NUMBER OF THE DAY

Total number of visitors to my blog. Today. On January 1st. At 1 p.m. No kidding!

 

BOOORING!

A meme. Well.
I was never gonna take part in any of those blog chain things. But because I like sneaker-seb and because he was the one who tagged me and because that movie that’s just on TV really sucks and because the cutest 12-weeks-old boy on this planet just just got tired of playing and fell asleep right next to me and because I just opened another bottle of wine and because I’m a little drunk – I’ll do it.

OK. Six boring facts about myself. That’s easy.

1- I take a tattered grey bunny with me whenever I travel to productions. It talks to me.

2 - The bunny’s name is also the password to my WLAN at home.

3 - My mom is the only person that still calls me by the very silly nickname my friends gave me back in high school.

4 - I used to be an acolyte in a catholic church. My (identical) twin brother and I were always appointed on christmas and easter masses because we looked so symetrical next to the altar.

5 - 18 years ago, when my twin brother’s not-so-intelligent girlfriend came over to our house, I pretended to be him. She didn’t notice.

6 - Last February, I had a lucid dream.

That’s it. According to the rules, I have to “tag” six other bloggers. Sorry, guys! Your turn.
roObin, Hemant, Sascha, Nijko, Beers & Ideas (that counts as two!)

THE RULES
• Mention the rules on your blog.
• Tell six quirky yet boring, unspectacular details about yourself.
• Tag six other
• Go to each person’s blog and let them know they are tagged.

 

INSPIRATION TO GO – PDF mags

Print is dead.
(the internet)

They are easy to compile. They are space-saving. And they don’t wrinkle: PDF magazines are a powerful promotional tool for agencies and design collectives to showcase their work. Their content spreads from graphic design, illustration and typography works to in-depth articles and interviews on just about any field of visual and communication arts.

One of the biggest virtual newsstands is PDF-mags.com. With hundreds of PDF magazines from across the globe, the fast-growing site is swiftly becoming the hub for online magazines.

 

MY BEST WORK EVER

Welcome, Jonas!

 

QUOTE OF THE DAY

(Found by JPG)

 

Muppets 2.0

Waldorf and Statler on: The internet.

 

NET NUGGETS 07/27/08

Auto Couture – Fashion designers dress cars.

Ode to the Mac – A music video solely composed of Apple Macintosh desktop clips. And another proof that idea beats budget!

Logo remixes – Designer Mario Amaya challenges our viewing habits.

Painful and hilarious – Photoshop desasters

Oh, and if you ever come to Duesseldorf, and are up for some really good food and fantastic wine – make sure to drop by here!

 

NET NUGGETS 05/20/08

Become a movie producer. In the world’s shortest film.

“Cabin crew, prepare for landing.” A day in the life of air traffic over the continental U.S.

Necessity is the mother of invention.

99Rooms. An “industrial art” project by Kim Köster.

PAPERVISION 3D. Demo for the open source realtime 3D engine for flash.

 

I WANT THAT!

ABDUCTIONLAMP.COM

 

THE F-WORD, REVISED.

A couple of months ago I told you about a senior citizen bus travel provider who didn’t seem too aware of the impression it might leave to typographically abstract the two diacritic dots in his family name to create a company logo.

I just spotted one of his buses again. I think he noticed.

(For non-germans: The umlauted vowel Ü can also be spelled UE.)

 

 

NUMBER OF THE DAY

Number of minutes before the projector broke down at the “Music Videos International” screening in the course of the OBERHAUSEN SHORTFILM FESTIVAL. 

The first 87 minutes however contained inspiring videos like this, this or this.

 

NET NUGGETS 05/01/08

Brooklyn-based artist and computer scientist Jonathan Harris explores the world’s diversity with experimental projects. Fascinating. Inspiring. Beautiful. number 27 – The work of Jonathan Harris

All the Simpsons opening sequence couch-gags. Time-lapsed to 5 minutes. 

The guys who produced the Sony rabbits. One of the coolest production companies around. An unbelievable assembly of talent: PASSION PICTURES

TRON. Animated with cardboard. Strange.

