Have a break

I'm trying this new look on my blog for a little while, we'll see how it works out. I haven't had too much time to read blogs yet this week, so it might be all over the place already, but check check out the site for the latest Kit Kat campaign in France, it's really cool!!

Kit Kat: La Quête du Break Ultime (The Kit Kat Quest for the Ultimate Break)

The intro 3D animation is pretty good, but what I find amazing is definitely the prize! The principle is for users to upload a video of what "the ultimate break" would be and then visitors can vote for their favourite one. A great incentive and I think a good online use of the brand's image (well in France at least; it stayed "Have a break. Have a Kit Kat" ever since the pandas in 1989).

And let's have the pandas, I loved this ad as a kid:

Messy

I was just checking out Michelle's blog and the her latest post is about groups of people apparently fascinated with messy desks. I guess I get fascinated with people in general and their strange interests in particular (mine included!). This is my desk at home, so maybe It'll only appeal to a minority amongst messy desk aficionados, though even then I never would have thought anyone would be interested in ever seeing it on the internet. But I also love being surprised and thought I'd join in the fun:



Ah marvels of technology! A mere 40 minutes later (I'm still learning how to use a MacBook, hadn't opened iPhoto yet...) and voila! The relatively uninteresting desk I see everyday is now available online for all to admire!

I got a bit excited and thought there might be an interest in my messy table... And all right, I admit I dressed one thing up for the picture, can you guess what?



This is becoming like a complete anthropology class! Studying the Willem (Willemus Curiosos) in his natural habitat... If anyone has the courage and time for more fun online activities, I'd be interested in finding out what kind amazing piece of wisdom one could gather from the scattered items on these pictures...

Flex user group meeting

I went to the London Flex User Group Meeting last Thursday, it was really interesting. It was a special meeting, 2 Adobe Evangelists, James Ward and Serge Jespers (wouldn't you like such a job title? Sounds just a bit weird at the same time, though) came over to talk about the lates Adobe are working on as well as some of the new possibilities available with Flex Builder 3. About 250 people turned up in Shoreditch Town Hall, and Adobe gave out a lot of free beer, which is always good.

I was particularly impressed with a new product they're developing called Thermo, the intention of which is to bridge the gap between design and development. Looks really cool, check the demo video here.

They also showed some impressive functionalities with Flex, from optimising the size of applications to embedding HD videos in Flash Player. I'm no developer, so I didn't understand everything when they started talking about code, but it was simple enough for me to follow what the results are and get some insight into the next possible things in Rich Media Applications, which is cool. Oh, and did I mention there was free beer, too? It's the first time I go to a conference where the speaker stops in the middle and encourages everyone to go get themselves another beer! You could say I was slightly drunk by the end of the evening...

Thanks to Chester at Emak Mafu, and to all the other Mafus for organising the event!

Giant Spider Gone

I'm really enjoying working right by the Tate Modern! Yesterday, they started taking Louise Bourgeois' giant spider away:



Today there's only a few legs left, gently wrapped up, like some kid pulled them all off an actual spider... (hopefully kids don't wrap up those, that would be a bit worrying after all)



Maybe I'll manage to be there when they start repairing the big crack in the Hall in April, that should be interesting!

Weekend links and blog surfing

A pretty cool branding concept recently showed up in Singapore (from Faris' blog): Link

Essential tools for the discerning designer, The Design Police.

A series of waterfalls due to be set up as an art project in New-York, including one under the Brooklyn Bridge, it's going to be pretty amazing.

Apparently some people in Rome hadn't had enough of the Sony Bravia Balls ad and decided to do it all over again: Link

For the Marvel and comics fans, a series of Stan Lee tribute artwork. Some of it is really cool!

And finally, let's not forget the Beijing Olympics are coming up this summer. Adidas reminds us that there are a lot of people in China as well. Pretty impressive ad in any case:



That's all for now folks!

Knicker Picker

George pointed me out to this absolutely fascinating website and its very cool rich media features: Knicker Picker. Check it out!

Digital for Dummies

Photo by Clairity

I'm absolutely loving my new job!
Above any other responsibilities I've taken on, I'm going to create and lead a seminar to train some people at iris in the basics of all things digital.

Here is the premise I very quickly wrote to get the ball rolling:

“Digital for Dummies” - This new and exciting seminar could be for you if:

• You truly don’t get what the whole Facebook fuss is all about.
• You think del.icio.us is a website for food and gastronomy lovers.
• You know that Blogging is a bit like Curling, but played in the Summer Olympics.
• You heard that “Rich Media” was the new nickname for Time Warner.

I'd love to have all and any kind of suggestions from the blogosphere! (I still hate that word...)
What do you think are the most important things to cover for basics? (Imagine talking to a traditional agency suit wanting to get into digital, for example. I'm sure it happened to you!)

Looking forward to hearing from you!

New Job and Happy New Year

Looking at the date of my last post, I'm simply going to declare that blog writing is not going to happen daily here, at least for now. I might change that if ever I receive too many complaints from my faithful readers (my father and my flatmate, mainly), we'll see.

Anyways I started my new job today! I'm working at Iris, with the digital team. I'm starting as a digital recruiter, the plan being that I'm going to do that and start being trained in digital strategy after a few months. I've already met with some great people, they do really cool work and I'm looking forward to gigantic heaps of information and just plain stuff to take on board! (I get really excited when given loads of work and new things to learn, I'm a bit weird like that...)

So the next thing (even though this is my personal blog and doesn't necessarily reflect Iris' views and bla bla bla) is to anyone out there who might read this and be interested in finding out more about Iris, I would be more than happy to tell you about the agency.

