pm-designers

[pm-designers]

Satirical Case Study Points Out Everything Wrong With Advertising

Advertising is something of a dark art, especially when it’s used to create the illusion of value where there is none. In order to promote the upcoming Creative Fuel event in Australia, cummins&partners; came up with “The World’s First Crowd Sourced 3D Printed QR Code, Live Streamed Via Go Pro To A Smart Phone Or Tablet Device, Drone Delivery Ticket System Project.”

There is no mention of what the campaign is meant to be promoting, which helps to drive home the point that we’re often just lured in with psychological tricks, fancy technology, and other shiny baubles. One such example is the importance of being first, described perfectly by executive creative director of M&C; Saatchi Sydney, Ben Welsh, who said, “it doesn’t really matter what it’s being first with, but being first wins the day.”

Another important aspect of the project was spending more time crafting the case study video than doing the idea. Executive Creative Directors of cummins&partners;, Jim Ingram and Ben Couzens, live-tweeted Paul Middleditch, creator of iconic films such as “The Big Ad” to achieve this goal. They had good reasons of course:

“We felt it was important to get somebody famous to make the film to give it an extra level of gravitas that it may have otherwise lacked.”

To prove just how great the campaign was, other big names in the Australian creative industry were given a taste, all of whom were “impressed into gasps of speechlessness, after first providing an interesting sound-bite for the case study.”

Other gems in the video include, “Who needs a f****** idea these days when you’ve got an awesome piece of tech?” and “We just find technology that we can bolt s*** on to.”

It’s safe to say you don’t want to miss out on the video below, especially if you want to avoid the advertising cliches that make their way into so many campaigns these days.

[pm-designers]

Charlie Rubin talks to PSFK about his hybrid film-digital process and how emerging artists can rise above the crowd.

For the bedraggled masses commuting in and out of New York every day, the city can seem like a tiring and never-ending employment machine, sucking out workers’ hours in exchange for pay. Billboards dripping with consumerism point out the hottest trends to spend your rent check on, and superficial interactions see you telling acquaintances how much you missed them and how you should grab that coffee tomorrow. Underneath all of this, however, lies the reason that so many creatives still dream of NYC and the opportunities it holds, upholding and reinterpreting the freeing view of the city made popular by the likes of Joan Baez and Andy Warhol in the ’60s.

“Everywhere else is just kidding, right?” As a small fish in what could be considered a massive ocean, photographer Charlie Rubin‘s response shows just how much living in NYC has influenced his practice as a young artist. The city’s streets, the countless music shows, the way the sun looks hanging above Brooklyn’s skyline – every facet of life here inspires Rubin. After a brief stint in Los Angeles, the Haverford College grad returned to New York and earned his MFA from Parsons The New School For Design in New York and hasn’t looked back. From the Unseen Fair in Amsterdam to the Pingyao International Photo Festival in China, the 28-year-old has exhibited around the world in just a few short years, a testament to the hard work he has put in to garner exposure for his work.

Using what he calls a hybrid film/digital process, Rubin shoots with a film camera, but instead of printing the negatives in a darkroom, scans them into a computer to create digital files. To apply his perception-shifting alterations to his photos, he sometimes paints or draws on the negatives, or just prints and re-scans them. For example, the shot above, All your dreams belong to us (2012), was made by adding inkjet ink onto a 4 x 6 photograph and then re-scanning it. While new technologies like Instagram and its suite of  filters have become the norm, turning anyone with a smartphone into a quote-unquote photographer, Rubin prefers to stick with the classics. “A lot of the technology I use is over a hundred years old,” explains Rubin. “Digital cameras are getting really good at emulating a film photograph, but there is still a certain light, black point, and color associated with it that just isn’t the same as a picture taken with a film camera.”

Rubin began his career in high school art classes, adding layers of paint and physicality to his photographs as he became increasingly bored of the monotonous images clouding our news feeds, lacking any sort of expression. A comprehensive look into Rubin’s work and his thought process can be seen in his first book Strange Paradise, published this year by Conveyor Editions. The 60-page kaleidoscopic body of work makes you question what’s real, and what’s been altered by Rubin’s hand. The book also questions how technology shapes what we perceive to be “real,” as well as what “artificial” even means in the context of our increasingly virtual and digital age.

