iPhone eighties style

This is probably the dumbest thing I've posted on DNA for a while.

But it still made me smile.

Probably because I'm old enought to have seen Wall Street at the cinema.

It's an 80's style iPhone cover.

Why you'd want one I have no idea.

But if you do you can get one from Urban Outfitters.

What the!?

Paper plus

OK. Fanboy alert.

Can I just say I am totally in awe/love with the stunning sculptural work of self proclaimed paper engineer Benja Harney.


One day. By hook or by crook. I'm gonna comission him to create something for a job.

One day...

Ugliest banners ever?

These two bizarre looking banner ads keep popping up in my webmail.

Today I saw them on an online dictionary.

I don't know about you but I reckon these ads are the weirdest/ugliest I have ever seen.

Given the "bad banner" link below the ad I suspect the people behind them may think so too.

Excellent advice

Excellent advice from Mike Dempsey. Intended primarily for designers but can easily be applied to any creative business me thinks.

Picture Tweets

Twitter has just introduced a handy new feature called Image Gallery.

It aggregates all the pics you've posted to Twitter into a single gallery.

This is particularly useful if like me you upload pics from multiple sources like Twitpic and Instagram.

To see your gallery go to your Twitter user profile.

Then click on the View All link on the right of the page above the thumbnail images.

Easy!

BMW and pearls?

BMW teaching you how to steal a pearl necklace?

Not what I'd expect from an auto maker.

But definitely a fun way to showcase BMW Vision Connected Drive.

What do you think?

This year's model

Three very 21st century icons advertised in the classic early 20th century style.

Quite lovely don't you think?

Thing is the rate of change in the first two decades of this century is so rapid that all three products advertised could well be forgotten by the time the 22nd century rolls around.


Don't believe me?

Consider this - When the clock struck midnight at the dawning of the 21st century none of these three products existed.

None of them.

And even though they are huge today they could well turn out to be nothing more than blips in the digital history book.

That's if there even is a book!

The price you pay

Via

Melbourne isn't important?

My work has been recognised at award shows across the world.

But the honours I am most proud of are from the MADC.

Our very own Melbourne based industry awards.

Sure they may not be considered to be up there with D&AD or Cannes. But an MADC is a bloody hard award to win.

Too hard according to some critics.

Which is why I was surprised to read that Melbourne's own GPY&R had decided not to enter this year's MADC Awards.

Apparently because it carries no weight in creative rankings.

WTF!?

Since when did rankings become more important to creative people than being recognised by your peers along St Kilda Rd?

Not being a part of the MADC is a very un-Melburnian thing to do.

The local adland equivalent of the time Manchester Utd chose not to enter the FA Cup.

Very sad. Very sad indeed.

Need a writer?

Check out Lisa's cover letter customizer here.

It's very clever. And guaranteed to make you smile.

Should you need the services of a clever writer visit Lisa's website here.

Ice cold beer

Cider sales in Australia are at an all time high.

This has been driven by a "cider on ice" advertising push.

Now the Japanese have decided to do the same with beer.

Yes beer.

More specifically Kirin Ice+Beer.



I've often put ice in my beer on holiday in places like Vietnam and Bali.

But this is because it's so damn hot there the beer goes warm real quick.

Why anyone would fall for an ad campaign to put ice in their beer is anyone's guess.

But you can't blame those crazy Japanese for trying!

Hipster Ipsum

Hot on the heels of Bacon Ipsum comes yet another generic type generator - Hipster Ipsum.

I think it's cool. Although it's apparently no longer cool since I discovered it.

Whatevs!

Anyway you can choose 100% hipster or a subtle blend of hipster and latin.

Here's two examples. 100% first followed by the blend:

Shoreditch carles stumptown fixie readymade Austin. Brunch thundercats vegan brooklyn banksy helvetica.

Pitchfork mcsweeney's retro cred labore. High life stumptown mcsweeney's bicycle rights, excepteur messenger bag shoreditch laboris leggings.

Click here to generate your own hipster shit.

A century of Bernbach

It was the 100th birthday of the single most important figure in the history of advertising on the weekend.

I'm talking of course about Mr Bill Bernbach.

He gave our industry the creative team.

He gave the world Volkswagen, Avis and Levy's bread.

