Days With My Father by Phil Toledano

Phil Toledano recently released a photo essay titled Days With My Father. A touching compilation of photos taken after the death of Toledano's mother, the images give an intimate look at the father-son relationship and serve as a time capsule of the period. Although very simple and sparse, the series captures huge emotion.

Created by Fashionbuddha, the elegant design and functionality of the site compliments the work by allowing the photos to stand on their own and speak for themselves. I found it to be inspiring and at times heart-wrenching.

www.dayswithmyfather.com

Layer Tennis

Layer Tennis is a series of live design events on Friday afternoons presented by Adobe Creative Suite 4.

Two competitors swap a file back and forth in real-time, adding to and embellishing the work. Each artist gets fifteen minutes to complete a "volley" and then we post that to the site live.

The players may be designers, animators, illustrators or pretty much anything else, and they can use any tool or application they like. The match progresses volley by volley.

A third participant, a writer, provides play-by-play commentary on the action as it happens.

The match lasts for ten volleys and when it's complete, opinioned Season Ticket Holders sound off and we declare a winner. Check Tennis HQ for more information and links to past matches.

www.layertennis.com

Pretty Funny

Grid-based design - two essential tools

Grid systems bring visual structure and balance to website design. As a tool grids are useful for organising and presenting information. Used properly, they can enhance the user experience by creating predictable patterns for users to follow. From designer’s point of view they allow for an organized methodology for planning systematic layouts.

www.grid.mindplay.dk is an amazingly useful website - it's a handy tool for dabbling around with grids and typography when starting a new website design.

GridFox is a Firefox extension which places a grid on top of any website. If you’ve started your design from a grid-based layout, you can now easily check to make sure everything is lining up the way you had planned.

How TV ads are taking the net by storm

Companies such as Cadburys are increasingly using TV spots to launch their ad campaigns online.

As a piece of entertainment, it runs the gamut from highbrow to lowbrow. The latest TV commercial from Cadbury, in which two schoolchildren's eyebrows "dance" along to a funky soundtrack, has been hailed as proof that - for advertisers - the internet, not television, is now king.

The one-minute film opens with a boy and girl sitting in a photographer's studio waiting to have their portrait taken. But the photographer leaves the shot when the boy starts an electro tune, "Don't Stop the Rock" by Freestyle, on his digital watch and the children break into a choreographed eyebrow dance in time to the music. The little girl - wearing a dress in trademark Cadbury purple - produces a balloon, which she uses as an unusual sound accompaniment.

The ad had its premiere during the final of Celebrity Big Brother on Channel 4 and has frequently been on TV since. But it is online that "Eyebrows" has gone "viral" and picked up unstoppable momentum. American rapper and producer Kanye West posted a link to the video on his blog, while celebrity gossip blogger Perez Hilton featured it with the comment: "The UK definitely seems to be doing them better! Click here to check out a super-cool new commercial." Actor and writer Stephen Fry gave it a further boost via his posts on the microblogging site Twitter.

Cadbury now estimates that the video has been watched more than four million times on YouTube and other sites - more than double the number racked up at the same stage by an earlier Cadbury cult hit, featuring a gorilla playing drums to Phil Collins's In the Air Tonight.

The company has struck a deal with Orange to give away the latest ad's soundtrack as a mobile phone ringtone, which was downloaded 125,000 times in the first 11 days.

"Eyebrows", created by the agency Fallon in a £3.7m campaign, has also spawned numerous parodies, from imitation eyebrow dancers including Lily Allen and Alan Carr, whose rendition on Channel 4's The Sunday Night Project has become a YouTube hit in its own right. Cadbury's website invites visitors to enter an eyebrow dancing competition called "Jivebrow 09", promising an audience of millions.

Lee Rolston, director of marketing for Cadbury Dairy Milk, said: "TV and online are morphing almost daily. We tend to put our first ads in big things such as the Big Brother final or the X Factor, then it's immediately online, which becomes a very fluid, organic process. People tend to interact with the films and make their own versions and their own music. We just let it go and see what people think of it.

