FINALLY- PAY BY PHONE PARKING

Westminster Council have launched a 6-month trial of a new pay by phone parking facility in large areas of the West End. Covent Garden and Soho will see all parking meters removed and replaced by 'Pay by Phone Only' bays, and Pay & Display areas will include pay by phone options.

A great idea- UK should have more options to use mobiles as payment methods, it makes life so much easier. Let's hope this trial is successful and the scheme spreads throughout London

read more here

BEAUTY SURPRISE

We've seen it with clothes, handbags and shoes, now Yellow Box Beauty brings the element of surprise to your makeup too.

Focusing on 'finding brands that are either new to the spotlight or may be on the verge of being the next "it" thing', the company offer a makeup or beauty product from a hot new brand delivered to your door once a month. Each month a different brand is spotlighted on the website, and alongside the product you receive are different offers such as gifts with a purchase or discounts on orders.

A great way of trying some of the many new cosmetic brands out there, and getting you to branch out from your normal safe choices- as the site says 'You never know what will show up at your door and that is part of the fun.'

WINE CELLAR SORBETS



Cleverly combining food and wine for wine lovers throughout the country, Wine Cellar Sorbets produces refreshing sorbets made from vintage wines.
Choose your preferred vintage from a constantly changing wine list that includes a selection of Californian and New York red, white and rosé wines. Available in New York and New Jersey gourmet stores, fine restaurants and caterers, it's a 'cool' new way to enjoy your favourite tipple, and such a brilliantly simple idea i'm amazed it's only just reached the market.

Wine Cellar Sorbets

PERSONALIZE YOUR PORSCHE

For the 'extra personal touch', Porsche are taking customization one step further and offering the option to replace the product type at the back of any 911 with your choice of text.

The site says "Let your creativity run wild and give your Porsche its own identity and a unique name or personal message". This is definitely our favourite- at least they recognise who their customers are!!



name your Porsche

UPDATE- sorry, my mistake- this is not being offered by Porsche itself but by an external customisation company

THE FUTURE OF ADVERTISING??

In Stores Now is a great site that makes fun of how far brands are infiltrating our lives by placing advertising in the most controversial settings. Among those displayed are ideas for 'branding' strippers, animals and places/items of worship. Funny images, but how long until we see a company push the boundaries of taste and utilise such ideas? Many have come close through 'sponsorship' and 'charity' deals enabling a huge amount of product promotion and placement around these areas, but i've yet to see a logo on a bible. Is this the future of advertising? And will brands soon be buying our skins, if not our souls?







In Stores Now
via adverlab

ZOO

Zoo art fair opened it's doors for the third year running in the great setting of London Zoo on friday (or thursday for some of us lucky few) to a huge surge of people eager to snap up new emerging artists' work, and invest in the Next Big Thing.
Of the talent on display here is my pick of the new names that I think are worth watching for the future-

TITUS KAPHAR-

'White Underneath' are a collection of vintage portrait photographs from the late 1800s which the artist has painted over to replace the white face of the original sitter with a black one of a member of his family. He explains it as "experimenting with transgressive interventions on paintings as a means of undermining hierarchical roles of the past and imposing them on contemporary narratives".

Titus has just graduated from Yale and been awarded the prestigious artist-in-residency programme from the Studio Museum, Harlem.

ROBERT MCNALLY-

A recent graduate of Camberwell College of Art, 'So How was It?' is one of Robert's delicate pencil works combining soft atmosphere with quirky humour. All four of his pieces have already sold, but look out for more offerings in his first solo show next year





RAFFAEL WALDNER-

'Fiat Coupe 2.0 Turbo' is just one of Raffael's amazing photographs of crashed luxury cars. His pictures are observations of everyday objects and locations that have lost their original function- in this case taken live at the crash scene (the police call to notify him whenever a sports car crashes), and the resulting images seem hyper-real. Due to have his first solo gallery show in Berlin in November

RENATO GARZA-

'Mental Passages' is an installation of 54 typographical images, each one representative of the artist's emotion at the time of conception. The artist is a recent graduate from his native Mexico and has already been picked up by the MOMA Mexico, plus there are plans to produce the images as a book. An ironic title considering the extortionate price tag on this piece- £5000!

MORE MANNERS FOR MEN

There's a great article in the inaugural issue of commons&sense man magazine on a new UK finishing academy for men offering a three-day training course on 'the art of being a gentleman'.

Following the success of the ladies school, there have apparently been many male applicants keen to learn the art of good table manners, hosting skills, deportment, housecraft and the many other lectures offered, the aim of which is to "acquire mastery of how best to conduct yourself in a sophisticated fashion, whether in a business of leisure environment".

Etiquette is most definitely on the rise so watch out- bowing and curtsying might become the new 'have a nice day'!

The Finishing Academy