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.

Augmented Reality: LG Chocolate & Avatar

As part of LG's strategic partnership with the new James Cameron Avatar movie, the company has teamed up with T3 and Total Film to bring a little bit of Augmented Reality to their December issues.

As part of their global partnership with 20th Century Fox, promoting the launch of Avatar, LG Electronics have teamed up with media group Future (publishers of T3 and Total Film) to feature an exclusive augmented reality gatefold ad in their December issues. The campaign is designed to promote both Avatar and LG's new Chocolate BL-40 widescreen mobile phone.

LG's own media agency, Mindshare, were responsible for brokering the deal.

The 6 page ad promotes the stunning widescreen cinema-aspect of the new LG handset by offering users a sneak peak at video from the movie. By holding the ad's AR icon up to your webcam, you can access a special Avatar trailer that plays on an onscreen 3D model of the new handset. Coupled with this is a host of in-magazine features that bring to life both the movie and handset.

John Barton, sales and marketing director at LG, said: "We're delighted to be working with Future on such an exciting campaign. Both 'Avatar' and the new LG Chocolate BL40 represent innovations in their respective industries which this campaign will bring to life by delivering a cutting edge platform to interact with our customers."

Malcolm Stoodley, sales director at Future, said: "As Future's first augmented reality campaign in the UK, this is an exciting new format for advertisers that really brings this campaign alive for our readers. With an audience of influential movie and technology advocates, the exclusive 'Avatar' footage showcases this pioneering new film and LG's new mobile phone to T3 and Total Film readers like no other medium can deliver."

Khoda

“Khoda” is a fantastic animated video project by Reza Dolatabadi using 6000 paintings that were specifically created for the 5 minute film. Each time you pause the video you see a new painting.

Over 6000 paintings were painstakingly produced during two years to create a five minutes film that would meet high personal standards. Khoda is a psychological thriller; a student project which was seen as a ‘mission impossible’ by many people but eventually proved possible!

Calvin Flakes

Last week Calvin Harris tweeted about a gift that arrived for him from Kellogg’s.

Basically Harris had been doing a lot of tweeting recently about his breakfast preferences, about his choice of cereal. Picking up on this, Kellogg's sent Harris his very own breakfast cereal with the strapline ‘50% cornflakes, 50% branflakes – the perfect mix’. This is superb marketing. Simple, low cost, and yet highly, highly effective. Instant Brand Ambassador!

The Web In 5 Years, According To Google

Revolution Magazine carried a great article last Friday about an interview that Eric Schmidt, Google's CEO, gave at the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo Orlando 2009.

While the interview is initially about Google, where it's come from and where it's going, Eric Schmidt also gives an overview of how Google sees the web changing in the next five years time. Schmidt outlines a 'radically different' internet that will be dominated by the Chinese language and Social Media content, and delivered to us by super-fast broadband.

By far one of the most interesting points that Schmidt raises is that brands should be listening to youth consumers when planning their marketing strategies. He simply points out, "Talk to a teenager about how they consume media and remember in five years they'll be your employee".

This is an overview of Schmidt's vision compiled by ReadWriteWeb:

1. Five years from now the internet will be dominated by Chinese-language content.
2. Five years is a factor of ten in Moore's Law, meaning that computers will be capable of far more by that time than they are today.
3. Within five years there will be broadband well above 100MB in performance - and distribution distinctions between TV, radio and the web will go away.
4. "We're starting to make significant money off of Youtube", content will move towards more video.
5. "Real time information is just as valuable as all the other information, we want it included in our search results."
6. "We can index real-time info now - but how do we rank it?"
7. It's because of this fundamental shift towards user-generated information that people will listen more to other people than to traditional sources. Learning how to rank that "is the great challenge of the age." Schmidt believes Google can solve that problem.

This is the interview: