Scissor Sisters: Invisible Light

Word Lens

I like this. I can imagine it would be very handy and apparently it genuinely works.

Tableau: Physical Email

This really is one of the most beautiful ideas i've seen in all year. John Kestner's Tableau is a repurposed nightstand that stores and retrieves memories using a twitter account, bridging physical and digital media. It quietly drops photos it sees on its Twitter feed into the drawer, for the owner to discover. Images of things placed in the drawer are posted to its account as well.

Most Contagious 2010

Most Contagious 2010

View more presentations from Contagious.

One of the very few times I feel obliged to attach a 'must read' to a post.

Why Work Doesn't Happen at Work

Shop Vac Kinetic Type Animation

Amongst the plethora of kinetic typography out there this is one of the best examples i've seen to date. A little ropey at the start but some gorgeous design as it progresses. All created by animator Jarrett Heather for Jonathan Coulton's track Shop-Vac.

 

Handmade Ads for a Handmade Beer

Cossette have teamed up with Canadian Brewery La Korrigane and 100 illustrators and graphic designers to create a series of handmade ads. A lovely way for a handmade beer to tell it's story. 

Internet Skill #253: How to play a drain pipe

A+ kid.

A Pot Noeldle Christmas

WWF Replaces PDF

Simple solution to an obvious problem.

Into Eternity: Trailer

Photocopy Romance

Kim Rugg

Mr Smith's Letterpress Workshop

Creative Review's visit to the South London studio of independent letterpress printer, Kevin Smith. Very interesting. I love type. Particularly letterpress type.

Heinz Beans Containers

Lovely insights for a lovely ad for a lovely product.

Above Everything Else

Unbelievable CGI from the guys at The Third and The Seventh.

Live Now

Old Idea. New Execution. Very quirky little spot from director Andreas Nilsson fro Swedish pension fund SPP.

John Lewis Christmas Ad

Just beautiful.

Gary Hecker: Veteran Foley Artist

New Balance: Sneaker Projection Mapping

Probably my favourite projection mapping execution to date. I wasn't even going to click on the link when I read those hackneyed words. But done on a smaller scale I kind of felt fresh. And indeed I believe it is. Created by Hayoung Jung.

Nuit Blanche

Director Arev Manoukian's short 'Nuit Blanche' explores a fleeting moment between two strangers, revealing their brief connection in a hyper real fantasy.

Jamie, My Intentions Are Bass

The latest from director Saman Keshavarz for !!! track Jamie, My Intentions are Bass.

Popcorn From St John Ambulance

Very rarely will your ad get a round of applause. Well done BBH London.

The Block Project

If Scrabble really does still need to advertise then this is the way to do it. Created by Ogilvy & Mather, Paris.

Funky Forest

Your Secret

Honk If You're Human

Another nice little animated spot for BBC Knowledge. Again from Sydney-based creative agency Three Drunk Monkeys. Directed by Sean Pecknold.

The Black Hole

This has been around for a while but I saw it again today over on Ektopia and thought I'd post it for anyone who hasn't seen it. Shot by Diamond Dogs.

This Is Dare. Are You?

I recently came across Dare's facebook page for grads. It's ok I guess. Another 'are-you-like-us' form thingy. Fine. But then I saw the above infographic animation that they've created to promote it. Now this is great. Very, very nice. Very topical. Very silly. Very cool. Grads, get on the case. This is a place you want to be right now.

Where Good Ideas Come From

Waiting For Superman

Produced by directing team Buck, this animated 'pledge' trailer is for the forthcoming Davis Guggenheim film, Waiting For Superman, that investigates the crisis in the US education system.

Philips Wake Up The Town

The latest in the Philips Experiments Series is this for their Wake-Up Light. Longyearbyen is the administrative centre of Svalbard near the north pole. For four long months the sun doesn't rise here, and Philips are going to be the people's saviour of course. Follow the progress of the experiment on the wake-up website.