Aside from keeping in touch with people and keeping his Tumblr updated, Rubin has distinct strategies set in place to achieve his personal goals and hit his milestones for this year and the ones to come. “Send your work out constantly to editors and other artists you admire, enter relevant contests and use social media to your advantage,” says Rubin, adding, “But don’t be annoying.” This tactic has worked well for Rubin, who entered himself in the FOAM Magazine Talent Call in 2013 and snagged one of the 16 finalist spots. With 1,566 submissions from 72 different countries, that’s no small feat.

Not only is Rubin pounding the pavement for his own practice, he has also devised a way for other artists to introduce their pieces to new audiences. Neighboring Walls is a series of open-call art shows held in the private apartments of local artists, with the locations rotating on a monthly basis. Rubin was bothered by the lack of spaces in NYC where people could exhibit new work, without having to pay costly submission fees or jumping through other hurdles to be seen. “Making a low pressure, no-bureaucracy process for people to share art and meet new artists was the goal,” says Rubin. While the participating artists have a place to sell or trade their pieces, attendees can also leave with affordable and original artwork, and maybe a few new friends.

After I noticed the slim, On Kawara-like “2014″ tattoo on the back of his arm, Rubin spoke about his big plans for the rest of the year, including some very cool photo blankets, pairings of still-life photos with paintings, and also a portrait project. Keep a look out for things to come from this artist, and check out more of his work here.

Charlie Rubin

[pm-designers]

You live in a city of 15 million people and it seems like litter is everywhere. One day, while on a busy street, you come upon a bright red Coca-Cola machine, but upon closer inspection you realize it is not a soda dispenser, but instead an arcade game. You dig through your pocket for some change and bend down to insert your coin, only to see a 20oz bottle-shaped hole. Glancing back at the screen you see the words ‘Insert bottle to play.’

Dhaka is a city in Bangladesh that has a huge waste problem. To raise some awareness, Coca-Cola teamed up with Grey Dhaka, a local advertising agency, and together came up with the ‘Happiness Arcade.’ Placed is six heavily populated areas around the city on six different days, the machine encouraged passers-by to input a Coca-Cola bottle for a round of ping-pong like play. When the game is over, the words ‘Remember to take care of our environment’ appear on the screen.

The video below states that thousands of bottles were collected during those six days, which were then turned into pellets that will be reused later. Though the ‘Happiness Arcade’ is not a feasible sustainable recycling endeavor, Coca-Cola is hoping to send it to several other countries around the world before retiring it. In the mean time, we can all continue to look for ways to make recycling fun.

[pm-designers]

Incredible Optical Illusions for Honda CR-V.

M.C. Escher would be proud.

Here's the behind the scenes in case you don't think it's real...

[pm-designers]

The artist seems to have created some of the earliest computer art in the 80's.

In December 2011 digital artist Cory Arcangel approached the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh with the idea of restoring the Commodore Amiga hardware in the museum’s collection and archiving the art on the associated disks. Little did he know that he would discover some of the earliest computer art from Warhol on the deteriorating 30-year-old floppies that held all the computers’ data.

Arcangel enlisted the help of members of the Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) Computer Club, with assistance from the AWM’s staff, CMU’s Frank-Ratchye STUDIO for Creative Inquiry (FRSCI), the Hillman Photography Initiative at the Carnegie Museum of Art (CMOA) for the restoration. The data originally gave the impression of having been lost because computers in that era did not have hard drives. However, using a data recovery technique called KryoFlux allowed Arcangel to collect ‘archival dumps’ of data based on magnetic variations typically handled by the Amiga operating system.

