 'Big Lebowski' holds the answers to all of life's problems and it's starting to ring true. Here's some advice from the flowtown.com blog on how to handle your social media, taking insights from the DUDE:

Social Media Insights from the Big Lebowski

Without a hostage there is no ransom.

Wizard Smoke

This is a short skate video from SALAZAR in Vancouver. Having been around for a while i'm really suprised no one has turned this into an ad yet. If you get bored by the skateboard stunts then skip to around 5.40 for the water jumps. Great simple idea and really well executed.

Featuring: Bradley Sheppard, Alien, Nate Lacoste, Chris Connolly, Nate Roline, Stacy Gabriel, Mike Klinkhamer, and Rob Rickaby

Directed By Liam Mitchell
Shot By Nathan Drillot and Liam Mitchell

10x10

Okay, so in the past i have been guilty of not paying quite enough attention to the news. Time to remedy that, homepage set to bbc news and let's keep an eye on this

'Ten by ten' is described as an 'interactive exploration of the words and pictures that define the time'.

How it works: "Every hour, 10x10 scans the RSS feeds of several leading international news sources, and performs an elaborate process of weighted linguistic analysis on the text contained in their top news stories. After this process, conclusions are automatically drawn about the hour's most important words. The top 100 words are chosen, along with 100 corresponding images, culled from the source news stories. At the end of each day, month, and year, 10x10 looks back through its archives to conclude the top 100 words for the given time period. In this way, a constantly evolving record of our world is formed, based on prominent world events, without any human input."

The system gives you a snapshot of what is going on in the world and can be viewed by the hour, day, month or year.

Posterise

Over the time of my masters course (which i've just completed thank you very much) i've managed to hobble together a few posters using my limited knowledge of the old photoshop. So here they are.

Moving clockwise:

The first poster was for a piece of coursework where we had to pick an organisation to perform a design audit on. I chose the much loved (and hated) Glasgow Subway. Although it often seems to be in the dark ages it was interesting to see the effort that had gone into re-branding and pushing the service forward on a limited budget. As part of my recommendations I had chosen to push the work they had already done with the 'S' subway logo and orange colouring. I made a series of posters and an animation (if i work out how to upload an animated powerpoint i'll put it up here) centred around using that logo in the core messages. Unfortunately the move was perhaps so obvious that SPT produced a pamphlet using pretty much exactly the design below before i handed it in... still think mine looks better... humph.

The second poster was for the Caledonian Creates exhibition put on at our University. We were given an open brief and i wanted to portray the most important elements that I felt I had gained from the Masters programme and what i felt was the essence of the course, the coming together of strategy and creativity.

Poster number three was not uni related but a request from a flatmate who was producing a play for an independent theatre company named 'Flatrate'. The show was a success which i put entirely down to the poster and not its raunchy content. Unfortunately i was not present when these 'explicit polaroids' were being taken in my house. Damn.

The final poster was part of a project myself and a classmate did in conjunction with the university and Springburn Academy. Essentially it was an after school crafts project for first years where the pupils made these paper mache masks (we started off with a theme but the kids had other ideas). We produced a series of posters featuring each of the pupil's masks with a hijacked version of our Caledonian creates logo. We wanted to encourage the pupils by demonstrating that their efforts could contribute to a creative project and that art and design was a career path they should consider if they enjoy it.

What the f**k is my social media strategy?

Save your self some time and effort with this website that will generate social media strategies and jargon at the click of your mouse.




Blatantly ripped off from the people who do the fucking excellent whatthefuckshouldimakefordinner.com



Indecision is a thing of the past. Who says swearing isn't big or clever?

Thinkin oot his box

Here's an interesting video brought to you from the Creators Project about a German inventor/artist by the name of Julius Von Bismark. In addition to having a truly excellent beard / hair cut combo he's coming out with some really original ideas like his out of body experience camera and his much sought after 'Image Fulgurator', seen below.





And sorry agencies but it appears he's not up for selling you his ideas. How selfish. Check out the video underneath. You can turn on the subtitles in the 'CC' box in the player if they aren't showing up... or go and learn how to speak German.

When good bananas go bad

I've always liked that Chiquita logo, as with my beloved Tunnocks packaging i would have said don't ever mess with it. But i must admit this campaign is pretty good. They're taking the most recognisable element of the brand and putting a clever twist on it that is definetely going to grab peoples attention when they're at el supermercado. And as a skateboarder you don't have to convince me about the joys of sticker collecting. Everybody loves a good sticker.

And of course the campaign doesn't stop with the stickers. For all your digital banana related needs you can pop over to eatachiquita.com and go bananas with games, viral videos, animations and even make your own sticker (which you can buy on a t shirt).

They've also jumped on the skateboard bandwagon. (oh no they di-uhnt) So i'll wrestle with my 'only buying from skater run companies' conscience for a while to see if this guy will be going up on the kitchen wall... it would work well with the hideous yellow paint job i've inherited.

