Winning is everything.

I’ve just won a copy of Pixelmator. Me? Win! I never win anything. So this is even more special. Thanks to Jay at Bittbox. I’ve seen some of the outputs and been pretty impressed as there are some things that the mighty Photoshop isn’t as good at, but so far I’ve not used the application. I’ll keep you posted as to how it works out.

Logorama

I had an idea over Christmas, while I was in Hokitika, that I’d like to see all the shop signs, road signs, menus and all the ephemera in a small provincial town completely overhauled by a group of designers. Rather than an obvious uniform “helvetica” solution could they create a uniform (as in ‘of and area’, but still local and individual feel to a place without it being soulless? The whole thing could be carried out virtually in some kind of StreetView mashup (but as it happens Gogle couldn’t even be bothered to go there). The kerning on the main drag, Weld Street was horrific, despite being routed out of wood. With all that effort it would’ve been nice to get it right. And many of the shop fronts seems to be hereditary. I am not advocating the removal of history, I was just wondering if a collective of designers, with a proper strategy, could create something “better”. After all proper kerning is for everyone.

It's about the people, not the company

I believe that creating better ways for companies to interact with their customers is a good thing. Although Asi has a good point:

While I strongly believe in the idea that brands should be generous etc., when I see (or do something like that with my clients) I can’t avoid the feeling that… this is the kind of stuff you do when you don’t have a better idea to earn people’s attention - you give away free stuff in a slightly cheeky way.

He mentions another example, that’s quite fun too. There is definitely a story/purpose behind it.

Blu Dot Real Good Experiment from Real Good Chair on Vimeo.

Broke Back advertising

Clever use of a clever idea for pain relief. Via DirectDaily.

Life imitating thought

I’ve been chatting to my friends about a theory of ideas. The essence is that ideas shouldn’t be horded, but rather they should be set free so that more (and better) ideas fill the gaps that the others were taking up. For the last year or two I’ve been noting the ideas for projects/designs/other random thoughts in my iPod Touch, in the always handy Notes app. Handy until yesterday it crapped itself and deleted everything. So there we go, 50+ ideas that were waiting to be realised (on that infamous rainy day) vanished in a flash. I am pretty disappointed in myself for not acting sooner to
(a) back them up
(b) complete them
but excited to see if my idea is actually true and the ideas waiting in the wings come into fruition in the new year.

Vector in and Enhance godamit

Zooom.

Come on in.

It’s always interesting doing some tiding up. Sometimes you’ll find a thing you had totally forgotten about. Like this drawing. Completely skipped my mind. Never finished, but now not forgotten.

The future of (interactive) magazines

Sports Illustrated has some very interesting ideas for the future of a magazine. I’ve been following/learning the development of interactivity of the pdf format (via inDesign and Acrobat) but this it something else. (watch at fullscreen for the real deal).



Via John Nack

Junos represents

Back in the motherland the whirlwind that was the 2009 B2B awards is settling down. It’s nice to see that Junos, a project that I branded last year while with Base One, has just won an award. Well done chaps.

Books come to life

Lovely work by ColensoBBDO, Auckland.