The team used an Amiga emulator with various versions of Warhol’s primitive image editing software, Graphicraft, to view the files. Not all of the files have been successfully recovered yet, as they appeared to have been created by an even earlier version of the software that they have been unable to dig up. Several files with enticing names, such as “campbells.pic,” “flower.pic,” and “marilyn1.pic” could only be read after the ROM used to boot the emulator was changed to one from another disk. The result was worth it: all three of these turned out to be signedoriginal works. Several more never-before-seen portraits and pictures of individuals were recovered. The three in this article are the only ones that have thus far been released to the press.

Warhol was known to love his Amiga (you can read more about how he related his practice with it to other pop-art trends at the time, such as Xerox Art, in this Amiga World interview), but little of the work he did on it has become available for public viewing until now. Don Greenbaum, the CFO of Commodore, also recovered several files in 2011 but wasn’t sure whether they were Warhol’s work. At a press conference where the Amiga was launched in 1985, Warhol showed off his finesse with the primitive mouse, recreating the distinctive pop-art screenprinted look by doing leaky color fills on a photo of Blondie’s Debby Harry. The event made the cover of NME in 1986 but has since been largely forgotten. You can see footage of it below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3oqUd8utr14

[pm-designers]

Amazing...

worldwide advertising agency mccann has commissioned photographer nick meek to visualize the images for the campaign of sony‘s new 4k TV, a monitor which promises four times the detail of full high definition. the team flew to the colorful tropics of costa rica, where they collected thousands of lush, vibrant botanical life — like multicolored flower petals and leaves — for more than two weeks. these materials would become the fundamental medium for the project: to illustrate the excellence in focus, the petals were blown and exploded throughout the island landscape, whirled through the prismatic suburban streets, blasted out from a neighboring volcano, and blanketed on a pathway where a young skateboarder drifts past. the detailed vistas, which describe the extreme caliber of sony’s new device, are so sharp and clear that the viewer is immediately enveloped in the hyper-realism.

from designboom

[pm-designers]

Now Is What You Make It - Pepsi 2014 #FutbolNow

Pepsi's World Cup ad, by 180LA, follows a YouTube musician who wanders the city and just happens to run into six of the world’s best soccer players—Leo Messi, Robin van Persie, Jack Wilshere, David Luiz, Sergio Agüero and Sergio Ramos.

[pm-designers]

Great article. It's inspiring and has great suggestions. Now to try and implement them...

Want to foster creativity? Skip the foosball table and opt for a war room instead. Google Ventures’s Jake Knapp shows you how. Plus: a peek inside Google Ventures’s own war room. Read more> 

[pm-designers]

Dutch designer Daan Roosegaarde is trying to replace streetlights with glow-in-the-dark trees using “the bio-luminescent qualities of jellyfish and mushrooms.” The glowing plants are created by “splicing DNA from luminescent marine bacteria to the chloroplast genome of a common houseplant, so the stem and leaves emit a faint light similar to that produced by fireflies and jellyfish.”

This project is part of a major, year-long collaboration with MINI and Deezen that will explore how design and technology are coming together to shape the future.

Titled: Deezen and MINI Frontiers

This collaboration will be looking at some of the most exciting developments in emerging fields such as augmented reality, wearable technology, synthetic biology, robotics and mobility.

It is another interesting intersection between technology and design, at the same time intersecting advertising and corporate patronage. Hopefully their research and support will be fruitful in gathering awareness and for this type of innovation.

Thanks to kateoplis for the find.

[pm-designers]

Indie band fosterthepeople promotes new album Supermodel with an artistic play on out-of-home and experiential advertising. The band commissioned the mural located at 539 S. Los Angeles Street, a block away from the home of the bands frontman Mark Foster.  The above video is a time lapse of a mural being painted over 10 days in Los Angeles. The Artwork is also the cover art of the bands newest album. This location was again used as the setting for a free live performance of their new album on January 23rd.

A video from that performance is below:

"This was a chance to make something that's going to stand independent of the music that we make,'" Mark Foster says, "Living down here the last four years, I've gotten to be part of a cultural renaissance. I feel like Los Angeles has given us a lot, and we wanted to give something back. There's a lot of people who live down here, who walk past or ride the bus to work past that wall every day. They have no idea who we are, but they're going to be able to see a piece of art that's making their neighborhood more beautiful, even if they never listen to the band."