 

HOMER SIMPSON UNTOONED

It first emerged in 2007. It turned out to be highly contagious. And it was bright yellow – SMPSONIZE ME! The online application launched by Burger King transformed portrait photographs into cartoon characters. And instantly went viral. The annoying aftermath can still be seen in countless online profile pictures.

Now here’s a refreshing response: An anonymous digital artist turns cartoon characters into … well … humans. The slightly disturbing detail is that he sticks to the original cartoon proportions.

Strange!
Here is a Photoshop time-laps of how he did it.

 

6 BILLION OTHERS – the voice of the planet

A couple of years ago, french photographer Yann Arthus-Bertrand amazed us with a breathtaking perspective on ourselves: THE EARTH FROM ABOVE is a series of aerial photographs that reveal the stunning beauty of our planet.

Now Yann is back. And he has landed his helicopter. To meet the people that inhabit the landscapes he’s been portraying all those years.

In his long-term project 6 BILLION OTHERS, 6 directors set off across the world to interview 6.000 people from 65 countries. They filmed 4.500 hours of interviews. And compressed them into 450 hours of translated and subtitled video portraits.

Well-lit and tightly framed, the short interviews are intimate, emotional close-ups of the people that populate our planet.

The interactive website was created by the french design company THE BLAST MACHINE.

>> MEET THE OTHERS <<

 

GOOGLE DISCREET VIEW

A little off-topic, but this is just too funny!

A couple of months ago, Google‘s web mapping service GOOGLE MAPS launched a new feature: GOOGLE STREET VIEW. A panoramic street level environment lets you descend from the sky and virtually travel through the streets.

Impressive. And contentious! The feature has raised privacy concerns. This scene from a Chicago street shows why:

(THANX TO SOJAHUND FOR THE LINK)

UPDATE: The original picture has been deleted. Always good to make screenshots!

 

PLAY!

(Seen from the rooftop bar at MPC Moving Picture Company in London)

 

THE GOLDEN ARROW – how advertising will destroy the planet

It always kind of sucks when someone tells you that what you do is bad.

Environmental activist Annie Leonard however does it in such a charming way that you can’t help but almost like her for it.

Her animated 20 minute-short film “The Story of Stuff” is a “fact-filled look at the underside of our production and consumption patterns”. And a painful reminder of what what they do to our planet.

True insights, illustrated with simple images and compressed into a strong message – everything a good commercial needs!

/// THE STORY OF STUFF ///       (VIA WERBEBLOGGER)

 

SIMPLIFY.

One of the most important factors for a brand to be successful: its name. 

One of the most promising approaches: keep it simple!

 

 

(Seen in London) 

 

NUMBER OF THE DAY

Total number of spaces where you can stand around clinging to your 20-pounds-cocktail in the bar of the SANDERSON Hotel in London on a Friday night without a sinister-looking, ear-plugged giant showing up to tell you that you can’t stand here because this is the VIP area or this part of the terrace was just closed or this corner is only for members.

 

Also the total number of times I will book that hotel again.

 

Alfred Hitchcock – a commercial director?

Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock (1899 – 1980) was beyond doubt one of the most visionary personalities the entertainment industry has ever bred. His movies are narrative masterpieces and “tutorials” for powerful filmmaking.

Dave Pattern, Library Systems Manager at the University of Huddersfield/UK, pays a very special tribue to old Hitch: He compressed every hitchcock movie to a duration of 1000 frames – The length of a commercial!

Rear Window (1954)

Psycho (1960)

The Birds (1963)

The experiment has a fascinating effect: the sequences break down to a striking condensation of Hitchcock’s picture language and the “visual rythm” of his movies.

And yes: I really think Hitch would make a  good commercial director. Just imagine his 30-second ad for bird seed …

>> ALL THE MINI-MOVIES <<

(FOUND ON EHRENSENF)

 

QUOTE OF THE DAY

We will open the book. Its pages are blank. We are going to put words on them ourselves. The book is called Opportunity and its first chapter is New Year’s Day.

(Edith Lovejoy Pierce)

 

WEEKEND TRIVIA – of dubious brand names

My hometown Duesseldorf doesn’t really bristle with too many exciting cultural landmarks. But on weekends, it seems to inhale bus fleets carrying herds of senior citizen tourists that spend their sunday afternoons gaping at shopping streets and twisted buildings.

This is one of the main travel providers.

