Customers With Even More Power

Interesting to see how yet again more evidence that the customer is taking ownership and more control from brands, I love this idea as you can see where the clothes and products you are buying are sound ethically, this is something I have always struggled with when shopping offline or online - in do we really know how a product has been manufactured? Well now you can thanks to co founders of DoneGood Cullen Schwarz and Scott Jacobson who developed this chrome extension

As you browse, DoneGood will tell you that there's a better option that fits your buying criteria, like a union factory or a woman-owned company. A Google search for "men's dress shirts" yields a list of ads and results from the most expected brands. But if you install a new Chrome extension called DoneGood, you'll also get a lesser-known suggestion: 'Tuckerman, a startup that makes organic cotton shirts in a union factory in Massachusetts'. This approach really benefits the SME businesses who are making products of high quality and managed correctly in treating their staff etc. In this instance the company DoneGood, very clever and something that is really useful for shoppers, I love the fact that the internet gives the power to the customer and can dictate where they spend their money, brands who think they can hide with sub standard working practises will eventually get found out.

Lights, Action, Lights

Latest IKEA from Mother - very simple idea, beautifully shot, location looks like Thamesmead (Seems to be of a director's shooting mecca for edgy urban landscapes) the cast and the music makes the spot complete. If you're wondering who's the track by it's Patrick Watson -Lighthouse - proper old school TV spot that stands out in a dire landscape of TV spots

Great art direction craft is truly an art form

This post is going back to old skool _well I'm listening to some old skool Soul so it seems quite fitting, but I wanted to share as I think it's vital for young art directors, designers or budding photographers the importance of craft. In an age where time is money and money is time and most people have neither this is a great case study in how to save money and time but still create something magically. Step forward Felix Hernandez Rodriguez who was commissioned by Audi to shoot their top of the range sports car retail price at a tidy $200,000 and what does he do? He shoots a toy $40 model of the car.

Now mere mortals would seriously struggle in making this look slick and something that could be used in print in fact even for online we would struggle, but this cat by using props, clever angles and lighting has produced something truly incredible. Now I don't know this photographer but looking at the shots this guy is highly trained and knows how to art direct, it's not just a job title. Not only is he talented but smart too. Could you imagine getting the real car on different locations? I know from experience of working on many car brands just getting the car on set is an issue and when you do, you have a time slot.

It reminded me of a shoot I did for Castrol the concept was a visual of one of those old fashioned chimney sweeps coming out of the exhaust. (Castrol stopped the build-up of soot in your engine apparently) So everything was signed-off and as a young art director everything was planned out, re-sizing my crops etc. But I had over looked one thing; the exhaust was too short so you couldn't fit the sweep in. Slight panic on my face started to appear as I wss in the studio that was charging 10K a day!! The photographer Kevin Summers at the time saw my face of horror and smiled, he went away and then 10 minutes later he returned with a cardboard tube sprayed black - he walked over to the BMW and whacked it on the back, at that point even more look of horror spread across my face, he smiled further and said he would light it and no one would know, I was nervous but he was right. No one ever knew till now. This was a great learning curve in my career, in you must really learn your trade to break the rules, this principle still applies today even in the tech world we live in You can see the full joyous piece here

Amazing use of 3D printing

How cool is this, somewhere you and kids could visit, making your own cakes but using 3D printing, idessert where you create and select your cake via a touchscreen, and then voila it is then made via 3D printing. Now you can enjoy not just eating cake but watching it been made. More Cake Off than Bake Off.

Amazing Creativity

Chie Hitotsuyama "Paper Trails" - Short Documentary from Ayako Hoshino on Vimeo.

This is incredible and a great back story, here a Japanese paper artist replicates amazing wild animals using intricately bound newspaper. Over the past four years, Hitotsuyama and her team have worked to create lifelike paper creatures with staggering accuracy. After wetting the newspaper, they twist, fold, squish, and roll it, and then bind it into the desired form. The artist builds paper sculptures representing everything from manatees to monkeys, including some endangered animals such as rhinoceros and sea turtles. Hitotsuyama even takes advantage of color-printed newspapers in some sculptures, using the gradations to mimic the animal’s actual coloring. Every inch of every intricately bound animal sculpture is made entirely by hand.

Simple Planning

I'm sure you have seen this visual as it's been around for a while, but it just popped up again on my social feed. I looked at it again and laughed as I always do and then as I thought of it even more, I felt like crying. How can some people be so so stupid? With all their education and degrees in marketing etc how could they not see this? Really even without a bloody degree how could you miss it? Well I think this sums up alot on what's happening at the moment in the industry, trying to be a smart arse and then missing the point completely many blinkered by research data and insights and all the voodoo that goes with it. Just pause and think and look at everything in pure simple terms. They might have degrees coming out of their ears but one degree in this instance that's missing is a degree in common sense.

Offline Community Building

Love where people within their communities help one another, nice little piece here PumpiPumpe is a Swiss initiative that facilitates social interaction and sharing between neighbours.

