Guinness: Arthur's Day - Paints The Town Black App

Fans To Reveal Arthur’s Day Message and Raise
Over €30,000 for Arthur Guinness Fund

I've posted a lot about Arthur's Day, and will probably post some more, but this is definitely one of my favourite things happening around Arthur's Day this year. Today the Guinness Storehouse launched a brand new Facebook application that allows fans to paint a pixel on a canvass in the digital world that will trigger the spray painting a huge canvass in the real world action in the Guinness Storehouse to reveal an Arthur’s Day message.

The app also helps raising funds for charities as, for each pixel painted, Guinness will donate €5 to the Arthur Guinness Fund, generating in excess of €30,000 for the fund on completion of the painting.

Each pixel correlates to an area on the canvass that is hanging on the 1st floor of Guinness Storehouse. With 6600 pixels to paint, it is estimated that the final image will be created by midday tomorrow (Wednesday 26th September).

According to Lisa Fitzsimons, Marketing Manager of the Guinness Storehouse, ‘We are delighted that we are able to involve thousands of people in the creation of the real-world canvass at Guinness Storehouse. Fans of Guinness and the Guinness Storehouse can play their part in the creation of this canvass while continuing Arthur Guinness’ philanthropic legacy and generating funds for the Arthur Guinness Fund  benefiting many worthwhile social entrepreneurs in Ireland.’

Visitors to the Guinness Storehouse can interact with the application through teams of staff with iPads to claim their pixel and fans throughout Ireland can do so through their Facebook profile. Those who wish to see the real-world reveal can witness it on the 1st floor of the Guinness Storehouse.

The ‘Paint The Town Black’ can be found on the Guinness Ireland Facebook page and was developed by Tribal DDB London. Matt Oxley, Head of Creative Technology, Tribal DDB, London, said ‘This is a truly innovative campaign that blends technology and creativity to bring to life a traditional medium in a modern way’.

FUSE@GN1 - Pop-up Shop

Two weeks ago I was asked to pop along to the launch of something really cool. A friend of mine, Danielle Mac Innes, who runs the Dublin-based furniture and design company FUSE Interiors has partnered up with Gallery Number One to transform the space into a mid-century, vintage and recycled furniture exhibition and shop. The shop launched on October 29th and will be open for 4 weeks.

If you have any sort of interest in vintage furniture or design this will be a treasure trove of wonder that you need to visit. The pop-up shop has a wide selection of seating, tables, lighting, storage and cool accessories from a variety of sources and ages.


In case you're not familiar with Gallery Number One, it's located just beside Dublin Castle at 1 Castle Street, Dublin 2. The shop is open Monday to Friday 10am - 6pm (late Thursday) and Saturday & Sunday 11am - 6pm. And don't fear while the shop was due for a 4 week run, things have been going so well that it's now going to stay open until Christmas.

About Fuse Interiors
Fuse Interiors carefully source and select a mix of mid century investment pieces, flea market finds and restored vintage pieces. Through pre-owned vintage and re-cycled pieces, as well as seeking suppliers who use sustainable methods and materials, Fuse aim to bring responsible yet exciting design to their customers.

They work on large and small projects with both individual and business clients.
They offer a full range of design services which include floor plans, 3D drawings, sourcing and specification of furniture and finishes, colour consultancy and project management.

Uniqlo Lucky Machine

The Japanese fashion folk Uniqlo have relaunched in the UK with yet another example of web brilliance, the Lucky Machine. This pinball game offers UK customers have the chance to win a £1,000 cash prize, as well as instant online discount vouchers from £5 up to £100.

With three stages of play each customer is given three balls but with the option to get more balls by inviting their friends to play the game via Facebook or Twitter. So the more friends you invite the more chances you have at winning! As with all the Uniqlo promotions and activities to date, this is a breath of fresh air both from a mechanic and a design point of view. Hat tip to chaps involved, very nice work. Check out this video, it pretty much explains all...

Kinetic Typography of Human Rights

Some eye-candy for a grey Wednesday evening. I love Kinetic Typography and this is one of my favourite examples.

Adidas Originals Street Art Competition

Champion Sports have just launched a pretty cool competition to find Ireland’s most talented urban artists to create an original piece of street art that will embrace the theme of ‘celebrating originality meets street art’. The prize is a masterclass with Krooked Type and the chance to get your art displayed on your own billboard. The competition is part of the launch campaign for the brand new adidas Originals clothing and footwear range.

The winner will get a two-day masterclass featuring Maser, Albert Hooi and Fraher, which should be a dream come true to any budding young artist. Or even a 30-something scribbler to be honest ;) Krooked Type will be judging all entries.