Kronenbourgh Slow The Pace

Little Piece of Privacy

Bullet-Time Surfers

In collaboration with Timeslice Films, Rip Curl took on an ambitious 52-camera bullet-time campaign shoot in Malaysia's Sunway Lagoon Wavepool with lead surfers Mick Fanning, Stephanie Gilmore, Owen Wright and Matt Wilkinson.

My VCR collection VHS recorder

Liars: Scissors

Director Andy Bruntel's for Liars track "Scissors" is just lovely.

Last Minutes With Oden

An incredibly powerful film from director Eliot Rausch depicts the last few moments of a dog's struggle with cancer. It took Best Video at the inaugural Vimeo Awards this week.

The Halo Reach Wall Murial

Brother Sharp

Know your memes, people.

Keep Your Goals To Yourself

Seaweed By Tell No One

A thing of beauty.

Gardyn

Elizabeth Gilbert On Nurturing Creativity

Stephen Wolfram: Computing A Theory Of Everything

IKEA Kondis

A wonderful spot from Foresman & Bodenfors for the new IKEA Konsi app, following on from their recent Baking Book.

Snickers Halloween Grocery Store Lady

Tatooine

A gorgeous stop motion video for Jeremy Messersmith's beautiful new track Tatooine. BY Eric Power.

The Art of Hermann Zapf

The Art of Hermann Zapf from Johnny Dib on Vimeo.

The Joy Of Ink

A Chief Ink Maker shows how colour and ink is created from the raw ingredients--powder, varnish, and passion. Everything designers and printers need to know about the process, the challenges and joy of ink making.

Break The Habit

From Australia I think. Launched via social networking sites.

The Guardian And Observer Film Season

Wieden + Kennedy's new ad for the Guardian/Observer features references to 26 different films: can you spot them all?

Homemade Is Best

A gorgeous set of images for a 140-page IKEA baking book by agency Forsman and Bodenfors and photographer Carl Kleiner. The book contains 30 classic swedish baking recipes everything from small biscuits to large cakes.

Superfluidity

The Global Consciousness Project

What the..?

Sound Sculptures

More great work from Dentsu London. Their 'Sound Sculptures' project for Canon’s PIXMA colour printer range saw Dentsu collaborate with an all-star team including Director Chris Hewitt, DOP Jason Tozer, and Biochemist Linden Geldhill. Each sculpture was created by stretching a balloon over a speaker to form a membrane.  A few drops of paint were then placed in the centre of the balloon and a single sharp note was played through the speaker, causing the paint to erupt for just a fraction of a second.

David A Smith: Sign Artist

David A Smith is synonymous in Sign-Writing and Glass gilding circles, with high quality, hand crafted reverse glass signs and decorative silvered and gilded mirrors. This documentary from director Danny Cooke goes behind the scenes of one of the few remaining UK sign artists.

Flexible Love Folding Chair

Domestic Abuse PSA

Powerful stuff from Y&R Chicago.

Straight From The Horse's Piel

I think this guy is for real. From director Kobus Holnaaie.

Ill Behaviour

Hippie, grebo, raver mashup from Danny Bird

Light Drive

Stop motion form and colour, using light painting techniques. Every frame is an individually shot photograph. Each photograph is a long exposure photo, with exposures reaching up to 20 seconds in some cases. To control the lights, an Arduino was used controlled via bluetooth to drive a stepper motor. The stepper motor controls the movements of the lights remotely from Processing.

Julian Treasure On Sound

Playing sound effects both pleasant and awful, Julian Treasure shows how sound affects us in four significant ways. Listen carefully for a shocking fact about noisy open-plan offices.

The Recluse

Great piece of storytelling by Partizan director Daniel Wolff for Plan B's new video The Recluse.

The Game Layer On Top Of The World

Seth Priebatsch, CEO of the new mobile gaming platform SCVNGR, says nothing influences our daily actions like game dynamics.

Dot

A nice miniature stop motion short using CellScope technology, created by Sumo Science at Aardman for the Nokia N8.

I Still Have A Soul

Lovely piece for HBO's boxing coverage.

Dedicated to Shoreditch

This is ridiculous. I love it.