Simply apply small stickers to your mailbox to display the items that neighbours can borrow from you. How neat is that, very sociable without a tweet insight, mind you I'm not sure what happens if you don't return the borrowed item :+

Know your true value - especially in business

1998: YAHOO refused to acquire Google for 1M 2002: YAHOO realized its mistake and offered 3B Google requested 5B YAHOO refused. 2008: Microsoft offered 50B to acquire YAHOO YAHOO rejected the offer 2016: YAHOO has been acquired for 5B Current value of Google is around 545B Still amazes me even in business how some top executives under cook or over cook the value of their company, usually with take overs threes plenty of tyre kicking at the start to sound each other out, but I do know of one company who offered 3.1 billion for a competitor, the audit was done over a weekend! That's crazy. Once they looked under the hood did they find it's true value. Back to my point; don't make it personal but look at the figures and weigh up the potential, and make sure the people doing the sums is the right person, if an individual then ask for unbiased feedback or advice from colleagues or people you trust when it comes to business. I remember the old saying nothing personal this is business, I feel Yahoo execs took it personally.

Creativity and Boredom

Reading on the subject of creativity on how it comes about? And why some appear to have it more than others? It's 4am in the morning, my mind was curious and wandering, I wasn't tired more bored which funny enough got me thinking and I then came across this, how spooky. Creativity Have you ever found that it is often when you’re bored, doodling away absentmindedly perhaps, when some of your most perceptive insights arrive, bubbling up unbidden from the depths of your subconscious? Boredom has long been regarded as a prelude to creativity. Consider Friedrich Nietzsche, no less, who wrote that great artists ‘require a lot of boredom if their work is to succeed. For thinkers and all sensitive spirits, boredom is that disagreeable ‘windless calm’ of the soul that precedes a happy voyage and cheerful winds. They have to bear it and must wait for its effect on them’. Indeed, Manfred Kets de Vries has argued that boredom has played a crucial role in many great artistic and scientific breakthroughs For instance, Decartes allegedly ‘discovered’ the notions of x and y while idling in bed watching a fly on the ceiling, while Einstein reportedly achieved the initial pivotal insight into the nature of relativity while boredly daydreaming.

Such anecdotes have been corroborated by recent research. For instance, in experimental studies, it has been found that people induced into a state of boredom perform far better on creativity tests (e.g., thinking of novel uses for plastic cups), compared to participants who are either elated, relaxed or distress. One explanation is that boredom allows attention to wander, and the mind to free-associate, thus facilitating creativity. Indeed, from a neurophysiological perspective, boredom may activate the default mode network, which is thought to play a key role in creativity (e.g., stimulus independent thought)

This is just a piece from an article originally appeared at Psychology Today Tim Lomas, Ph.D., is a lecturer in positive psychology at the University of East London, where he is also the co-program leader for the Masters of Science in Applied Positive Psychology and Coaching Psychology.

Arduino Is Now Kids Play

I love this, now we can all create working prototypes from scratch without all the geekiness

Marketing Ideas and spooky job titles

Funny thing I noticed recently, and it's this; our industry is now changing not by the year or week it's changing by the day,a quick search today this is what came up; Snapchat glasses, BMW built a power plant from old electric-car batteries, Microsoft puts AI to work in Office 365 I could go on and in that new roles are created and others evolve; for instant job titles; 'digital creative directors' are now becoming 'heads of digital transformation' others too like 'design directors' with a tap of a key command are now; 'product innovation directors'. So what's happening? I think as an industry we are in a state of flux. Don't panic, I've seen 4 major changes so far in my career, we're just in another transition. Many companies trying to find their niche on what to do? What do they stand for? Or as the old school would say; what's our USP? No different of old but now the lines are now blurred for instance we now have cross-over from PR, media into agency land and vice versa, marketing directors becoming an agency planner. It's now not unusual for even creatives going client side working for the likes of Uber and Facebook. I personally think it's great with all this cross over as it shows that companies are in search of the ideas but many muddy the water, they complicate things. As always it's the idea that counts not the title or where you work, that's super exciting for me, is an idea or ideas that truly transform a business which sets them apart either agency or client side. Enjoy the ride. Here's an image I love which made me laugh, when someone asked me when I was working in Australia 'what's the difference between a front end and and a back end developer? I shared this from my image bank. Thankfully these roles never changed.

Everything Can Have An Idea In It

I was on TNW and the usually cookie policy pop-up came up but what caught my eye here on this site was a cute playful neat little idea, WOW someone actually thought of a creative idea rather than the usual bland copy only cookie policy. It gives the site a bit of personality, it's very simple on a loop video, a man is trying to eat a 'cookie' without using his hands, much more fun than the usual. Tip for all young creatives, even with no budget, no time and a boring message you can still get an idea in there, you just need to sit down drink some coffee and perhaps a cookie to crack even the most mundane brief.