The mural's artists are known as Young & Sick, and their artwork also lives in scrolling tumblr animation on the band's website http://www.fosterthepeople.com 

[pm-designers]

Jody Xiong of DDB China in conjunction with the China Environmental Protection Foundation created this wonderful outdoor campaign to create a subtle visual reminder of the environmental benefits of walking versus driving. Enormous white canvases with a bare tree were placed across 132 crosswalks in 15 Chinese cities. As pedestrians crossed their shoe soles were imprinted with a small amount of green paint, leaving behind a trail of leaf-like footprints. BBD estimated that nearly 3,920,000 people passed through the installations, and the final posters were eventually hung has billboards in several urban locations. Awesome! (via moeity)

[pm-designers]

Puzzle Facade brings the experience of solving a Rubik’s cube to the urban space. It transforms the Ars Electronica’s media facade, into a giant Rubik’s cube, inviting passers-by to engage with an interactive experience that takes place in the city of Linz (Austria).

[pm-designers]

Origami Inspired Kiosk Booth

Inspiring design work put into these kiosks. They are very functional, practical, and esthetically pleasing.  The origami connection is described in some depth in this article.  It was designed by the architecture firm Make, and is currently at London’s Canary Wharf.

[pm-designers]

Australian band Cut/Copy's new music video features 3D-printed figurines running around a city.

The project is yet another great example of one of the applications of 3D printing in the entertainment industry.

[pm-designers]

Intriguing use of light and perspective. From concept to imagery it is truly stunning. The minimal nature of the room mapping and the play on perceived depth and space must have been exciting to explore. It has great potential use for immersive environments.

United Visual Artists - Vanishing Point / Berlin, 2013

Vanishing Point employs perspective as both tool and visual outcome to reshape, redefine and represent a space. Inspired by sketches of Leon Battista Alberti, Leonardo DaVinci and Albrecht Dürer, UVA sends lines into space from an arbitrary vanishing point, creating different volumes, divisions and rooms to be explored by the audience. ・ Materials / RGB Laser, Black Voile, Code Dimensions / 6m (W) x 3m (H) x 15m (D) ・・ United Visual Artists (UVA) is a London based art practice that combines a wide range of disciplines including sculpture, installation, live performance, and architecture. The studio has an open approach to collaboration, uniting diverse skills to continuously evolve new technologies and materials, which in turn suggest new artistic directions.

[pm-designers]

One Million Square Feet of Culture

http://www.1msqft.com/

One Million Square Feet of Culture is a series of guest curated physical spaces that live on through technology.

An excellent example of a corporate patron, in this case Microsoft Windows, supporting the arts community in an open and passive way. The collaboration and expression in the works so far are very inspired.

Here are a few examples from this ongoing program:

Emotional Arcade

Alex Reben and Brent Hoff

Are you an "emotional person?" Using specially modified EEG headsets, people played a new kind of technologically-enabled game where uncontrollable emotional expression is a strength. The only way to win is to feel. There are no losers in an Emotional Arcade game, just revelations.

Churn

Hisham Akira Bharoocha

Musician / visual artist / designer Hisham Bharoocha uses detailed line work and bold geometric shapes to visualize his interest in the architecture of the mind. The line work represents the experiences, thoughts, and feelings that churn in our minds constantly while the bold geometric forms imply a balance that can be found within the chaotic mind.

My Brightest Diamond

This musical performance literally marched down Main Street and drew the crowd inside for an intimate performance. The band My Brightest Diamond mixes classical styles from opera and chamber music with rock, and now marching bands. Lead singer Shara Worden was joined by a dixie marching band that made a path into the venue.

I look forward to more great events and expressions from this series.

More info about Pearl Media

[pm-designers]

Invisible vending machines surprise lovers on Valentine's Day.

Here is again something cool done by Coca Cola. Not too crazy just a simple interaction that got consumers to stop. Check it out!

More info about Pearl Media