The new adidas Originals range is driven by adidas' history and looks to bring the spirit of adidas’ past and present to life in a fresh and modern range. The range combines typical adidas quality and materials with creative and luxurious street fashion, creating urban wear that blends timeless and modern designs echoing the brand’s heritage.

Coinciding with the competition, and offering a great place to pick up some inspiration, adidas and Champion Sports have specially commissioned a new collection by Maser. His ‘Originals-inspired’ street art installation can be seen at The Bernard Shaw, Richmond Street, Dublin 2, as part of the launch of the new adidas Originals range.

Speaking about the campaign, Emily Barry, Marketing Executive, Champion Sports said, “We are truly excited at the launch of the adidas Originals range in our stores. It has been a great experience to work with Krooked Type on the installation, which we feel really celebrates the spirit of both the Champion Sports and adidas Originals brands. We’re looking forward to receiving lots of entries to the Street Art competition and working with the winners to create their very own billboard!”

To enter simply email your artwork to celebrate@champion.ie before Friday 8th October. Submitted entries will be uploaded to the Champion Sports Facebook page, as they are received. The three winning finalists will be announced on or around Monday 11th October.

Cee Lo Green: F**K YOU

This is one of the best examples of Kinetic Typography, and a severely catchy tune to boot. Listen and love!

Fuse Finds Launches

Not so long ago I had the utmost pleasure of doing an LMI course in the company of a number of brilliant people. One of these people was Danielle Mac Innes. Danielle is a particularly skilled Interior Designer and owner of Fuse Interiors. This week I was really excited to learn that Fuse Interiors has launched an exciting new store, Fuse Finds! The store offers mid century and vintage furniture that Fuse has sourced themselves. The items are absolutely stunning and the service opens up a world of home and office design opportunity that your average person simply would never have.

What I find particularly cool about the Fuse 'Finds' concept is that it is very much based around sustainable design, with each item having been handpicked by Danielle from various travels around the world. These items are then either sold as they were found or revamped in the company's Dublin studio. The studio, which has just opened on Lad Lane in the city centre, is a one stop shop for all your interior design needs. By appointment you can pop along and view any of the 'Finds' and avail of Danielle's expert advise. There are also some pretty cool plans by Fuse Interiors to launch a series of pop-up shops later this year.

This is all really just tip of the ice-berg though. I highly recommend taking a look at Fuse's website and blog - both of which are 100% must read if you're into design, interiors or furniture!

Other ways to keep up to speed on what Danielle and Fuse are doing is to:

• 'like' Fuse at facebook.com/fuseinteriors, or
• 'follow' Fuse at twitter.com/fuseinteriors

There's also a Fuse newsletter that you can sign up to on the website, or download the full press release available here.

Portfolio Night Comes to Dublin

Tonight sees the first Portfolio Night in Dublin giving any and all emerging creatives an opportunity to showcase their portfolios to twenty of Ireland's top Creative Directors. The event is taking place in Ogilvy's Dublin office and kicks off at 5.30pm. It costs just €20 to participate but you must register online at http://portfolionight.com/

JP Donnelly, CEO Ogilvy Group in Ireland, said: "We are delighted to support such a worthy event which is a clear demonstration of our commitment to putting creativity at the heart of our industry and providing a thriving environment to nurture the best and brightest young talent available. Ireland has a great reputation for creative talent and Portfolio Night is an important step towards building for the future and attracting the best creative minds into the advertising industry. If we are to genuinely develop a smart economy, we need to invest in Ireland’s creative talents."

Background on the event:
The concept, which was devised by Toronto-based ihaveanidea.org, is the world's largest simultaneous advertising portfolio review event. Portfolio Night sees advertising's top creative talents come together to review the portfolios of students, emerging creatives and freelancers in a 'speed-dating' setting. Each participant will receive three 15-minute portfolio review sessions with three of the country's most prominent Creative Directors, who will offer them advice on improving their portfolios. Portfolio Night will be held simultaneously in almost 40 cities around the world.

Philips Design Probe - SKIN:Tattoo

There is some seriously cool stuff being done by the Philips Design Probe, and this is by far one of my favourites. I love the idea of this...

Tattoos and physical mutilation are amongst the oldest forms of personal expression and identity. Subcultures have used tattoos as a form of self representation; a visual language communicating personality and status. Philips Design examined the growing trend of extreme body adornment like tattoos, piercing, implants and scarring.