Table for One

I don't know what it is but I find people eating alone heartwrenching. And now this: a blog dedicated to the solitary folk. It's like having the bambi death scene on repeat.

Google Instant With Bob Dylan.

God I love this guy

The Making Of The Blade Runner Hades Landscape

Special Effects Artist Douglas Trumbull talks through the creation of the famous opening sequence of Blade Runner, referred to as the "Hades Landscape". Inspiring stuff. Here's the link.

Bike By Me

Bike by me makes it possible to create a bike in your own favorite colour scheme. The site works pretty simple; pick a colour for each part, choose your frame size and order your bike online. Delivery time in Europe is about 2-5 business days.

Uniqlo Lucky Counter

A new one from Uniqlo, Lucky Counter: You tweet about a product and its price will come down for everybody, loving the social interaction around the whole thing.

Levi's Ready To Work

Levi's and Wieden + Kennedy are becoming part of this tale of city reinvention, built around the spirit and hope of Braddock, Pennsylvania.You can discover the stories behind the communities inspiring the rebirth of the town on the YouTube channel, and almost feel the spirit of pioneers so dear to the brand.

Pranav Mistry's Sixth Sense Technology

Ultimo Bra Test Drive

Nice idea from British underweaar brand Ultimo. A group of busty test-riders donned a variety of Ultimo bras and were put through their paces on several rides at Alton Towers to test the durability and lift support of bras-and to make sure they were a snug fit. Here's the link.

The Wilderness Downtown

Arcade Fire have released a Google Chrome interactive video for their new track We Used To Wait. At the beginning of the Chris Milk-created video, you'll be asked to enter the house where you were raised. Built entirely with the latest open web technologies, including HTML5 video, audio, and canvas, your information then forms a series of custom rendered maps, in real-time composited music video.

Interactive Twitter Murals For The CTC

A nice use of real-time social media updates in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles for the Canadian Tourism Commission. A series of interactive murals were put up to inspire Americans to book a holiday to their north American neighbour, by pulling in tweets about Canada from Canadians. A more engaging way of executing one of those "show off all the cool stuff you can get up to here" briefs.

The POV Concert Series

The innovative folk at Pitchfork recently created The POV Concert Series, turning the viewer into the editor. The way it works is simple, but something that I don't remember ever having seen before (correct me if I'm wrong). Pitchfork basically set up six cameras at a small concert venue and record the performance of a band. Then, instead of having a director chop up the six shots into his or her idea of how to present them, the viewer can pick which of the six views they want to see and can switch between the angles at any point.

This technique really seems to be in it's infancy at the moment and could definitely be put to better use - to tell different perspectives on a story for instance (see HBO Imagine). What I really like about the POV Concert Series however is being able to view those parts of the act that you would never normally see, like the bass player when there's no bass line involved. We're going to see more of this soon I'm sure.

Save The Words

Save The Words was created by the Oxford University Press to show all those lovely words that used to be in common use and are now in danger of going extinct. The idea is for visitors to locate their favorite one, register with the site and make a promise to begin using that word in daily conversation, thus taking a nearly extinct part of language and making it useful again.

The World’s Biggest GPS Message

Nick Newcomen has created the world's biggest piece of typography using a car and a GPS tracking device as a "pen." His message "Read Ayn Rand" consists of 12,328 miles travelled and stretches from the Pacific to the Atlantic Ocean, covering 30 American states. Created during the spring and summer of 2010, Newcomen turned on his GPS logger device when he wanted to write, and off between letters. He then input the recorded data into Google Earth to create the image above.

Ayn Rand was a Russian-American 20th century novelist and philosopher by the way. Newcomen says “the main reason I did it is because I am an Ayn Rand fan. In my opinion if more people would read her books and take her ideas seriously, the country and world would be a better place; freer, more prosperous and we would have a more optimistic view of the future.” Works for me. I'm ordering The Fountainhead off Amazon right now.

The After Hours Athelete

I very much like this spot for Puma from Droga5 and director Ringan Ledwidge, celebrating the after-hours athletes; ten-pin bowlers; pool players, and darts fanatics. Such a refreshing change after the summer's usual bombardment of epic football ads.

