ERROL'S BLOG

Genius graphic design

A brilliant collection of playful and inspiring inventiveness - mostly with a client attached. A timeless and enduring truth comes through for me here is that inspiring people is the key thing to achieve to makes something stand out.

Home movie by The Milk and Honey Band

Just You

The Milk & Honey Band | MySpace Music Videos

This is just a lovely piece of home movie film made by the band who made the music. There's lots of this kind of thing around but this feels very genuine, very honest. A wonderful lightness of touch. 

New Did You Know? from Xplane - convergence and how the internet is changing our lives

via PSFK.

Elephant - a new magazine for 'the enthusiastic and curious'

The owner of Magma bookstores, Marc Valli, has created a new magazine called Elephant aimed at people he describes as being 'enthusiastic and curious'. This is a link to an article in Creative Review about it.

He says in the article that he wanted to create, 'the kind of magazine a group of beat friends would have done in the 50s, before the art world became the art world, and the creative industries took over, a time when artists didn’t measure the worth of their work according to auction prices, but by the opinion of their peers.'

The content and design looks interesting. It replaces a previous magazine, Graphic, that was themed based. Colors, made by Benetton and edited in the 90s by Tibor Kalman, used to be a good theme based magazine. It was a good source of interesting facts and figures and great images and was a design studio must have. 

Elephant looks like another good aggregator of interesting things in culture, like Monocle and Wallpaper, set to do well. Valli says that while books sales are down, magazines seem to be thriving. Elephant will have global distribution in stores and newsagents.

This is an old Colors cover. The magazine was printed in French and English which gave it both a graphically interesting and continental feel at the same time. It was a fascinating read and a great example of a very subtly branded content.

The sound of optimism - analogue happiness

Playing the Theremin is a very odd experience - you make sound without touching anything except the air around a box which looks like a very early prototype of some kind of metal detector, in effect you're playing the air. This is Randy George who also does classical recitals with his theremin (on his site). 

Free film about our home planet - Recycle, reuse, and reinvigorate our appetite for doing the right thing by the planet

This is a talk about free film called 'Home' released last week on World Environment Day. 

There are some stunning images and some poignant commentary in this talk by it's creator, Yann Arthus Bertrand. It's completely copyright free. 

Plus see a fascinating study of people across the world at 6 billion others, another project by Bertrand as part of the goodplanet.org site, a non-profit environmental organisation he founded.

A wonderfully generous gesture.

Kesselskramer exhibition in Sydney

I saw this walking to work this morning in Bondi Junction. 

Kesselskramer are a famous dutch creative agency, often mentioned in the company of other great Amsterdam creative agencies like Strawberry Frog, Wieden + Kennedy, Droog and 180. This should be well worth checking out.

Maharishi and messages about doing the right thing

These are printed inside Maharishi clothes on the inside of pockets. A good point of view and a great way to let people know what you think and align with your views in a quiet way. 

For more great CSR see Toms Shoes in the interesting places column, check baggu bags on coolhunting.com and try this link to a howies post i did some time ago.

Stand for something against the intolerable status quo - give fans assets - start and feed a movement

In this talk at TED, Seth Godin adds weight to the argument that push marketing has had its day – he’s promoting the idea of tribes (the title of his new book) as being the way to go for brands in the connected world we are in.

He suggests that social networking technology has helped tribes form easily around niche interests and galvanize themselves into creating change - sometimes on a world scale.

He gives examples of how change can happen from Al Gore to Tom Shoes (in the interesting places column on this blog).

Status quo challenging ideas from leadership thinking, that become stories or big ideas that a person or a brand stands for are necessary. Then its harness tribes to create a movement and create change individuals couldn’t achieve by themselves.

But thanks to these times of internet connectivity, it seems like power to the fans of ideas that create a better way, is gaining on the power of the mass mindset.

Another good case in point of the influence of the internet and the power of social networks, is in this two minute extract of a talk given by Scott Thomas, which I found on at Coolhunting.com. Scott designed the Obama's digital campaign. Instead of just having people ordering campaign merchandise online, people were able to download Obama branded assets so they could create merchandise of their own.

Net result; Obama's vision of getting people more involved in the political process is achieved - and from involvement comes committment.

 

Here's an image from Seth Godin's TED talk.