The Electronics Tattoo film expresses the visual power of sensitive technology applied to the human body. The film subtly leads the viewer through the simultaneous emotional and aesthetic transformations between two lovers.

Videogioco

Videogioco is a stunning animation by Donato Sansone, with sound by Enrico Ascoli.



Cheers to @RobReid for sharing this one :)

David LaChapelle

If there's one thing you do in the next 6 weeks, this should be it!

David LaChapelle, one of if not my favourite photographers of all time, is here in Dublin with his “American Jesus” collection. The exhibition is at the Sebastian Guinness Gallery until the end of October and offers the chance to experience, first hand, one of the greatest photographers of the last 50 years.

Lachapelle is widely regarded as one of the best fine art photographers working today, particularly for his treatment of iconic celebrity images for some of the world's most renowned fashion magazines. His work has featured in Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone and Vogue. LaChapelle has also directed music videos for artists such as Christina Aguilera and Moby.

Audi Crowd Sourcing

Yesterday I wrote about Unilever's move with Peperami towards a full crowd sourcing model. In that case, Unilever went as far as to end a 15 year relationship with Peperami's advertising agency, Lowe. That was perhaps an extreme example of brands/businesses that are moving to a crowdsourcing model but it's certainly not an isolated occurance. Aside from Doritos and Pringles who were also both mentioned yesterday, Audi are the next big brand to step up to the table and call on their fans and customers to drive their coming developments.

The whole campaign has grown off this year’s Los Angeles Design Challenge, which is titled 'Youth Mobile 2030'. Design design studios from all over Southern California have been called on to submit their vision of what a 2030 customer will want.

Audi, who currently have more than 324,000 Facebook fans (making them one of the highest among auto brands), have partnered up with TurnHere, to create a video based campaign asking fans for their input on what features they want to see on future models. TurnHere produced videos profiling Audi's participation in the "Youth Mobile 2030" design challenge for its Facebook fan page. The videos show the overall participation that Audi have had in the design challenge. Essentially, they present a showcase of actual Audi designers sharing their own design philosophies and visions of the future, and describe how Audi wants to consider lifestyle, form and function for future designs.

The campaign will primarily be run through Facebook, and shows a real hands on application of the massive fanbase that the company have developed. This not only shows great use of an extremely valuable resource but also goes to reinforce the ideals of Social Media, as a brand goes back to its users and asks them what they want (ref. Vodafone Mission Red for a current Irish example of this).

“Video is a powerful way to experience the Audi brand and the passion of our design team. We wanted to show our Facebook fans that we’re committed to creating automobiles that fit our changing lifestyles; and having this conversation with them is a critical part of that process,” said Brad Stertz, Manager of Corporate Communications for Audi of America. “TurnHere did a great job of capturing that passion and desire in an authentic way that lets our designers start the conversation online among our fans."

Through the videos, fans are encouraged to participate in Team Audi's efforts by participating in the live discussion, giving feedback, and helping to answer the question 'How will your car play a role in keeping you connected to your digital world in the future?'

"Audi is using social media to excite its community and engage them in their brand and design process. Video is an integral element to showing the human side of any brand and creating a personal connection," said John McWeeny, COO at TurnHere. "Online video production is now very affordable, and more brands are able to use video to engage people on the social web."

IKEA and Vedana

During the week, what may seem like a seemingly insignificant event, swept across the web creating a huge amount of debate and coverage. IKEA changed their font.

Seriously.

IKEA's signature Futura font has been replaced by the Verdana. For the last 50 years, IKEA have been using IKEA Sans, a customized version of Futura. However, for their new 2010 catalogue, IKEA have made a switch to the Verdana typeface. As it turns out, fans and designers are extremely unhappy with the change. On Wednesday, design consultant Marius Ursache even went as far as to create an online petition to stop IKEA from changing the font. So why did IKEA make the change and why are their such strong feeling over this?

In an interview with the Swedish design magazine Cap & Design, IKEA’s Ivana Hrdlickova said that IKEA's central reason for changing fonts was to allow the company to use the same typeface in all countries it currently operates in. IKEA's previous font Futura did not allow for Asian characters. As Verdana was designed for the web, it allows the company’s image to remain consistent online and in print. Unfortunately, that's also the main reason for the backlash. Verdana was never intended as a print typeface and was created purely for use on screen. Microsoft invented the font for shipping with Internet Explorer 3 in 1996.

Here are a selection of a few comments that have been made:

Simon l'Anson, a creative director in London, said "it has open, wide letterforms with lots of space between characters to aid legibility at small sizes on screen," but "it doesn't exhibit any elegance or visual rhythm when set at large sizes. It's like taking the family sedan off-road. It will sort of work, but ultimately gets bogged down."