Tony Robbins And The Invisible Forces

Another incredible video on TED that I had completely missed. Here "Success Coach" (very American) Tony Robbins discusses the "invisible forces" that motivate everyone's actions. I'd really like to think that I haven't just been duped by another self-help speech as I found myself very moved by a great deal of what he had to say. Have a watch if you get 20 minutes to spare.

Sir Ken Robinson's Learning Revolution

Sir Ken Robinson carries on where he left off with his fabled 2006 TED talk. Here he takes the opportunity to make the case for a radical shift from standardized schools to personalized learning, creating conditions where natural talents can flourish. Look out for his wonderful appropriation of WB Yeats' Cloths of Heaven.

56 Sage Street

56 Sage Street is a nice little interactive game for Barclays, created by BBH London and B-Reel. Similar in style to Sim City and Grand Theft Auto, the game works as a kind of rags to riches story, whereby a kid comes to the city with a mission to make it big. The game is aimed at teenagers with the idea being that they manage their bank account well enough and end up at 56 Sage Street, the home of the mysterious Mr C’s empire. There's an interesting making of post over on BBH Labs' blog from creative Ali Merry that's worth a read.

Hard Times Of R.J Berger Trailer

I'm definitely going to be catching an episode of MTV's Hard Times of RJ Berger after having seen this stunning trailer. I'd love to know who directed it - IMDB lists four different episode directors: Anton Cropper, Jeffrey Melman, David Rogers and Ryan Shiraki - or if it's just some sweet editing of the series' footage.

Young Lions

I wasn't aware of Peter Szewczyk until I came across this music video for The Maccabees' track Young Lions. The film tells the story of a boy who finds solace from a tough world with the help of a pet moth. When his father intervenes both boy and insect escape in separate journeys in search of sanctuary. With a background in CG - having worked at Dreamworks, Lucasfilm and Weta - Szewczyk based Young Guns on James Thurber's short story Moth and the Star. Good tune too.

Up There

The Ritual Project have created Up There, a beautiful documentary following a group of New York daredevil painters as they hand paint a 20x50 foot brick wall advertisement. Directed by Malcolm Murray with music by The Album Leaf.

All In One

Director Frédéric Sofiyana's All In One is an experimental short film commissioned for the upcoming book+dvd release “Black Material”, which showcases the artwork of Robert Knoke. Very cool, very surreal. Perhaps inspired a little by the Tony Kaye Dunlop ad.

The TxtBomber

I don't know too much about this, but it looks incredible. The txtBomber is a handheld gadget invented by Felix Vorreiter that prints text on any flat surface using Arduino-controlled pens. Vorreiter describes it as “a one-hand-guerillia-tool - a machine not much bigger than a pressing iron - that generates political statements on the fly and immidiately prints them on any flat surface". Very interesting.

Pulse Of The Nation

Pulse of the Nation is an interesting project devised by a group of researchers from Northeastern University and Harvard University, studying the characteristics and dynamics of Twitter. By data mining the social networking site over the course of a year (using over 300 million tweets), Pulse of the Nation shows a number of mood trends, regarding both times of day and geography. The peak in the overall tweet mood score being observed on Sunday mornings, and the trough occuring on Thursday evenings.

A Headset That Reads Your Brainwaves

Tan Le of Emotiv Systems presents a new computer interface that reads its user's brainwaves. The Emotiv EPOC, as it's called, uses a set of sensors to tune into electric signals produced by the brain. These sensors detect the user's thoughts, feelings and expressions, which allow them to wirelessly control the functions of a PC. Here she demos the headset, and talks about its far-reaching applications.

Glastotag

Another great idea from Poke London for Orange's sponsorship of this year's Glastonbury festival. Glastotag is a 1.3 giga pixel image is of a 70,000 strong crowd at the Pyramid Stage basking in the sunshine during the England vs. Slovenia match. Taken with two Hasselblad H4D-50 Cameras, Glastotag is aiming to hold the world record for the most people tagged in any image online.

