Eric's head

Eric Testroete wins the award for best Halloween costume ever. Brilliant. Quite brilliant. And disturbing.

Collective creativity of Minuit

For those of you who missed the hype, Minuit have released their new single Aotearoa. Word went out for folk to submit photos of them in NZ, and before you know it there it is, just in time for summer. See if you can spot friends and family because there are hundreds of folk in there. In this age of hyperrealityspecialeffectness it just goes to show that a good idea is a good idea, and a feelgood idea is even better.

Internetland is a wonderful place

Once upon a time, The Collective (a group of design friends in New Zealand) painted pictures and filmed the process, selling the timelapse film with the painting thereby letting the purchaser own the entire process, not just the final output. Somehow, someone in Internetland found the original video and showed it in Manchester as part of Oxfam’s Climate Change even (images above). Like they say: every bit helps. The Internetland is a wonderful place indeed.

Awesome illustration of not me

A totally random find here: the work of Austrian designer Paul Leichtfried. In particular this piece above. Ok, I’m biased, my name hardly ever appears in print, so forgive me if I get a bit excited, it it really is lovely. Check out the rest of his work, you won’t be disappointed.

Wacom now in colour

Wacom green, originally uploaded by smoothfluid.

Following the trend of virtually every product out there, Wacom are moving away from one-colour-suits-all to something a bit more exciting. Here is some of the work we have carried out recently to promote the new range of coloured pens available this Christmas.

Trendwatching me

It comes as a huge surprise to see my work gracing the screen of the legendary Trendwatching October report. In particular because it is about NOWISM*, and the piece in question was created over 3 years ago. Perhaps I really am a futurist after all.

*“Consumers’ ingrained* lust for instant gratification is being satisfied by a host of novel, important (offline and online) real-time products, services and experiences. Consumers are also feverishly contributing to the real-time content avalanche that’s building as we speak. As a result, expect your brand and company to have no choice but to finally mirror and join the ‘now’, in all its splendid chaos, realness and excitement.”

About SEO

There’s an interesting article about SEO by Derek Powazek

“It’s not your job to create content for Google. it’s their job to find the best of the web for their results. Your audience is your readers, not Google’s algorithm.

Which brings us, finally, to the One True Way to get a lot of traffic on the web. It’s pretty simple, and I’m going to give it to you here, for free: Make something great. Tell people about it. Do it again.

That’s it. Make something you believe in. Make it beautiful, confident, and real. Sweat every detail. If it’s not getting traffic, maybe it wasn’t good enough. Try again.”

Undoubtedly his post will rank pretty highly. And quite rightly so.

PhotoSketch, or ComputerShop™

PhotoSketch: Internet Image Montage from tao chen on Vimeo.

Wow. This could do me out of a job. I have concerns about the legalities of the image selections but love the technology. Try it here. Via Creativebits.

In your Facebook

Something isn’t right here. I realise that Facebook has redefined what ‘friend’ can mean, but ‘like’? Get real. Get smarter. Do 4 people really ‘like’ this? I think not.

Google in an emergency

A handy use for Google Maps for planning an escape route to the impending Tsunami alert here in NZ.


View Tsunami Arrival Times in a larger map