Leah Wild

WWF/Adena has spent years making people aware of the implications of climate change and that everything may come to an end if we don’t do something to stop it. From the smallest things, to the biggest, the planet. In order to get people to join up over the 2007 Christmas period, they enclosed a WWF/Adena insert in certain book collections in several bookshop around Madrid. The insert looked like just another page in the book. A leaf of the same paper, same weight, same colour, same font… On the page was written “The End”, surprising the reader that the book had ended long before the last page. In this way they wanted people to understand that any story, anything, can end before it is supposed to if we do nothing. So, on the other side, they asked them to help stop climate change by joining WWf/Adena. WWF/Adena received a reply from 20% of the enclosed coupons, considerably increasing during the first two weeks the number of mebers and partners.

Advertising Agency: Contrapunto, Spain
Creative Directors: Antonio Montero, Jaime Chávarri, Iván de Dios
Art Director: Clara Hernández
Copywriters: Guillermo Santaisabel, Jaime Chávarri
Photographer: Alvaro Guzmán

Advertising Agency: 303 Group, Perth, Australia

Advertising Agency: TBWA\PARIS, France
Executive Creative Director / Creative Director: Erik Vervroegen
Copywriter: Nicolas Roncerel
Art Directors: Caroline Khelif, Leopold Billard, Julien Conter
Account Supervisor : Laurent Lilti

Nearly 60% of UK design consultancies employ fewer than five people, yet two of the world’s leading practitioners say 12 is the ideal number of staff to have. So, what is the best size for a design studio?

The question arose at yesterday’s Podge lunch – an annual event that this year marked Lynda Relph-Knight’s 20 years as editor of Design Week. Neville Brody and Erik Spiekermann were having one of those ’so, how are things with you?’ conversations that, right now, tend to involve much nervous touching of wood and finger-crossing. So I asked them, what do you think is the right number of people to have in a studio? Both, without hesitation, gave the same answer - 12. Why? It means you are big enough to take on major projects but small enough to stay in control: any larger and you have to start taking on the kind of work that you’d rather not do just to way the bills.

The question of how to grow (or, this year, more likely how to cut back) without undermining your business seems to be a constant problem for design studios. As we reported recently, Ian Anderson felt that one of the contributory factors to the demise of the Designers Republic was that it had grown too big and had ceased to be the company that he wanted it to be. It’s a familiar tale.

According to the Design Council, 82% of UK design studios have ten or less employees, so the prevailing view is definitely against Spiekermann and Brody. Many of the leading lights in graphics have surprisingly modest operations - Farrow, for example, is just three people, including Mark Farrow himself.

So, in these times when everyone is considering cutting staff numbers and how to re-shape their business, what is the optimum size to be?

found on the CR Blog here

Two projects for Leeds Youth Opera's production of Sweeney Todd, both designed by B&W Studio. The brochure (8) was printed black-only onto newsprint. It features illustrations by Leeds University student Nic Burrows of eight characters from the production. The loose-leaf brochures were handed out before and after the performance, as were posters (9-11), rolled to resemble barbers' poles.
Photography: Mike Feather

taken from Creative Review - The Annual (May 2006)

quite similar to Karl's Barbershop project by Glorious, an award-winning Manchester graphic design agency.

The owner of one of Manchester's last traditional gentleman's barbers wanted something special when celebrating 40
years in business.


Solution: As most customers were city professionals,
it made perfect sense to run the calendar over the financial year, utilising the red and white striped barber's pole and other iconic images to create a clean, crisp promotional item. The calendar won several awards.

The Pong Table designed by Moritz Waldemeyer. It's a part of MoMA's Design & the Elastic Mind Exhibit. This table re-creates the classic game Pong, introduced by Atari by 1972. The tabletop has 2,400 LEDs and two track pads embedded in its surface, turning the white Corian into a digital gaming borad. When the game is turned off, the integerated technology disappears.

found here

Advertising Agency: DDB, Milan, Italy
Executive Creative Director: Vicky Gitto
Art Director: Aureliano Fontana
Copywriter: Bruno Vohwinkel

found here

Twenty-Four Seven aims to provide students with an insight into the design world by highlighting some basic issues that need to be considered before starting work. Twenty-Four Seven draws upon the experiences of internationally renowned designers, with email comments from Tom Roope (Tomato Interactive, UK), Alexander Gelman (Design Machine, NY) and Jan Wilker (Karlssonwilker Inc, NY) and interviews with Jonathan Ellery (Browns Design, London), Peter Saville (London) and Adrian Shaughnessy (TiRA, London).

Twenty-Four Seven has been designed for you to print out. You're downloading a print ready .pdf with bleed and trim marks. We would recommend you scale to fit an A4 page and print it double sided. Once trimmed, you can spiral bind and keep your copy, forever. Enjoy!

download the pdf here

Sleeping is definitely one of life’s greatest pastimes. Just ask Garfield. But the best part of sleeping has to be dreaming. Where else can you experience the splendour of a tartan hippo’s picnic under the bright green sky of Salvador Dali’s sausage allotment than in the land of dreams?

Okay, that’s pretty random, but then dreams usually are. One night you’re meeting Michael Jackson on the Planet Tharg, and the next you’ve inexplicably figured out how to fly before turning up at school naked. Yikes! Still, more often than not we’d like to recall our dreams, and that can be infuriatingly tricky.

That’s where the iREMember Dream Recorder comes in. This ultra sleek gadget wirelessly syncs to its accompanying headgear and automatically starts recording when you enter REM sleep. But how? It might seem a bit sci-fi but thanks to the super high density EEG electrode cluster, a previously unheard of amount of data can be monitored by the device. Amazing!

While this technology is relatively new, the patented Filter and Decoder make the iREMember a world first. They ensure the iREMember stores and converts useful information into an actual video. The resulting video file (up to 60 minutes) can then be copied to your PC or Mac via USB, or you can plug the unit directly into any TV with the handy AV cable (included). To say this is utterly jaw-dropping stuff is an understatement of epic proportions.

Of course we recommend you vet your recordings before showing them to friends and family. Our head buyer inadvertently gave us a bit too much insight into his inner psyche when he proudly showed us a lovely dream. A lovely dream that quickly descended into a video of a gang of screaming clowns chasing baby chimps into a fiery canyon. Nobody sat next to him at lunch for a week.

Dreams have been responsible for inspiring artists, musicians and writers since the beginning of time, so being able to directly reference them will be invaluable for creative types. Lucid dreamers could even direct their own Hollywood blockbusters while getting a good night’s sleep! The iREMember is going to be massive, so get yours now and be one of the first. As John Lennon once said: “You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one. I hope someday you will join us, and the world will live as one.” Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz!

Available for £149.95 from here.





Happy April Fools from Firebox..... the bastards! :D

found here

The Web Design Sketchbook, designed by Paranaiv for Hyper Interaktiv.

This is the perfect tool for any web designer. No more layers and marquees - just grab a pencil and let it flow. Great for mockups and client meetings.

The book contains 45 pages with browser windows, and 15 pages with the standard web advert formats.


link