I'll finish on the holidays (which happened already ages ago): Happy New Year!

I stayed in London and had a great Christmas with my little sister and plenty of good friends, and was at a really cool Rave party in London for NYE. It had been ages I hadn't been to one, and it had some really good sound systems (7 of them in total!). A whole group came from France with some friends, you can check out their music on MySpace:
My friend Ben [9mm] and Les Oiseaux de Nuit (that's a link to a video from a party they were at in 2006), from Tours. I had a really great night (and day, considering I left at 2pm on the first), danced a lot and met some great people!

Catch up Post

I haven't written anything in over 10 days so I decided to organise a quick sum up of interesting things happened or that I've seen over that time, in no particular order:

1. My best friend James in China created a new social network for all electro lovers on Ning called Electro Freaks. Here's what he has to say about it:

Hi everyone,

I'm giving a test on creating a social network!

Electrofreaks is a open network for all the lovers
of the best in electro minimal sounds & visuals.
I think it could be a cool idea for us to share new stuff,
meet new people & more on...

If you're interested in this new experience,
you're more than welcome to join me :]

J.

Click here to join:
http://electrofreaks.ning.com/profiles?xgk=f35865784b

I'm just listening to some of the tracks on it right now and he uploaded some cool stuff, check it out!

2. I went to the Tate Modern this week and saw the giant crack on the floor over the whole length of the Turbine Hall - the real name for it being Shibboleth (which sounds much better) created by Columbian artist Doris Salcedo. It's definitely impressive and I liked it, though I must admit that without the explanation of the intention behind the art piece I wouldn't have understood it. I think it's really powerful, worth having a look at walking the length of the Hall, pondering Salcedo's message and intention.

In breaking open the floor of the museum, Salcedo is exposing a fracture in modernity itself. Her work encourages us to confront uncomfortable truths about our history and about ourselves with absolute candidness, and without self-deception.

(From the Tate Modern's website).

3. New televisual experiences! (sad but true) I checked out new TV shows that came out recently in the US and discovered Chuck. It's really funny, good action scenes and doesn't take itself seriously, all in all a good surprise. I also started watching Dexter, deeply disturbing but looks like a really good show, I'll keep watching.
Otherwise new seasons for Prison Break and Heroes, I've only watched Prison Break so far (keeping Heroes for Christmas). I really love the show, how they manage to keep the characters in serously deep sh** and keep the tension alive and kicking from one episode to the other is awesome.

4. I saw the latest Burger King advertising campaign, really interesting but once again a reminder that the relationship between the American people and their fastfood is slightly frightening. You can view the video from the official Whopper Freakout website, or directly below:



5. Greenpeace has launched a new online campaign I really liked called Clash of the Consoles. The site informs us through the voices of 3 iconic characters from the 3 major console manufacturers (Microsoft's Master Chief, Nintendo's Mario, and Sony's Kratos) of the damages caused by games consoles on the environment and compares each company's efforts (or lack thereof) on toxic use, toxic policies, recycling, and energy use.

6. One of my favourite authors, Terry Pratchett, has announced this week that he has been diagnosed with a rare form of early onset Alzheimer's. Here is the open letter he wrote on Paul Kidby's Discworld News:

AN EMBUGGERANCE

Folks,

I would have liked to keep this one quiet for a little while, but because of upcoming conventions and of course the need to keep my publishers informed, it seems to me unfair to withhold the news. I have been diagnosed with a very rare form of early
onset Alzheimer's, which lay behind this year's phantom "stroke".

We are taking it fairly philosophically down here and possibly with a mild optimism. For now work is continuing on the completion of Nation and the basic notes are already being laid down for Unseen Academicals. All other things being equal, I
expect to meet most current and, as far as possible, future commitments but will discuss things with the various organisers. Frankly, I would prefer it if people kept things cheerful, because I think there's time for at least a few more books yet :o)

PS I would just like to draw attention to everyone reading the above that this should be interpreted as 'I am not dead'. I will, of course, be dead at some future point, as will everybody else. For me, this maybe further off than you think - it's too soon to tell. I know it's a very human thing to say "Is there anything I can do", but in this case I would only entertain offers from very high-end experts in brain chemistry.

7. Of course, quite some time has been dedicated to my job search, I had some really good interviews and I should hopefully have some more detailed news to give about this next week.

WMC's

I went to see the Weapons of Mass Communication exhibition at the Imperial War Museum last Friday. It was a bit curious, firstly I hadn't been to the IWM before and arriving there in the dark under the rain was quite surprising. I'm not a big war fan, and walking into this great hall full of rockets, cannons, and war aircrafts seemed a bit surreal to me.

I liked the exhibition a lot and thought it was really interesting, it gives a really good sense of the different design and communication strategies used by different countries. It's also fascinating to notice that the World Wars last century generalised outdoor advertising in a way nothing else could have (well, I guess we'll never know but it certainly seems that way). Some of them were beautiful for their design, and a lot were just chilling, given the intended idea in a lot of cases was to make the viwer feel guily or obligated to participate in the war effort (by signing up or giving money). It makes you seriously think about what it must be like to live in a country at war (actually the whole museum does), I was looking at the posters about the Spanish Civil War and thinking about my grandfather who lived through it. Incidentally, the CNT Poster was one of my favourite ones, it's visible on the microsite here.

The funniest and pretty scary mention for me was in the section of product advertising: a French poster advertising a chocolate drink powder depicting a tiger at the witness stand of a tribunal with Petain's head and holding the chocolate box high in his paw... Really weird...