You can read a full interview with the designer over at design:related for his insights into this particular brand development.

One more thing before you go tho... It's all well and good coming up with this sort of stuff to make a brand a bit more exciting BUT when you have problems with your company image with regard to ethics and human rights violations you might want to sort that out first otherwise there is always going to be people telling you where to stick your bananas.

Here's the Banana Sessions to play out this post. A jolly good wee band fae the Burry Toon.

Sleep tight

I love a good pun i do. Shame about the spelling mistake but we'll let it go, maybe they were rushed by the approaching junkie wanting his bed back. Perhaps it's a social commentary on Madonna's career? Oh, you don't remember that song? Not surprised...

Olly Moss

Here's some graphic work that caught my eye this morn from Olly Moss. The first four images are from his 'make something cool everyday' project.




The following are commercial work with his custom shooting targets, a poster for the 'a life well wasted' podcast, poster for the Black Keys and an image representing the internet police for a Financial Times article on internet censorship in china.

Haters

The Melbourne Advertising and Design Club (MADC) have chosen something a bit different for their promotion of this years awards ceremony.

The campaign has real comments taken from the Campaign Brief Blog, all contributed under the guise of 'Anonymous'.

"Accordingly, the MADC would like to thank 6:09, 8:23, 11:17 and all the other brave contributors for providing the content for this campaign".

Silence Anonymous and keep brushing off those haters...

Boring

Okay, so Apple are the cool, good guys and Microsoft are boring and evil... right? Perhaps. The debate shall no doubt rage forever amongst the techies and the mono-button, fancy pants.

Below is an ad for Office 2010. Excited already aren't you? It's a bit cheesy but it's a step in the right direction. When so many people hate you it can't hurt to take the piss out yourself from time to time.

poor wee Clippy... he just wanted to help you write a letter.

Crafty

Woops, the blog kind of died for a wee bit there. Had to actually do some of that work stuff... Any way, a few more bits and bobs you might find interesting coming up.

Because i am nothing if not bang up to date, cutting edge and down with the youth here's a year old flyer design from those renegade party chaps now collectively known as 'Numbers'. If you like getting sweaty and dancing about to grimey beats whilst rocking the patented 'stabby gun fingers' moves then check them out.

What better way to get people to pay attention to your flyer than getting them to pick it up and play with it..

Crafty indeed.

Harvest by Haroshi: SKATE AND DESTROY

Now this is impressive. 'Harvest by Haroshii: Skate and Destroy' is an Exhibition recently shown a plsmis gallery in Tokyo. All of the images you see below are made from old skate decks. Most skaters will end up with piles of old delaminated and snapped boards kicking around the house if they are not left to die at the skate spot. They are either in that pile, given to kids or burned in the bonfire by your Dad. This guy had a different idea...

"I decided to make some accessories with the old decks and this was the birth of Harvest. The works of Harvest are through the perspectives of a skater and as an artist. As a skater, I want to take responsibility of reusing skateboards when they were no longer useable. Also, as an artist I want to explore the possibilities of what can be done with skateboards.

We see the care and effort that a skater can have for his/her deck and we also acknowledge the origins of a skateboard. We believe that if the small things we do can connect to sustainability then we’re doing something right. We’d be satisfied in our effort when people look at products and start thinking of ways to recycle.”

Stolen from HUH.MAGAZINE

Wood for the trees

Research carried out in 2008 by a Robert Heath.. whoever he is.. showed that the average consumer (who isn't a consumer?) is exposed to over 5000 brand messages per day.

" Well, according to this researcher, it must be understood that we absorb a large part of this information unconsciously. This is his theory of Low Involvement Processing (LIP).

Without us realising it, without any special effort on our part, our brain records this information subconsciously. That will obviously play a role in our knowledge of products and brands from all household consumption categories.

Our brain constantly chooses what “interests” us. It stores this information at a “conscious”, accessible, close level and classifies elsewhere what “doesn’t interest us” and archives it in an area that is, so to speak, more “distant and less of a priority”.
It’s often said that we are entering an era of “Permission Marketing” in which the consumer is more and more able to build barriers around them to stop appeals that they consider undesirable.

The practical consequence is that the only means of convincing the maximum potential clients is to try to be present in the media as often as possible in order to have a chance of getting there “with the right offer, at the right time”…when such and such an individual’s “drawbridge” is open"

- taken from: http://treguer.wordpress.com/2008/04/27/a-consumer-is-exposed-to-an-average-5000-brands-message-per-day-tvlowcost-will-help-your-brand-by-reducing-spectacularly-the-cost-of-the-most-powerful-and-influential-media/

Now i'm not wholly sure if i buy into this theory. Yes we are more susceptible to what we are interested in and looking out for. I still can't see that moonwalking bear if i'm counting the passes. I don't think this means that you have to barrage people with images and messages in the hope that maybe one day they might think about your product. You could beam a subway sandwich sign into my brain 24/7 and i still wouldn't eat one unless it was absolutely the last option. This research was promoting cheap advertising slots for a network. In my opinion it's less about forcing the brand on the consumer as it is about breaking down the barriers that make them see it as undesirable.