EA's Human Avatar

Dare has taken the virtual customization feature of EA's new massively multiplayer online game All Points Bulletin into the real world, letting an unmerciful online mob decide the new look of some poor guy called Josh. Just like players of the game can customize their avatar's haircut, piercing, tattoos and clothing, the group's collective decisions are being inflicted for real. A dedicated site allows visitors to become voters, deciding on what is turning out to be a pretty ridiculous appearance.

Twirdie

Twirdie works like this: You enter a word that you think is very popular on Twitter right now. The ball then goes a foot for every tweet with your word or phrase in it from the last 60 seconds. You then have to enter progressively less popular words to reach the hole without over-shooting it. Nice.

Make Mine A Builders Tea

I haven't really been showing any degree show work here as it seems to be plastered on every ad/design blog going. However, I do really like this campaign from Claire Watson, a creative at the University of Central Lancaster. The line reads "Builders created this tea, so we let them do the ads". Very nice.

Don't Fucking Tell Me What To Do

For Swedish pop star Robyn's new charmingly titled track Don't fucking tell me what to do, Blip Boutique has produced a 3d video that feeds in tweets from fans stating the things that are killing them, with their name credited at the bottom of the webpage. Fans simply have to tweet their vices and add the Twitter hash tag #killingme. Created entirely in code in collaboration with Stopp Web in Stockholm, with typography by Jakob Nylund.

Graffiti Analysis: 3D

Graffiti Analysis is a series of physical sculptures by Evan Roth, made from motion tracked graffiti data, with time extruded in the Z dimension and pen speed represented by the thickness of the model at any given point. The data is 3D printed to create a physical sculpture that can be exhibited as a data visualization of the tag. Very inspiring stuff.

Tube or False?

In its 147-year history, some weird and wonderful things have happened on the tube. So TfL are running a poster campaign on the Underground at the moment, inviting commuters to spot whether fact really is stranger than fiction. The posters direct users to the TfL site where they can find out whether the fascinating fact is Tube or False. Some lovely design too.

Double Rainbow

Yosemitebear is currently an Internet phenomenon. And watching this video you can see why. The guy is beautiful. Double Rainbow shows a man at one with nature (He get blown away by Turkeys and the moon too). You can see his Kermit the frog remix here and the AutoTuneNews' version here.

Dave DeVries' Children's Drawings

This collection of art works, from illustrator David DeVries' The Monster Engine Project, are based on drawings by children, all aged around 6-years-old. I'd love to see these turned into a cartoon series.

This Is Yours

Hackney's The London Fields have employed the talents of designer Phil Bold to help design, package and promote their debut album, This is Yours. Recruiting the help of friends and family the band cut and painted 250 cereal boxes to size, forming the CD's packaging. These were then attached to the railings at London Field's park. The tag on each read "If you are reading this then you have probably found this album. After you have had a listen please sign the card and leave it in a place for someone else to find. Kind regards." Download the album for free here.

Live London Underground Map

Drawn in from the TfL API, Matthew Somerville created this live map of the London Underground showing all the trains currently running on the network in real-time. The red pins are trains, the yellow pins are stations.

Struck

This is Struck, a short film by Screenwriter Milena Ferreira, and her husband, Producer Nathan Lorch. Directed by Taron Lexto Struck tells the tale of Joel (Bodhi Elfman), who gets impaled through the chest by a three-foot arrow. But it doesn’t harm him. And it won’t come out. Joel has to learn to deal with both his newfound protrusion, and his own painful loneliness. It's a lovely watch.

Three Sided Football

Played on a hexagonal pitch Three Sided Football is a game invented by Danish Situationist Asger Jorn. He presents it in the book The Application of the Triolectical Method in General Situology; his refinement on the Marxian concept of dialectics, which states that "every historically developed social form is in fluid movement, and therefore takes into account its transient nature". Yeah, whatever.

The Work Of Mike Lemanski

Very rarely do I simply post links to a designer's portfolio, yet the work of Mike Lemanski is just too beautiful not to share. Some lovely illustrations; some gorgeous typography, and most surprisingly of all, some truly inspiring concepts, which I often find lacking in many design portfolios. Very nice indeed.

