Betamaxification

I was reviewing a PhD proposal recently and was prompted to invent a new word, this is a (pretty) shameless attempt to get this into general circulation. The PhD was looking at impact in knowledge transfer when most accepted opinion is that transfer (from say universities to companies) is a rather old fashioned way of thinking about this sort of activity and could well become a millstone at the start of a 6 year project. It seemed to me that ‘Betamaxification’ or hitching your wagon to a falling star was a good way of describing this. Please use this liberally and if anyone has seen this in action let me know either here or by fax or post me something on a Jazz drive.

Sometimes there is no rational..

Friction in Advertising

If you are like me you have a morbid fascination with the adverting work. On the one hand it’s the engine of conspicuous consumption, shallowness and materialism that despite my protestations I really know is not sustainable and has to stop or at least change course*. Unfortunately far out weighing this is advertising as an engine for creativity, new ideas (and the appropriation of interesting ideas). Of course not all advertising is interesting, I used to place students to work on the yellow pages advert creation department – man was that a dull placement!

This link is an excellent source for interesting ads as it’s a collection of adverts that have for one reason or another been banned, its very up to date so you can find out why you can’t see the Oasis ‘Cactus’ ad anymore. The image above was a promotion for an advertising magazine that was banned after its run was complete, giving it another cycle of exposure.

* this is not universally the case, as you may know I have some loose connections to Saatchi and Saatchi, Kevin Roberts (worldwide CEO) was talking to me recently about their Blue concept (rather than green) for more go here

Sometimes it’s the simple things

The internet is full of junk, charlatans and whining teenagers but its also a fantastic medium for distributing creative media that other wise would only receive the most limited audience. A good example of this is the animation by dustball at this link. I discovered this deceptively simple animation dig.com, my favourite peer review news site. The combination of percussion and rotoscoping and editing is both hypnotic and highly effective. As I know advertising agencies spend a lot of time scouring the internet for interesting things like this for campaigns expect to see this on a TV near you soon, lets just hope the original authors are credited and included in the process, all too often these things are simply ripped off.

Zebra-tastic

As someone who spent a considerable amount of time trying to arrange a giraffe-drawn carriage for their wedding day, I think this picture represents real progress.

Fun in the Digital Economy

Ever since I created a pair of ultra-customised trainers in on the now sadly defunct Customatix website (asymmetrical red and purple suede with giraffe skin soles and lynx penguines o0n the soles) I have been sold on the potentail of the web as a tool for individual choice. I`ve sort of been keeping an eye on this but been a bit destracted. A post on Donshades blog brought this back into focus, he posted here, about a new t shirt design he has created (above). If you like this you can buy it here, but you can also set up your own shop and easily upload images to be produced on a huge range of products, from t shirts, to baby grows to bags. It seems things have matured in this respect, watch this space for news on an Imaginarium shop.

Saw / Sore

Giving (and taking) the Bird

I`m not a fan of the idea of twitter, it seems too short and designed for inconsequential fleeting thoughts. Still I suppose fleeting thoughs are not necessary inconsequential, so I`m giving twitter a go. this is partly to see if my scepticism is well placed, partly because the head of my lab, who is normally very social-media averse is a twitter evangalist but mostly because I am going to be working on a project in the Autum mapping innovation in high-tech SMEs. One suggestion by an evcellent mobile phone developer I work with is to use twitter to map fleeting instances of inspiration and innovation.

This seems like a real reason top catch fleeting ideas rather than inane trivea - Steven Fry I don`t care if you have just bought a packet of biscits!

Horse-Peg

I did this drawing a while ago but there is something that keeps drawing me back to it.

The power of the Macabre

As a ‘practising’ surrealist, I have a great deal of affection for the macabre as a mechanism for challenging assumptions and breaking through conditioned responses that we all rely on but often pre-limit our approaches to problem solving. This observation was stimulated by a truly extraordinary website gallery entitled When Taxidermy Goes Wrong, featuring a range of experimental or highly incompetent, taxidermy. Related to this is the work of Chilean artist/ designer Sebastian Errazuriz and his duck lamp, see more of his work here.

As we get into the summer slow-down, I think shaking things up a bit is a good idea so expect to see some provocations here in the coming weeks.