The man your man could smell like

Isn't it great when adverts are actually good.

" We're not saying this body wash will make your man smell into a romantic millionaire jet fighter pilot, but we are insinuating it"

.. I'm on a horse.

Guerrillas in the midst

The great comedian Bill Hicks (RIP) once said, "if you are in marketing or advertising... kill yourself. No joke here, really. Seriously, kill yourself, you have no rationalisation for what you do, you are Satan's little helpers. Kill yourself, kill yourself, kill yourself now."

He was a pretty harsh guy old Bill but i can see why a lot of people hate it. The reason it attracted me in the first place however was not exploiting people and clocking up the dollars, i'd be a fool if it was with starting salaries at an absolute pittance. It's the creativity you can express whilst trying to make a success of a brand or a service.

Something that i think most people will like is what is now referred to as 'Guerilla' advertising. The concept is basically that you can promote something around an imaginative, creative concept without having to spend a huge amount of money on the campaign.

The ideas behind the campaigns are often unconventional, interactive and unexpected. They can be pretty subtle like this Axe deodorant sticker..

or subtle as a brick..

Here's a few good'uns,

Mr Clean.

Interactive red carpet Nikon ad on the Seoul Subway. (motion sensors make the cameras flash)

And hey. if you're going to write a book about Geurrilla advertising why not make the book advertise itself, that's what the Tokyu agency did for the release of Gavin Lucas's book in Japan by the addition of a handle to the cover.

And this i just think is pretty shmaert..

Hell Vetica

Now technically i'm not a designer, i don't really have skills to get whatever is in my head onto the computer and my drawings are more than a little dodgy. I've always had an interest in it however, i do care about layouts and colours and logos. I can even spend a day or two on photoshop and come up with something passable but that is about as far as it goes.

Last summer i was at the Wickerman festival in Dumfries having a jolly good old time. Now you may be familiar with that feeling of lying in your tent and hearing the more hardcore of your friends jabbering on outside about god knows what. This time i was pretty taken aback by the conversation topic... fonts. Something to do with the merit of serifs. For gods sake you are at a festival, if i hear any more about fonts i am going to have to kill you and write your obituary in 'wing dings'.

Now the more i look in design related stuff the more i feel like i am becoming one of these font followers. Enter this film:

This is a feature film about typography and graphic design released in 2007 to commemorate 50 years of the well used font of the same name. You may not know the name of it but trust me you see it everyday. 'Arial' is its bastard (ugly) cousin by the way, don't get confused. The film is a pretty geek tastic but i found it interesting. The side affect is that i now devote a silly amount of time looking at shop signs, print and logos trying to analyse the merit of how they've used typography. Many agencies seem to specialise in taking brands and helvitcising them to death. Whether its a good thing or not confuses me daily. So basically don't watch it if you like being oblivious to such things, ignorance can be bliss.

On a Glasgow related helvetica note check out this calendar designed by Effektive.

S'nice intit? I want one. Again produced for the 50th anniversary you can't get hold of this as yet but Greig Anderson the designer is currently working on a non year specific version so keep an eye on the effektive website if you like the look of it. Here's a sneak peak at the new version:

This gun's for hire

This is a wee slideshow i made to support an application for a job with a back-catalogue film company a couple of years ago. Basically to illustrate that i did have an interest in filums. I didn't get the job but i reckon this helped me get the interview out of the 200 odd people that had applied. Goes to show that sometimes a little something extra can go a long way. Obviously i'd do it a lot better now and yes i know that scrolling text at the end of it is horrendous but hey-ho..

this gun's for hire from scotiamacb on Vimeo.

Smashing

Is it just me that gets an urge to take a baseball bat to furniture now and again? Apparently not. Here's an exhibition that a young lady called Nikki Lau came up with, making an entire living room Pinata style. Nice. Courtesy of the Medicine Agency, San Fransisco.

Video of the wreckage below:

Nikki Lau smashing a giant pinata living room at Medicine Agency from Medicine Agency on Vimeo.

So Macho

So what better way to kick off than with the upcoming masterpiece from A-deen's finest, Alex Craig. Friendlyfire Productions presents 'Machotaildrop'.



In 2005 Alex and co-producer/director Corey Adams made the film Harvey Spannos for a competition for Fuel TV. They won. The film gave them the opportunity to spend their $1m winnings on a new project - Machotaildrop. Featuring Rick McCrank, John Rattray, Anthony Amadori, James Faulkner, Lukacs Bicskey, Vanessa Guide, Fred Mortagne, Frank Gerwer, Steve Olson and more. The trailer tells you what you need to know so check it out and keep your eyes peeled for it hitting the big screen.