And of course the agency he founded - DDB.

To celebrate what would've been his century I'll leave with this seemingly simple yet incredibly accurate quote.

"An idea can turn to dust or magic, depending on the talent that rubs against it."

Happy birthday Bill!

New from Uniqlo

The clever kids at Projector have come up with another sweet website idea for Japanese retailer Uniqlo.

It's called New York Voices. And you can find it here.

Remarkably similar

Been finding some cool stuff over on Flickr of late.

Such a great visual resource.

My most recent find is the work of Bob Caruthers a retired Professor of graphic design.


Being a professor and a man of great experience Bob obviously knows his stuff.

Which is why his Flickr site is so damn good.

It features dozens of design homages.

Or should that be rip offs?

Maybe. Maybe not.


My fave of Bob's finds is one I was already familiar with.

The Clash's London Calling.

Great album. Great design. And definitely wears its influences on its sleeve.

Typography in 7 mins

"Words have meaning and type has spirit and the combination is spectacular.” ~ Paula Scher

He works at Lego

Is this Lego business card the best business card ever?
I think it might be!

It's the Twitter me!

Get your very own Twitter visualisation plus other dumb but interesting stuff about your behaviour on Twitter by clicking here. Go on. You know you want to!

Timeless beauty

Came across these beautiful posters for the Sunday Times magazine while flicking through Flickr.

Beautiful aren't they?

They're by Patrick Tilley and date from the early 1960s.

So so simple. And stylish.


Hard to imagine a newspaper doing something this stylish and clean these days.

Yet these posters weren't always a big hit with the critics back in the day.

One critic described them as being better suited to an intellectual leftist periodical than a national newspaper.

Mind you that was fifty years. When The TImes was very much an extremely conservative read.

So conservative in fact that maybe the critic was right.

But looked at today they seem absolutely timeless. Don't you think?

Thought for the day

What's with Twitter?

Twitter.

I resisted it's lure for quite some time until Julian Cole talked me around.

Since then I've never looked back.

These days it's hard to imagine life without Twitter to be honest.

Yet 80% or possibly more of the people I work with aren't on it.

Nor are most of my clients.

Anyway what I have never understood about Twitter is how they ever make any money.

And I've really been thinking about that over the last day or 2 since I heard that Twitter was opening an office on Madison Ave.

Yep. They're movin' to adland.

Still doesn't explain the mystery of the money though.

Especially since they're well on the way to employing 600 people.

600 people!

Trying to work out what all those people do is almost as perplexing as working out where their income comes from.

Maybe I should stop worrying and just learn to enjoy my time on Twitter.

At least until the money runs out!

Around the Blogosphere

My most recent Around the Blogosphere column for Marketing magazine is now live on my dedicated Blogosphere blog.

This month I share my fondness of seventies Southern rock and my frustrations with so called recommendation engines.

Click here to go take a look and feel free to share your opinion via the comments.

Mumbo meets jumbo

Ask any copywriter what the must frustrating thing about their job is and chances are they'll say getting stuff past the client legal team.

Great case in point is a recent long copy print ad for McDonalds in the US.

No copywriter would ever write a line like this:

"Several years ago we lowered the trans fats in our fries to 0 grams per serving."

Zero grams!!

Why can't they just say there are no trans fats?

Because legal won't let them.

Of course I don't know that for a fact. But I'd be willing to put my house on it in a wager.

Which brings me to the 99c ad above.

I'd like to blame legal for that monstrosity too but somehow I can't help thinking it's simply an example of what happens when clients write their own ads.

Negative or Plus?

Obviously it's still very early days for Google+ but I have to say at the moment I'm just not lovin' it.

Then again it might just be me.

Who knows!

You see I like keeping up with friends who are both close and not so close via Facebook.

I also love spending time with thousands of people I've never met on Twitter.

Google+ conveniently lets me combine them both.

I'm not sure I want to to be honest.

Even if I can group then into Circles.

Like I said it's early days. But I can't help thinking my friend Kirsten put it best in this post on Google+:

"This a bit like a party where they've run out of beer. Awkward. I mean seriously.

I've invested time and effort being erudite and witty at another party and I just can't be fagged doing it all again.

There are no hot men and the music's crap.

Someone say something provocative or post something before I take my coat and go home. ;-)"