Patrick over at WERBEBLOGGER has more unfavorable logos.

 

Top ten things on an ad creative’s christmas list

Gingerbread showcases, mistletoe decorations, dutch shopping tourists wearing stupid santa hats – christmas seems to be a lot closer than I thought. Guess it’s time to start writing a wish list.

Ok, let’s see. I want

10. This

9. This

8. This

7. This

6. This

5. This

4. This

3. This

2. This

1. And this.

 

I WANT THAT!

Now!

PUCHI PUCHI is a hendheld electronic toy that, when squeezed, makes this bubblewrap popping sound.

Funny:
“Once in every 100 squeezes of an air bubble, instead of emitting a “pop”, the noise will be replaced by the sound of a fart or a woman moaning in ecstasy. “

How’s that for a gift idea?!

 

The iPod – invented in Germany?

The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be.
And that which is done is that which shall be done.
And there is no new thing under the sun.

(Ecclesiates 1:9:22)

Apple designer Jonathan Paul Ive must be a passionate bible reader. Or a big fan of German industrial designer Dieter Rams. Some of Rams’ design classics from the Sixties show striking similarities with today’s Apple products …

Top left: BRAUN T3 pocket radio
Top right: APPLE iPod

Bottom left: BRAUN ET33 calculator
Bottom right: APPLE iPhone

(Via FLANKENLAUF and SPIEKERBLOG)

Tribute or plagiarism? What do you think?

By the way: There’s some serious “tributing” going on in our fast moving advertising business as well.

ADMIRROR detects “mysterious coincidents” in print ads. Very entertaining!

 

QUOTE OF THE DAY

It used to be that people needed products to survive.
Now products need people to survive. 

(Nicholas Johnson)

 

LIFE 1.0 – weekend unplugged

No early phone calls. No meetings. No presentations. No powerpoint slides. No account executives. No commercial scripts. No rejected commercial scripts. No brand core analysis. No target groups. No emails. No Re- Re- Re- Re-mails. No black coffee. No airplanes. No pre-PPMs. No castings. No mood boards. No headlines. No sublines. No bodycopy. No starbursts. No logo. No bigger logo. No film sets. No 35 mm cameras. No rehearsals. No catering. No minor changes. No award shows. No research. No photo briefings. No director´s´interpretations. No photoshop. No gamma curves. No hotel bars. No conference calls. No pitches. No headhunters. No lunch dates. No pre production. No post production. No sound studios. No alternative edits. No double page print ads. No 30 second TV commercials. No 10 second reminders. No copy strategy. No art buying. No creative planning. No TV department. No Daily Dilbert. No client´s approvals. No launch campaigns. No outdoor ideas. No consumer insights. No illustrations. No vectors. No double clicks. No HTTP. No warm midtones. No late pizza. No lost accounts. No won accounts. No press releases. No confused team assistants. No portfolios. No RSS feeds. No visual concepts. No screenshots. No TIFs. No JPGs. No “We open on a tropical beach“. No camera cranes. No spam. No after work parties. No particle effects. No blogging.

Just nature.
And the pacifying awareness that I actually have a functioning operating system of my own.

Life 1.0 – Not so bad.

 

AIRPLANE OBSERVATIONS

Ad people spend a considerable part of their life time on airplanes. We sometimes fly several times per week. But when something turns into routine, you tend to lose sight of the subtle humor that life might have in store …

Here´s what George Carlin has to say about the safety lecture on airplanes.

George Carlin, master of observational comedy, started his career in the Sixties. He was the first person to host SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE, he won several Grammy Awards, and he is one of the funniest men I have ever seen.

 

I WONDER …

Have you ever imagined a world with no hypothetical situations?

 

REAL VIRTUALITY – Life´s a game

Game developers have always been striving to make computer games look as real as possible. Here is a guy who makes reality look like a computer game.

Inspired by third person games like WORLD OF WARCRAFT, 25 year old designer Marc Owens created AVATAR MACHINE, a gadget with a rigged camera that lets you view yourself as a virtual computer game character. In real time. WATCH THE VIDEO

How twisted is that?!

But there´s more: Marc creates all kinds of art projects and strange product designs.
I want the Digi Pocket Watch!!

(via PIXELSUMO)