"It's down to the quality of the film, and how it makes you feel, to how successful it is as a piece of online film. It should surprise and delight you so you want to pass it on, and the best medium for that is online."

From Media Guardian

Happy Valentine's

Kazunori Yamazaki, a 51-year-old Japanese farmer was astonished when a baby ox was born on his farm complete with a heart-shaped marking on its forehead.

The creatively-named 'Heart' was born 20 days ago at the Yamakun farm in Fujisawa, near Tokyo.

The paradox of PLEASE

This is great.

From the ever-educational Logic+Emotion.

New Cinnamon Creative Site

Cinnamon Creative has a fabulous new website! Have a look round and let us know what you think.

www.cinnamoncreative.com

Pimp that snack

If you’re stuck for ideas for that special someone on Valentine’s Day, check out Pimp That Snack. Many treasures to be found. Favourites are the toffee crisp, chocolate button, twix, creme egg and number one the party ring.

Thanks to It's Nice That.

How to make the most out of Snow Day

A huge group effort by random strangers on Hampstead Heath helped to produce an enormous snowball that was eventually pushed down the hill after much protestation from the safety police.

New website is the 'Google for Films'

For the first time the release dates for every film and DVD available in the UK, and where to watch or obtain them lawfully, has been put on a single website.

Seeing itself as the “Google for films”, the site from the UK Film Council lets visitors find out when, where and how a film is available, legally and on across all formats.

FindAnyFilm.com will be updated daily, but already offers more than 30,000 unique film records – the equivalent to seven years’ worth of film – for its users to search. Like most movie searches, the site lets users enter the genre of a film but it can also run keyword searches by mood, location or film preferences, like ‘fairytale ending.’

The thinking behind the site, beyond giving film addicts their fix, is to combat the piracy that costs British TV and film-makers a reported £485m a year in lost revenue.

London snow provides blank canvas for branding

An innovative and quick-thinking creative agency, took advantage of yesterday's blizzards to deliver a 'snow-tagging' campaign for sports channel, Extreme.

Curb, which provides branding and advertising solutions using only natural resources, stamped over 2000 Extreme logos onto 350 London locations.

Parked cars, post boxes, walls and central London’s shopping hub Oxford Street, were all branded with the logo, which was applied using a laser cut stencil.

Al Gosling, CEO of Extreme Group, said: "Extreme has a long history of both branding innovation and association with alpine adrenaline living, but it’s not very often we get to bring these both together onto the streets of London.

Review of 10 trends that will affect brands and business in 2009

Click here to read the 10 trends that will affect brands and business in 2009.

Photoshopped Ads Get Exposed in Berlin

Messing with ads in subways is becoming an artform, but this "Photoshopping" of ads in Berlin takes things to the next level by creating a Photoshop interface with stickers. Pitch-perfect adbusting.

More subway images here.

SketchSwap

Nice new site: SketchSwap is a web based drawing board where you can draw something on the screen and receive a random drawing back in return.

Make sure you have your wacom at the ready if you want to be top of the tree.

Obamicon Me

Yes you can!

(Obama-ize yourself that is). Make your own "Obamicon" (your image in a style inspired by Shepard Fairey's iconic poster) over on Obamicon.Me.

Thanks to Holster for the link.

Inspired Advertising

Fantastic Ad from T-Mobile

This is Saatchi & Saatchi's fantastic new T-mobile advert which was filmed at 11am on Thursday 15th January 2009 at London's Liverpool Street station, and aired on Channel 4 less than 48 hours later.

I love the random granny joining in and throwing in some shapes whilst holding her shopping.

Stamp of approval for British design classics

A set of first class stamps were issued today to commemorate ten icons of British design. The Royal Mail’s new series offers up a noticeably nostalgic look at some British Design Classics, largely from the 1930s and 1960s.

RJ Mitchell’s Spitfire, George Carwardine’s angelpoise lamp, Harry Beck’s map of the London Underground network and Edward Young’s designs for Penguin all originate from the 1930s.



The series of ten also includes Sir Giles Gilbert Scott’s 1962 telephone box and Robin Day’s polypropylene chair for Hille Seating from 1963.



