Archive for January 2008

Cscout points us to a sleek new push pack box designed for Glyna, a Japanese sleep supplement powder that comes in long individual packets.

Other than the novelty of something new, the benefit to push packs is that the outer box remains intact after the initial opening, where as traditional boxes tend to get ripped to shreds with just the slightest bit of impatience.

Cscout: Push-Pack product design in Japan

Creative Review recently interviewed Chris Palmer the founder of Gorgeous Productions, the people behind some of the best ads of recent times. Formerly a copywriter Palmer has risen through the advertising world to become one of the most in demand directors. He’s now setting his sights on directing feature films.

On the Creative Review blog they’ve asked him to talk through some of his best known ads:

“[Skoda] was an epic undertaking involving an ingredients list that included 180 eggs and 100kg of caster sugar. The ad became something of a documentary of the making of the car-cake, with the modelmakers themselves starring in the spot. “I knew exactly what I wanted to do in my head and we had four days to do it,” Palmer says of the shoot. “The interesting thing with this one was obviously we couldn’t do a rehearsal so we were literally finding things out as we went along. But I did play the role of the madman - I’d stand there saying, ‘what I’d like to do is this…’, looking around at a mass of faces with their jaws open, shaking their heads. Basically I had the world against me saying, ‘please don’t do it like that, please don’t [make it from real cake]’.”

“It was an interesting process talking to the modelmakers - it is insane, talking to a group of modelmakers about how I want to make a car out of cake. Just the initial tests, working out what the basic cake was at the beginning, was a trip in itself. The thing about things like that is that when they are finished, it’s so bloody easy and obvious, but the process is so different. I mean, I saw some horrendous… I saw things no human eye should see in the cake department.”

Here’s the latest UK campaign for Levi’s. After a few years in the wilderness this is a return to form for the jeans brand. The press ads use the line ‘Originals never fit’ and illustrate this with Americana shots from the viewer’s perspective of people staring in disbelief and horror at you.

We particularly like the “Angry Father” execution which references Michel Gondry’s “Drugstore” commercial for Levi’s.

Via and created byScamp

Yep, we’re coming back to New York. On March 27, we’re going to hold PSFK Conference New York 2008 at the Art Directors Club in Manhattan. This year we present at a wide range of topics as we continue our focus on trends, inspiration and creative ideas.

Check the details we have so far: www.psfkconferencenewyork.com/ - As you see we’re already well ahead in planning the day (compared to last year) and we’ll update the speaker list and agenda as we complete it. (There’s RSS to track if you want).

Anyway - would love to have you all there on Thursday March 27.

Piers + The Team

PEEL showcase the NYC sticker movement and features stickers, interviews and articles from the first eight issues of their magazine. Interviews include Shepard Fairey and SEEN. The Amazon book description reads:

Stickers have long been part of the street-art scene, but PEEL is the first magazine dedicated to this aspect of graffiti. Inspired by the wealth of stickers they saw all over New York City when they traveled there from Indianapolis, Indiana, to help with the Sept. 11 clean-up, Dave and Holly Combs have never been able to look at stickers the same. With every issue of PEEL, the couple feature art, and the community around it. Having evolved from a hand-made zine stuffed into plastic bags to a glossy, internationally distributed magazine, this book documents the development of PEEL and sticker culture, as both are intimately linked.

PEEL

Though it’s still in test-tube mode, a new music site called Awdio feels like it could be on to something rather worthwhile. Apparently, the site streams live music from international hot-spots, hotels, festivals or even underground dj sets straight to your computer.

Awdio says that this site will deliver in a single weekend what music addicts traveling the world would collect in a year. If this really actualizes, Awdio could indeed revolutionize not only the way we listen to music, but could expose a great audience to styles of music and djs known only now by the musical-elite.

The one detail that makes me dubious is Awdio’s tagline: Back to Basis. I’m thinking they might have meant Back to Basics. Giving them the benefit of the doubt, I’ll derive that it is a phonetic thing as clued by the .co.uk URL and the phonetically-interpretable spelling of audio. Cute.

[via Three Billion]

Information Architects have created a web trends map for 2008. They’ve plotted the 300 most influential and successful websites on a Tokyo train area map.

You can download a PDF of the map or visit the clickable web version.

One Page Magazine is an interesting exploration into how the contents of a magazine can be represented on just one page.

Some of the pieces show the position of all the advertisers logos on the front page whilst others show headlines or celebrity names.

The difference between the logos in Vogue magazine vs those in the Economist tell an interesting story.

Prints are available for just $6 whilst signed and numbered versions are $50.

via Love Creative

Some of you might know that Target’s non-response to a blogger. Although the case highlights how large organizations still struggle to cope with citizen media, it also highlights the arrogance of bloggers. The thing is, Shaping Youth is a nobody - only after a lot of hype and linkage from other blogs, they’ve managed to get a very low Authority of 108 on Technorati (that means 108 blogs have lined to them in the last 6 months).

Consider the New Influentials post yesterday and the power of the link. Shaping Youth should be far from influential( although we’re sure some PR agency is waving all the blog posts now in front of a Target exec reminding them how much they need a blogger strategy). Does Target really need to react to anyone below the A List*? We’re not too sure why an organization really would bother replying to ShapingYouth emails, we’re not too sure we would.

New York Times Coverage

(* and we’re not saying we’re anywhere near that)