Post-It: Don't Forget Your Friends

A really interesting facebook game from the king of venerable office adhesive reminders, Post-It. Don't forget your friends is a trivia app that rewards users for recalling facts about people in their Facebook networks, with Post-It brand products available as prize. The post-rationalized agency shpeel goes like this: "Don't Forget Your Friends is meant to help remind us that while it’s easy to accumulate digital friends, we should not forget why we have chosen to bring them into our circles". Nice try. It does nothing of the sort; it's just a really sweet little game that I think a lot of people will be interested in using. We don't need the adspeak to justify it.

Death To The Death Penalty

An absolutely stunning film for Amnesty International by TBWA\Paris and digital arts collective Pleix. Waxwork figurines melt in the light of the charity's candle of hope.

Adidas Match Tracker

Adidas' Match Tracker demonstrates the incredibly detailed dataset generated during international football games. Every meaningful event is tracked and recorded for the full 90 minutes, providing sports statistic enthusiasts and data addicts alike the power to explore and analyze a match from a completely different perspective.

Waze

Developed by software engineer Ehud Shabtai, Waze is a user-generated traffic updater using the GPS in it's community's smartphones. It's currently in it's infancy here in the UK and as such has a limited user base. Though I predict this to change rapidly as crowds begin to realise it's potential and begin creating the much needed road maps that it's going to rely on.

Nabaztag

Nabaztag is a Wi-Fi enabled ambient electronic rabbit invented by Rafi Haladjian and Olivier Mével. Once connected to the web Nabaztag can be customized to read news articles, emails and weather reports relevant to the owner.

Ant Protest

Now I can't imagine the stunt itself having any real impact per se. Yet, thanks to the wonder that is the internet, this ant protest for insecticide brand Baygon, will, I'm sure, get the recognition that such a wonderful idea merits.

Cry of the Dolphins

Interesting use of YouTube for an anti-cyber bullying campaign from Saatchi & Saatchi on behalf of the National Crime Prevention Council.

Star Wars Cantina 2010

David Beckham, Daft Punk, Snoop Dogg, Franz Beckenbauer, Noel Gallagher, Ian Brown, Ciara, Jay Baruchel and DJ Neil Armstrong all feature in this nice little number from Adidas, currently doing the rounds. It's essentially a creative re-edit of one of the most famous Star Wars movie scene, the Mos Eisley Cantina. To seamlessly integrate the new shots into the original Star Wars footage, the adidas team created a replica of the original dimensions of the Cantina bar. It launches onto UK tv screens on June 12th.

Project Natal

Microsoft's Project Natal ditches game pads and wiimotes in favour of full body gestures. These gestures and audio are captured and turned into actions on the screen. The concept's awesome, not to mention some of the acting in this trailer.

The Ambient Umbrella

The Ambient Umbrella lets you know when rain or snow is in the forecast by illuminating its handle. Light patterns intuitively indicate rain, drizzle, snow, or thunderstorms while it automatically receives local weather data from accuweather.com. Super cool.

The Playreport

I'm not entirely sure what IKEA are planning on doing with this just yet, but it looks interesting nonetheless. With the goal of making "the world play more", Playreport is a global research project on children, families and play. IKEA have conducted 11,000 interviews in 25 countries, speaking to 8,000 parents and 3,000 children aged 7-12. The results are illustrated through this lovely animation. I wonder what they'll do with all this data.

Blues Maker

The Blues Maker lets you record your own blues track...sort of. It's beautifully designed and has a really simple interface that's a pleasure to toy around with. From Brazil-based Fischer + Fala and the D3 Digital Production Company.

Out Of The Box

I like these phone manual books from Vitamins Design. When the user places their new phone inside, they can navigate through its feature in a simple and more digestible way. Each page reveals the elements of the phone in the right order, helping the user to set up the Sim card, the battery and even slide the case onto the phone. Arrows point to the exact locations the user should press, avoiding confusion and eliminating the feeling of being lost in a menu.