Thursday, August 31, 2006

ADVERTISING HELP FROM A HIGHER POWER!

This is definitely the funniest thing I have read today- ihaveanidea, Advertising’s Intellectual Archive, is excited to announce that it has commissioned a witch to forge a potion that will enhance the creative abilities of advertising professionals around the world!

"Ads around the world haven’t been that inspiring lately,” says Ignacio Oreamuno, President of ihaveanidea. “I think everyone in the industry could use a spark — a little touch of magic. As a result, we decided to ask Heidi Reiss, a real certified witch to create a magic potion that would enhance the creative abilities of copywriters and art directors around the world"

  • ihaveanidea
  • Thursday, August 24, 2006

    PRACTICAL AND STYLISH!



    I noticed these mini Bourjois lip glosses in a shop in Menorca. With a strap to attach to your mobile, it's a clever move on from the little toys that so many tweens already use to accessorise their phones, and a good way to tie a completely unrelated product in with technology. Personally I am always a fan of products in miniature- they're so much easier to fit in an evening bag!!!

    Monday, August 07, 2006

    GET ME... ANOTHER REALITY TV JOB COMPETITION

    News has reached me of a new Channel 4 programme due to start filing in September. A search for new television production talent, 'Get Me The Producer' looks more like a re-interpreted version of The Apprentice; the premise is that twelve aspiring producers compete to demonstrate who is the most creative, with each week of the show based around a different genre of television, involving "some of the most talented people working in the industry". Fronted by Greg Dyke, the former director general of the BBC, it just goes to show how even unglamorous professions can be given their 15 minutes of fame.

    Although it may not make for exciting viewing, I am definitely in favour of this kind of programming- if nothing else it promotes the idea of actually having a job and forging a career, which after another summer of Big Brother contestants selling their stories is a lesson worth reminding people.


  • Get Me The Producer
  • Thursday, August 03, 2006

    THE ART OF CLIMATE CHANGE

    Earlier this week I visited the Natural History Museum's exhibition in partnership with Cape Farewell; 'a free, contemporary art exhibition designed to deepen our understanding of climate change'. The exhibition offered an array of interesting interpretations, most notably Michele Noach's contour 'Contextascope', David Buckland's ice texts, and Anthony Gormley's ice-cast 'Marker One'- although 'Stranded', the crystal-encrusted whale skeleton by Heather Ackroyd and Dan Harvey makes the loudest statement, showing the impact of climate change in endangering species in a hauntingly beautiful way.
  • exhibition info


  • The best part of the exhibition for me though, was the Ideas Tank computer screen where you could find information on a wide array of practical solutions and positive approaches for encorporating the idea of sustainability into your life, and then email yourself any that you wanted more information on. Here are some of the interesting ideas on offer-

    -CarbonNeutral Flight Calculator
    Return flights to Paris for £3.20? Well that's the cost of the offset anyway. The CarbonNeutral Flight Calculator measures your flight emissions, then works out how much you need to spend to 'neutralise' them. The money you spend goes towards community projects that save exactly the same amount of carbon dioxide.
  • carbon neutral flight calculator

  • -Sustrans
    It's easy to focus on the problems created by increased car use, instead Sustrans provides creative, imaginative and practical solutions, aiming to change the way we travel by increasing the amount people walk and cycle. Use the interactive map to discover cycle routes near you and what you'll see along the way. Disused railway lines, canal towpaths, riversides and parks - the National Cycle Network offers 16,000 miles of signed cycle routes throughout the UK, putting almost 75 per cent of the UK population within two miles of the network.
  • sustrans

  • -Buy Nothing Day
    Participate by not participating. Buy Nothing Day is a personal 24-hour experiment, a challenge simply not to buy anything. Founded 14 years ago by ex-advertising executive Kalle Lasn, and propelled into a global protest movement via the Internet, Buy Nothing Day is celebrated in more than 65 countries by millions of people, each celebrating this anti-holiday in their own way. Concerned with sustainability and the political implications of our culture of over-consumption, it has inspired some seriously provocative and interesting actions
  • buy nothing day

  • buy nothing day UK

  • -Home-brewed fuel
    'Today, 42-year-old Steele is one of Britain's growing brigade of biodiesel fans. His red Volvo, a familiar sight in Manchester, runs on fuel brewed in his garden from oil he obtains from local kebab and fish-and-chip shops. "The beauty is that organic-origin oil has as much specific energy as oil of mineral origin and there is enough renewable energy for our needs," said Steele, who whips up 250-litre (66-gallon) batches of diesel with an apparatus he perfected over the years. Advocates say biodiesel is the solution to fuel shortages, pollution, global warming and farming problems
  • more info
  • Wednesday, August 02, 2006

    NIGHTJAM

    NightJam is a music and photography project exploring the London night through the eyes of homeless young people in King's Cross.

    "In early Summer 2006, Scanner invited young people at New Horizon Youth Centre in King's Cross to collaborate on a creative project that expresses how the city at night looks and sounds to their eyes and ears. Through music and voice the group explored the sense of freedom and fear, exhilaration and solitude of the concealing darkness. Between sessions, they captured their nights on camera. NightJam presents two elusive visual and musical journeys through the city’s ‘quiet’ hours."

  • NightJam
  • HAVE A NICE DAY!

    I've always been a big fan of Transport for London's Platform for Art program, and love seeing the new installations- it brightens up a dull journey when you pull into one if these station-cum-galleries, especially when what you see is as colourful and vibrant as the newest addition to Gloucester Rd- Chiho Aoshima's 'City Glow, Mountain Whisper'





    According to tfl " 'City Glow, Mountain Whisper' shows a timeless world created by contemporary technology. It suggests a utopian vision of the earth in which the past and future have collided and the boundaries between organic creatures and inanimate things have broken down. It alludes to the results of genetic, technological and environmental developments. A hybrid of the human, the animal, the plant and the man-made is proposed, and life is literally breathed into each building and mountain."

    The work expands along the whole platform, evolving along the way and enticing you to follow it- the only problem is you wish the trains would stop going past and ruining your view!

  • more