Classic designs like the Routemaster bus (manufactured between 1954 and 1968) and Concorde (1969-2003) have been retired relatively recently, but the 1965 mini skirt is still a classic of contemporary fashion, and the Mini (originally launched in 1959) has moved with the times and is actually the most popular British designed and built car ever. Not only that but its stylish design made it a hit with the trend setters of the swinging sixties with everyone from John Lennon and Marianne Faithfull to Peter Sellers and Steve McQueen owning one.

Wobbly web

Stylish and clever advertising for the iPod Touch on Yahoo's website.

From Richard Holt's fabulous blog

Jewish Book Week 2009: complete branding

For the 5th successive year, Cinnamon Creative has created the complete branding programme for London’s largest literary festival - JBW - including the 64pp programme, signage, posters and nationwide advertising.

To book for sessions at Jewish Book Week, visit www.jewishbookweek.com

Type assault

When bad tracking and bad naming collide the results really can be bad.

Almost as good as this URL…

From Richard Holt's fabulous blog

Apple Introduces Revolutionary New Laptop With No Keyboard: the MacBook Wheel

Apple employee fired for thinking different!

This is funny, poor guy... shame on you for being so innovative.

Design Inspiration

Company are a very talented London-based studio whose new site houses a fantastic range of really beautiful design work, and also some self initiated 'Friday afternoon' projects like ‘Hairface’ above.

Check out their work for some design inspiration, in particular for visual identity.

Amazing interactive site

Created in Flash using Masayuki Kido's own 3D library, Eco Zoo is a stunning interactive site - a 3d virtual pop-up book, full of cartoon animals and lush illustrations in a story that teaches through play.

It's aimed at children with characters encouraging kids to perform simple tasks like using re-usable shopping bags and turning electrical devices off at home, but rather than lecturing kids about saving energy, Eco Zoo lets them discover, through the animals' stories, how to be energy-efficient in the home.

This site is not only technically brilliant, it has real charm too.

Excel-lent video

Here's the world's first music video in an Excel spreadsheet!

To commemorate the return of heavy metal veterans AC/DC, Sony BMG have created this little piece of ASCII art history. You can download the Excel file here or if you don't have Excel you can experience it in all its greyscale glory via Youtube above.

Stickers for sneakers

If you've ever wanted to customise your own footwear, you can do it with Sneakerskin stickers. On this site you're able to to order all types of pattern sheets, then just get out your scissors, and give your trainers a quirky makeover.

You can also become a Sneakartist yourself by designing your own pattern and uploading it and making it available for the public to buy, with 10 per cent of the final sale price going to you. Not all designs, however, will make the cut — only the most unique and original artwork passes the grade.

Check out all the details on sneakart.com

Sneezing Panda

This hasn't got too much to do with visual communications but it is just too funny not to post.

10 useful iPhone tips & tricks

I’m sure that many iPhone owners are “power users” and probably know most of the following tips. But more casual iPhone users will find this excellent list, taken from tap tap tap, incredibly useful. I know I did!

1. Scroll to top
Tapping the status bar (the bar at the top with the clock) will make scrollable content scroll to the top. It comes in handy in situations like when you’ve scrolled down a long web page or mail message and you quickly need to get back to the top.

2. Screenshots
Simultaneously press the Home and Sleep/Wake buttons to take a screenshot of your current screen. You’ll hear a camera shutter sound, your screen will flash white, then the screenshot will appear in the “Saved Photos” library of the Photos app.

3. Saving images in Safari and Mail
Touching an image in Safari or Mail for a couple of seconds will present you with an action sheet which will enable you to save the image. As with taking screenshots, the image will get stored in the “Saved Photos” library of the Photos app.

4. Caps lock
Double-tap the Shift key to lock it to write in caps. For this to work, you need to make sure 'Enable Caps Lock' is turned on in the Keyboard section of General settings.

5. Extra keys
Do you need to type an umlauted-u (ü) but you’re not using the German keyboard? Touch and hold the U key and you get a set of additional keys to choose from.

This works for several of the alphabetic keys, enabling you access to letters such as éîçåß, etc.