Starbucks goes RED

Good to see more corporate giving in these times of economic stress. Well done Starbucks. I'm not sure what the deal is exactly with the contributions to good causes, but at least they've signed up. Signposting good intentions is a positive thing that may inspire others to get involved, so that's a definite win.

Also good to see this once trailblazing brand, flying a flag of philanthropy. Cynics might accuse them of going for a soft CSR sympathy dollar bandwagon but, I'm more optimistic there's a Warren Buffett-esque acting on a socially aware desire to have change for the good, happening here. The battle of good America v. crap America is hotting up perhaps - the popular hope has got to be that good America gets stronger, early Obama signs suggest it might, and that from here on, we all get to help in whatever way we can, to make crap America history.

Beijing Olympics quote

I was reminded of a good quote today which is Chinese. It connected to my last post in the Tokyo Olympiad film, and it was about complacency to a point, which connected to the Anti-Complacency League sentiment in the Paul Weller post. Here it is.

'If you are thinking of one year's time, plant a seed,
if you are thinking ten years time, plant a tree,
if you are thinking one hundred years time, educate the people'.

The best film of the Olympics ever made

Many would say the best film of the Olympics ever made is Kon Ichikawa's 1965 documentary, 'Tokyo Olympiad'. I'd agree with that.

Comedic, respectful of elite athleticism and dedication, tragic, beautiful, charming, disturbing, lonely, very human, weirdly not as uplifting as you might expect, something for the time capsule, something to show every new generation, arguably something for everyone. Here are two clips from YouTube.

Racewalking.

and Marathon.

Converse and (PRODUCT) RED doing good brightly

I saw these Converse shoes in a Hype shop window in Bondi Junction, in Sydney the other night. The brand is owned by Nike and it was one of the founder brands of Bono's (PRODUCT) RED initiative launched a few years ago in the US and UK.

The original brands in at the start of (PRODUCT) RED were Gap, American Express, Motorola, Armani and Converse. Gap did some t-shirts - INSPI(RED), was one design I saw pictures of David Beckham and Elle MacPherson wearing in a couple of different issues of mX the free Sydney commuter paper - American Express did a red card for use in UK and USA, Motorola did a red RAZR phone, Armani did some red sunglasses and Converse started their PRODUCT (RED) product line with some mud decorated Chuck Taylors. Apple have joined too offering (PRODUCT) RED bits of the iPod family, but Converse has, it seems, been the only brand to fairly consistently support the effort in Australia with a number of outings to market with new products.

A brand that innovates and gets to market fast and fairly easily might appear to be an ideal partner for a cause brand looking to have a lot of consistent market presence over a long time, with the message being kept relatively fresh. Though Apple may have had their (PRODUCT) RED Nano out for some time, it feels like Converse have been more active in their raising of the charity's profile.

What really caught my attention was the bright and optimistic nature of Converse's brand behaviour in this particular cause minded effort. Given the brand's stereotypical emo associations, the latest red effort could have been a whole lot heavier. It definitely isn't gloomy. It's very positive, rallying almost. It made me think about social efforts that are made, or could be made, by the commercial world again too, so thanks Converse and (PRODUCT) RED for bringing that very worthy but necessary point back into my head.

Apple store in Sydney

I saw this today in Sydney's George Street. I had a fleeting thought that it would be interesting if there was nothing actually behind the big blue poster awning covering the supposed new shop construction, and that one morning it suddenly wasn't there - a sort of pop-up pretend-to-construct-a-store.

It also struck me that such a vast piece of surface could have been put to some more interesting marketing use other than just being a great big coming soon poster.

People could have interacted with it in some way - perhaps a giant scratch card surface like the one in the post below about the Royal Festival Hall's 'Hidden Love Song' programme. Or a projection site of some kind, or a simple spilling on to the pavement or interacting with the buildings around it in some way.

Like the £106 million architectural wonder, the Eden Project cleverly did in Cornwall, UK, people might have been encouraged to come and watch the build progress. Eden Project sold tickets to come and see 'the big build' from a platform high above the disused China Clay pit as the vast biome structures took shape.

Perhaps it's a testament to Apple that something special is expected to be their business as usual. Once an expectation of innovation is set, there's no turning back to doing the normal kind of things other less innovative brands would do unnoticed.

the facebook backlash

I saw this on Howies' t-shirt of the week link. A comment that goes with it on their site suggests people should be out doing something more interesting instead.