Carolyn Fraser, a letterpress printer from Australia, said Verdana is "dumbed down and overused."

"They went cheap," said designer Iancu Barbarasa. "Designers have always thought of Ikea as one of their own, so now, in a way, the design community feels betrayed."

The issue has gained such coverage that Time Magazine have even covered the story. So what do you think? Does this change really make a noticeable difference?

The fonts in question...

Galactic Mail: FedEx vs. UPS

I spotted this over on [Geeks Are Sexy] and it blew my mind. It's a 3D short animation produced by French Animator Douglas Lassance (AsteroKid) in collaboration with Jonathan Vuillemin (Motraboy).

The piece took four months to get from storyboards to compositing, but there it took a slightly different route to the norm. The guys decided that Galactic Mail wouldn't be about generating impressive 3D renders using, what Jonathan calls, the Sigg Jones approach with proper global illumination shaded film,they concentrated on the pictures themselves and their composition, colours and overall coherence of the style.

Jonathan said, "I had this idea of making a movie with self-illuminated textures where all the shadows would be painted in already, and then combined with a “sliced” shadow system where you could really isolate how stuff are going to look when it’s in the shadow or not, nothing physically correct, but pretty controllable".

So check this out...

Eminem's Relapse Augmented Reality

Last week I posted about the launch of Eminem's new album and the massive Social Media drive behind its promotion and launch. Some seriously cool stuff.

I was doing some early morning surfing today and I came across this new Augmented Reality addition to the campaign by the guys over at Outside Line. Basically, in a new section of the site, users can partake in an online AR talent competition. What the heck is that I hear you ask. Just pop over, log in, create a 3D “E”, and spray paint with your personal design. Then enter your design into the running for some really sweet prizes.

Last week they gave away a trip to Detroit. Round two is now open and they're promising an equally slick prize to the best design.

Check out this video to see exactly what you need to do...

Male Copywriter

There are very few people not effected by the current global economic situation. Whatever sector you work in, you probably know people who have been laid off. But what if you are one of those people. What if, following 15 years of hard grift, you find yourself 'let go'?

Hope and pray that it all gets better? Pretend you know anything about coffee other then how to drink it and become a barista in the local Starbucks?

As Carlsberg would have us think, it's not always A or B, there's probably a C. And sure enough, if you're Lawson Clarke, there definitely is. It might be a little 'out there' but at the very least, it's a way to get known.

After his 15 years of copywriting for clients like Ocean Spray, Carnival and Strongbow, Lawson was another casualty of 'uncertain times' and found himself without work. Not willing to let his unemployment stop him, he created his site: Male Copywriter.

This is essential viewing.

In some sort of crazy cross between Ron Burgandy and Dirk Diggler, Lawson demonstrates him impressive work profile against a backdrop of 70's style porn shoot, with Lawson atop a bear skin rug, hair cheast cascading down his front, and the Star Spangled Banner belting through your speakers. Hopefully the tongue is firmly in the cheek, as if this is anything other then SNL style humour we should all be very scared. None-the-less, this is still must see digital and a potential 'how-to' for anyone else out of work with a bit of creative ability.

In-Banner Slider

Spotted this ad and thought the slider function was really slick. It's a simple ad but the coverview-style rotation of the images is really nice. I think it's really important to recognise how an otherwise relatively boring ad can be completely picked up with the simplest addition. I would bet that the engagement times for this ad were hugely inflated then if it had not had the slider.

Design a coin

Matthew Dent recently re-designed the UK’s coinage and in conjunction with this The Royal Mint has just launched a competition to design commemorative coins for the London 2012 Olympics. Entrants choose from 1 of 27 Olympic sports ( but not athletics or cycling, as these will be part of a Blue Peter competition), download a template and get designing. The competition is open until Friday 24th April and you can enter as many times as you like.

Winners will receive £1,000 and get to have their coin in circulation by 2010. The most interesting thing is that this is just a single example of a new growing trend of utilising the public to rebrand, redesign or innovate products and services. Walkers are probably the highest profile example, with the public not just suggesting but also choosing a new flavour of crisp for the brand.

I for one think it’s great. With the ever increasing adaptation of Social Media by all parts of society, this is just an example of businesses showing their willingness to listen to their customers. Long may it continue.

Wallpaper Graduate Directory

It's the Wallpaper Who's Who of 2009 - the people that will change the face of their industry.

Help! My dad's a graphic designer...

I StumbledUpon this series of photos and laughed my socks off. Check them out...