In addition, there are several punctuation keys that behave similarly, so that you can type curly-quotes, etc. if you keep your finger on the inverted commas key

And furthermore, when the keyboard is in “URL-mode”, where the “.com” key is available, touching and holding it pops-up additional options for quickly entering .net, .edu, and .org domains.

6. Lock / shut down / force quit / reset
Many people are under the false impression that locking the phone is equivalent to putting your Mac to sleep. But when your phone is locked, the screen turns off but the app that’s running at the time continues to run. For instance a relaxation app is able to continue playing sound but save battery power with the screen off. So, locking your phone is actually more like “display sleep” on your Mac.

So to ensure that your phone is using as little battery as possible, you’re best off always pressing the Home button before locking so that no app remains running.

To turn your phone completely off, press the Sleep/Wake button for a few seconds then drag the red slider that appears.

Additionally if you have ever been using an app and it’s become very unresponsive or completely frozen, you can force quit it by pressing the Home button for at least six seconds.

And finally, if your phone seems to be completely frozen where attempting to turn it off or force quit the current app does nothing, you can force a reset of your phone by pressing both the Sleep/Wake and Home buttons for at least ten seconds. Note that while Apple technically calls this a “reset”, it’s actually more like a “reboot” and none of your settings will be changed.

7. Home button options
A very underused, yet convenient feature is that you’re able to set the function for double-clicking the Home button. By default, this just brings you to the Home screen, meaning no different function than clicking the Home button once.

But if you go to the Settings app then navigate to General then Home Button, you’ll find a few handy options. I have mine set to go to my Phone Favorites but you can also set it to open the iPod app, or just show the iPod controls when music is playing.

Also with the newest iPhone OS when you now click the Home button while already on the Home screen, it’ll quickly take you to the first page of apps. This is a great feature if you have your phone filled with apps… and who doesn’t these days?

8. Swipe to delete
In the Mail app and many others that use lists of items, you’re able to quickly delete an item by swiping your finger across the item… sort of emulating crossing something off a list. Doing so exposes a Delete button so that you’re able to confirm your action.

9. The mic on the earbuds is also a button
Squeeze once to answer a call, and again to hang up. If there is no call, squeeze once to start music and again to pause. A double squeeze will advance to the next track.

10. More Shortcuts
- You can double tap space to get period + space.
- To silence a call, press the Sleep/Wake or either volume button. You can still answer the call after silencing it, until it goes to voicemail.
- For a quick "Go To Date” in Calendar, press either of the arrows on the top bar that shows the date.

This is by no means a comprehensive list, but ten of the most useful. To find out every single tip going, check out Apple's iPhone Tips page.

'Sock and Awe!' viral sold for £5,215 on eBay

Yesterday the viral game site,'Sock and Awe!' was sold on eBay for £5,215, after being created only a few days previously.

The website features a simple game where users throw shoes at George W. Bush, following the highly reported Bush/Shoe incident on Sunday at a press conference in Iraq.

The game was created by Alex Tew, who first came to worldwide attention when, aged 21, he created the Million Dollar Homepage, an advertising website that sold pixels for a dollar a piece.

This guy certainly has some innovative entrepreneurial ideas.

And speaking of mosaics...

...in order to celebrate over 10,000 apps in the App Store, TapTapTap has created a mosaic of an iPhone loaded up with apps- out of the icons of App Store apps.

You can see the entire thing full scale over on Flickr, and World of Apple is selling a poster of the image if any of you fancy a bit of geeky interior design ;-)

Speaking of 'Jobs'...

...(see post below), here's an iconic mosiac (literally) of another kind of 'Jobs' - the legend that is Steve Jobs, made up of all sorts of different icons by the Flickr user, tsevis. He does a pretty good job of capturing his Steveness in my opinion, and the rest of his Flickr set is equally as creative.

Which is the best design job board?

Here are 5 of the most popular ones. Do you have any others to recommend?

The FWA's job section is well worth visiting if you're looking for a post in the UK. It has a good reputation, especially among the web design Flash community, and holds information on vacancies with leading agencies.

