The Little Apple – New York as Toytown in The Sandpit

We first showed a tilt shift movie with the video Little Big Berlin and this film, which makes shots of New York seem like a toy town is also a must-see. Surely it’s only a matter of time before this technique is brought to wider public attention in a music video, advertisement or film – it’s an innovative, charming and quirky way to show a city at work.

Experience a normal day in 2014

Nice conceptual work on the future of screen technology – particularly like the desk, stretchy phone screen and the phone picture sharing. All that info on the bathroom mirror would be annoying though. And if I was a user interface specialist, I’m not sure I’d name my company ‘TAT’.

When the shit hits the Air Multiplier

It's a fan!

A friend of mine, we’ll call him Daniel Griffiths (because that’s his name), occasionally sends me a mini essay on a random topic he’s been thinking about a bit too much. It’s therapy for him and an amusing distraction for me and the handful of others he includes in the email.

His latest is a rant about Dyson’s new fan (and yes… it IS a fan!) the Air Multiplier. Thought you might enjoy it too.

The Dyson Air Multiplier

Before we get stuck into the Dyson Air Multiplier let me ask you a question: Were hoover bags ever a problem in your life?

Think about it.

Did you ever curse having to install and remove them? Did all that tiresome walking over to the bin and dropping them in ever rankle? And the way your hoover ‘lost suction’ just before the bag needed emptying? Were any of the above ever once a thought that even fleetingly crossed your mind?

No, of course they weren’t. The Dyson vacuum cleaner is a solution to a problem that never existed. I could start on about how Dysons, actually, in truth, loose more suction than bagged cleaners. How they require more frequent emptying. How they’re heavier, more cumbersome, use more energy and, rather than having the dirt neatly wrapped up in a bag, instead bring you face to face with your own skin and hair every time you have to trip to the bin. Every five minutes.

I could do that. But instead I want to talk about the Dyson Air Multiplier. Another device that – like their famous Flash Gordon hoovers – is another solution to a problem that nobody has.

It’s like this:

The DAM (as it shall be known herein) looks amazing. Amazing! It’s a hoop on a stick. This is a fan? No way! There are no blades! How? What? Where? I’m actually stunned! It makes air fly out of the circle?! But how? Jeez, £200! They’re having a laugh there, but it makes air fly out?! This is incredible!

Only it isn’t. Have you ever wondered why Dyson hasn’t been able to claim that the DAM is any quieter or uses less electricity than a conventional fan? Or even why – for something with no moving parts – it’s so bloody noisy?…

Think about it. It magically *propels* air… Right?

Wrong.

The reason it uses as much energy as a fan and sounds like a fan is because it is a fan. It does have blades. And a bloody big electric motor to turn them too.

Now, forgive me if this isn’t a surprise. You may be cleverer than I, but I – for some time – presumed that the DAM somehow used ‘Dyson magic’ to propel it’s air.

Lifetime Collective’s unexpected new video

The du jour brand for hipsters. Lifetime, started as a DIY basement outfit and have steadily progressed to creating full collections. Watching this video shows they still haven’t lost their edge. It’s nice when brands mess with clichés.

iPad + Velcro =

Genius!

Shadow advertising

Great skin cancer awareness campaign from CHE Melbourne

And an absolutely perfect billboard for SunChips (which are also made using solar energy) by Juniper Park.

Hans Rosling on TED.com

I have never seen data presented quite like this, pure genius.

Monopoly Hotel Bus Shelter

When it comes to promoting the Minnesota State Lottery, Colle+McVoy got creative on their assets.

Diehard with a letterpress

Innovation and inspiration are what we like to see on welovecreative and often that means that new technology is involved, simply because it’s easy to be innovative with new tech. When people get innovative with tech that’s nearly 600 year’s old that is mightily impressive.

Which is why we’re fans of Stukenborg who have created these beautiful abstract patterns by using blocks of die with a letterpress… and you can buy the prints.

Logorama – 2010’s logotastic Oscar winner

The winner of this year’s Oscar for animated short is Logorama, a wonderful inspirational design classic… that’s also a great quiz…. can you name all the logos used in its beautiful construction*?

*Actually, if you are going crazy trying to name all the logos those wonderful humans at Wikipedia listed them all in the Logorama entry

Volkswagen Independent Cinema Sponsorship Ads

By DDB London, try and guess the films, and don’t cheat by looking at the filenames.

Smuin Ballet Company Posters

Stunning Smuin Ballet Company Poster campaign by Evolution Bureau, USA

The Book Cover Archive

If you like design and books and typefaces and imagery and reading then the Book Cover Archive is a great place to spend a little time. In the meantime here are a few of our favourites.