The mad.co.uk jobs board is the best place to find UK-based jobs. All the biggies advertise here and it includes the jobs sections from Design Week, Marketing Week , DM Weekly and NMA magazines.

The popular Smashing Magazine sports a great searchable job board that includes full-time and freelance posts. The focus is on the US market, but a few British agencies have started to get in on the game, too.

Coroflot, created by industrial design mag Core777, has turned into one of the biggest career community sites. Job hunters can upload their own portfolios and browse the frequently updated job board, which has offerings from all over the world.

The jobs board on guardian.co.uk is another top place to go for creative UK-based design jobs, though this site is more focussed on permanent vacancies, rather then one-off freelance jobs.

iPhone: you Mac my day

I am now a very happy owner of one of these beauties. You can read all the rave reviews elsewhere (so far I agree with every one of them) but I have to say that one of the things I am most excited about, is that this is shaping up to be the first mobile phone camera that I'm actually going to use. Getting pictures off of my old mobile phone camera was never easy, so I never did it. The pictures that I took with it were ones that I intended to use for wallpaper. But the iPhone syncs so easily with iPhoto and the quality is pretty good. Purchasing the Toy Camera app (which gives your camera a great random photo effect) makes it even more fun.

Buying a product from Apple has always been a pleasure and the iPhone has not disappointed me yet!

Time to add the iPhone to my lovemarks...

Typograpical response taken from the film, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels

Created in After Effects, this is one of the best typography sequences out there

Download your favourite books for free

I generally like my books printed on paper, not least because of the chance to enjoy fabulously designed book covers, but if you disagree, or if a weighty volume just won't fit in your bag, try Gutenberg.org.

It's not the most beautiful of sites, but it's an excellent online library of downloadable books, and best of all, it's entirely free.

The worst an ad can get: Tiger Woods, Roger Federer and Thierry Henry win award for most cringeworthy commercial

It should have been a slick promo featuring three of the world's sporting giants, but the Gilette campaign featuring three of the world's highest paid sports stars has been named the worst TV advert of the year by industry magazine Campaign.

Tennis champion Roger Federer, golfer Tiger Woods and footballer Thierry Henry all appeared in the Gillette campaign which showed them using their respective skills to persuade their male target audience to pick up the brand's razor.

With their Hollywood grins, and slick suits, the trio are seen wielding their balls - tennis, golf, and football - to urge men to use the brand's newer Fusion Power razor.

But their on-screen efforts did not match up to their sporting prowess and the ad was voted top turkey of 2008.

Campaign editor Claire Beale said: "The Gillette ad is an own goal, a double fault and a bunker shot rolled into one.

"To secure three of the world's most famous sports stars would have cost Gillette millions but is such a wasted opportunity as the creative lacks any charm or wit."

To make matters even worse, they couldn't even get all three sporting heroes to appear together. Watch closely and you'll notice that they never appear together in the same shot, aside from some cheap compositing effects.

Bill Gates and Sir Alan Sugar made some of the *worst* technology predictions of all time

Big ol' Bill Gates and the legendary Sir Alan Sugar have made two of the worst technology predictions of all time.

Bill Gates back in 1981 allegedly said that, "nobody would ever need more than 640 kilobytes of memory on their personal computer." Hhhhmmm... most machines now are not sold with at least 2 gigs of memory, aren't they?

He also said at the 2004 World Economic Forum: "Two years from now, spam will be solved."

But perhaps the prediction that was proved wrong almost instantaneously was the one made by Sir Alan in an interview with the Daily Telegraph in February 2005. The founder of Amstrad said: "Next Christmas the iPod will be dead, finished, gone, kaput."

Do we think he's got one?

Designing for London’s Leading Literary Festival

Cinnamon Creative has designed the teaser flyers for London’s leading literary festival, Jewish Book Week 2009.

20,000 of these have been printed and they will be distributed all over the capital during December and January.

If you like the flyer, you’ll love the 64 page programme, out on January 6th. Email me your address details if you’d like one, and I’ll add you to the mailing list and get one posted out to you asap.

The festival runs in central London from 21st February to 1st March 2009.

The first computer I owned

Sadly it wasn't an Apple Mac. It was the family computer and being only 7 years old, I had no say in it whatsoever.

It was a Commodore 64 and below is an advert for it that I unearthed.

This is the kind of advertising that my parents were susceptible to?
Too funny...

What was the first computer you owned?

9 to 5 Must-haves

If you’re a connoisseur of the cuppa and know exactly how you like your favourite hot drink made, then you might like this clever little 'Love Your Mug'.

It enables you to personalise a mug with your exact hot drink preferences so whoever’s kind enough to make your cuppa will get it just right, every single time.

And if you're looking for a new laptop sleeve, the one above is sure to raise a few eyebrows in the office. If you've spotted any other interesting laptop sleeve/bags comment below.

Review: Babylon at the British Museum

Some say big exhibitions at the British Museum often look dry compared to the Tate Modern’s blockbusters or V&A’s fashion shows, but I thought Babylon was outstanding. It certainly deserves blockbuster status since the impression it leaves is of the inevitability of human nature and self destruction; as relevant now as it was thousands of years before we even started counting them.

The curators have expertly chosen to include art, poetry, audio tracks, and accessible, concise explanations to charge our interest in the ancient architectural relics. By evoking the imagination as well as the mind, a vanished civilization becomes reconstructed.

Some of the exhibits have never been seen in Britain before, and include awe-inspiring glazed brick panels from the Ishtar Gate and Processional Way, and a typographically stunning tablet describing the New Year celebrations in the city. With many such objects on display, the show aims to give visitors a real taste of everyday Babylonian life and culture.



Famous myths and stories are also explored including the Hanging Gardens, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, together with some of the incredible Babylonian achievements that are still with us today. Try to imagine life without the the 60 second minute and 60 minute hour and you'll begin to appreciate just how much we owe to the people of Babylon...

As an aside, one of the images from the exhibition, pictured at the top (Julee Holcombe's "Babel Revisited') reminds me of a piece of work I did for the Financial Times pictured below.

Babylon: Myth or Reality on show at the British Museum, Great Russell Street, London, WC1B 3DG until March 15 2009.


Make calls for free from your iPod Touch

You can now make calls for free from your iPod Touch via a new application, Truphone.

Truphone's VOIP software comes into its own on Apple's wi-fi beastie.

I've downloaded it, it's easy to install and the call quality is great.

Download it for free from the iTunes store right here

The nuttiest portfolio site I've ever seen (but well worth a visit)

This is an internet experience that will leave you both bewildered and enchanted. It's a portfolio site for the Dutch web designer Coen Grift, and operates in a highly unique style. Instead of viewing the site by clicking on various pages, you use a hand to drag your way around one enormous, apparently endless, piece of pixelated art. There are plenty of strange sound effects too (be prepared for some salty language).

Drive-Through Rap

I insist you watch this. It will brighten up your day.

Quantum of Solace

The film didn't do it for me, but this book cover, designed by Angus Hyland and Fabian Herrmann of Pentagram, is undoubtedly uber-stylish.

The book is a collection of Ian Fleming’s Bond short stories (bound in a single volume for the first time) and includes stories that inspired the Bond film classics From a View to a Kill, For Your Eyes Only, Octopussy, The Living Daylights and of course, Quantum of Solace, the latest in the series.

More beautiful work from Pentagram here

Malcolm Gladwell Live!

Last night, for one night only, New York guru Malcolm Gladwell replaced The Lion King at the Lyceum in London.

Considered to be “the most influential thinker of the iPod generation” (The Observer), the thought of Gladwell bringing his big ideas to the West End stage was a tantalising prospect, and i was looking forward to hearing him.

But, in fact, like Stephen Moss's spot-on review in the Guardian, I felt that Gladwell's theses got lost in the clouds.

As Moss says, You end up wondering "why am I here with all these people in expensive spectacles sending text messages?", and, more insidiously, "wouldn't I prefer to be watching The Lion King?"

The Very Best in Toilet Design

Bathrooms are starting to get some serious design attention. There is a lot of room to impress and surprise - it is one huge untapped opportunity. Seriously!