10 Days Palimpsest

Last May street artist and typographer RIPO took the day’s headlines and illustrated them and the next day went right over the top with a new headline, every day for ten days. The style is fresh and timeless, the idea brilliant and the video inspiring.

Brilliant words – what’s a palimpsest again?

Parkour Flip Book – Extreme Animation

This works brilliantly, it’s fresh, captures the dynamism of the pastime and it’s just about torn paper…

Another iPad concept – this time for Marie Claire and by our friends at Ceros

Curious one this, in that Ceros is a Flash-based platform and the Flash is like Kryptonite or at least Lex Luthor to the iPad.

Latest iPad content concepts

Nice interface prototypes from Wired and Penguin Books. Oh, and the original iPad promo reel for those who missed it.

Great Travel Hangers of our Time

The Rethink Hanger is a brilliant piece of lateral thinking… just look at the pics to get the concept, available to buy now at just $7.99.

Creative use of stairs for advertising

Drink fat Coke? You could use the exercise.

The perfect Jeep ad.

A creative reminder to donate your books to the Literacy Association.

Get organised at Ikea.

An clever awareness campaign for the American Disability Association.

Tips for better ideas

Watch this before every brainstorm.

That’ll be the decade then!

Everything noughties in one lovely table.

Picturing the past ten years

The future of magazines? Everyone seems to have a crystal ball this week…

The magazine publishing industry is panicking over rumours, yes just rumours, that Apple will unveil their iTablet/iSlate thingy at CES in January, pop a load of magazines and books on iTunes, reinvent publishing online and own that media market too. So suddenly, to look like they’re doing something, anything other than squinting hard at banner ads on their portal sites and desperately wondering how they can make money digitally, this week they’ve started coming up with ‘visualisations’ of how magazines could work on devices that may or may not come from Apple. That way, when Apple announce, they can all have a go at saying “told you so”. So are they any good?

First up is Time Inc with this Sports Illustrated demo (check out the spooky hand).

Next we have Mag+ the most beautiful of the three (we’re suckers for stuff with plus at the end – futureplus.co.uk anyone?).

Lastly we have Wired’s attempt, which should knock our socks off, but compared to the other two, looks like they slapped it together over lunch in a European disco using Keynote, just so that they can be seen to be doing something.

Are these concepts the future of magazines? How about some comments folks?

Learning French through great design

Caroline Fabès is a freelance graphic designer who has created a great little typographical animation for a key scene in Raging Bull…

This is the actual scene. With pictures.

Clothes shopping the Augmented Reality way

This technology just got useful.

Letterpress stop motion

Here’s a beautiful video following the process of printing a book and binding it. Made up of over 300 photographs, it’s a fascinating insight in to the world of letterpress.

The Berg – Think big. No, BIGGER than that

Ever wish you could move mountains? Perhaps you’re thinking about it from the wrong direction. German architect Jakob Tigges has come up with a plan to redevelop the old Templehof airport by ‘building’ a 1000 ft mountain called The Berg (www.the-berg.de). If it ever comes to fruition The Berg would offer skiing from September to March and be the grandest tourist attraction ever conceived. It’s already gathered a lot of public support, so, who knows, if moving mountains seems impossible, perhaps building your own is a better idea.

If you want to get involved they even have their own Facebook page now.

If plans are agreed Berlin will get its very own, man-made, 1000ft tall mountain.

Robert Downey Jr bursts out of the latest Esquire cover

Augmented Reality then (no don’t stop reading, this is good stuff). I’ve been meaning to blog about this for a while and the latest issue of Esquire gives me the perfect opportunity to kick off. So what is it? Hold a magazine, trading card, cereal box, printout or anything with a QR code (that square graphic that Downey Jr is sat on below) up to a webcam and ‘something’ interactive appears on screen. Or, as Esquire describes it, ‘A living, breathing, moving, talking magazine’. Is augmented reality simply a gimmick? Maybe, but there are interesting opportunities for print and online to really play with each other here. I’ll shut up, watch the video below and I’ll post some more examples in the next few days.


You can play around with this yourself without buying the mag. First print out the cover here. Next, download the little app here. Finally, open the app, point your printout at your camera and have a play.

Or if you can’t be arsed, pop over and have a look on my laptop.

Creative erm… Barcodes?

Thanks to Neil Mohr for these amazing barcodes from Japanese design company d-barcode.com

Big Headed Designer Genius

This is the best use of downtime I’ve ever seen, Eric Testroete gives a full and frank description of how to achieve this on his website… essentially he uses 3ds Max and photoshop and a load of paper and created a wireframe of his head and printed it out. Clever chap that Eric.

“Left v Right” graphic

obviously alot of this is utter rubbish but it looks nice… could work for other ‘subjects’. ie: football teams, countries, xbox v ps3, business models, markets, etc

http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/leftvright_world.html