Hung Like A Billboard

HBO’s show HUNG has now made its New Zealand debut on TVNZ’s Channel One.

Auckland-based ad agency Colenso BBDO was retained to promote the show and to generate some buzz. They have definitely created a buzz with their risqué billboard, recently erected on Victoria Street in central Auckland. Whether you like the billboard or not, and whether it draws you to watch the show or not, you must admit that the old, tried-and-true subjects – well-endowed female and male bodies – never seem to fail to draw attention...

From The Cool Hunter

Curiouser and curiouser...

As the designer of a fair few e-marketing newsletters, I'm always interested in the e-tail designs that drop into my inbox and today's Alice in Wonderland-themed offering from Selfridges.com was, I thought, jaw-droppingly beautiful (Verdana body-copy typeface aside).

As the Verdana text wasn't live, why oh why did they choose one of the world's ugliest typefaces (designed especially for Microsoft) for the body copy?

How nice is this? A sketch of a cat drawn from a single line.

Found on the homepage of the Design Museum's website.

Where to find London's best hot chocolate

Nothing to do with design, but so very important.

The best hot chocolate will banish all memories of milky bedtime cocoa - it's rich, complex and made with quality raw ingredients. London is starting to wake up to the idea of hot chocolate as a serious drink - here's Time Out's pick of some of the best purveyors in the city:

Artisan du Chocolat
89 Lower Sloane St, SW1W 8DA (0845 270 6996/www.artisanduchocolat.com)
The all-white ‘chocolateria’ at Artisan du Chocolat may be oddly reminiscent of Stanley Kubrick's milk bar in ‘A Clockwork Orange’, but thankfully the similarity ends there. You can pop in for hot chocolate to take away (£2) and if you drink in, the £3 includes your choice of three fresh, handmade truffles. The intense espresso hot chocolate will blast any cobwebs from the brain or you can go for the gentler matcha white hot chocolate made with Japanese green tea.

Carluccio’s Caffè
www.carluccios.com
The Italian caffè chain does hot chocolate better than most. Its specialites include bicerin, a concoction from Turin which lets the drinker mix their own preferred combination of espresso, Florentine chocolate and cream from little jugs. Branches throughout London.

Mélange
184 Bellenden Road, SE15 4BW (07722 650 711/www.themelange.com)
The hot chocolate served up by self-taught French chocolatiere Isabelle Alaya in her colourful little shop has become something of an obsession among posh Peckham-ites. The recipe is a secret, but it’s based on high-quality Belgian chocolate; rich and aromatic, it’s thick but not cloying, with a good balance of sweet and bitter flavours.

Melt
59 Ledbury Rd, W11 2AA (7727 5030/www.meltchocolates.com)
Chocolatier Chika Watanabe creates Melt’s hot chocolate with Madagascan vanilla-infused double cream and a drop of peppermint oil. The result is an intensely dark and rich drink enjoyed in tiny cups.

Paul A Young
33 Camden Passage, N1 8EA (7424 5750/www.paulayoung.co.uk). Branch at 20 Royal Exchange, Threadneedle St, EC3V 3LP
Former pastry chef Paul A Young makes different strengths of hot chocolate according to the weather forecast, and mixes it only with water to preserve the complex flavours of the beans. Slip into his tempting brown-and-cream basement atelier in Camden Passage and try the warming Aztec blend, made with Ancho chilli.

Princi
135 Wardour St, W1F 0UF (7478 8888/www.princi.co.uk)
This buzzing Soho bakery and caffè is a branch of a stylish Milanese coffee shop, and imports its chocolate from the house of Mussetti, which has been blending coffee and chocolate in Piacenza since 1934. Accompany your drink with one of the great Italian savouries or cakes and enjoy the buzz.

William Curley
198 Ebury St, SW1W 8UN (7730 5522/www.williamcurley.co.uk). Branch at 10 Paved Court, Richmond, TW9 1LZ
William Curley’s original shop is in Richmond. The second shop, in spacious new premises in swish Belgravia, opened late last year, giving the husband-and-wife team of William and Suzue more room to develop new ideas, including a breakfast and dessert bar, and a new teaching area/demonstration space downstairs. The hot chocolate tends to be light and frothy, rather than stand-a-spoon thick. The house blend is 70 per cent Amade, but there’s also Gianduja, with hazelnut praline and Aztec, which has a clean, clear flavour, with a spicy sting in its tail. Just try to resist the range of Viennoiserie and ‘fancies’ on offer, from raspberry delices to Bakewell tarts and yuzu cakes, flavoured with Japanese citrus, or the range of handmade truffles.

The Wolseley
160 Piccadilly, W1J 9EB (7699 6996/www.thewolseley.com)
Hot chocolate is considered to be a proper, grown-up drink on the Continent. Accordingly, this European brasserie serves a few types, including the espresso-sized fondant, versions with whipped cream, and a truly decadent rum version that’s scrumptious.

iPad Keynote in less than 180 Seconds: Incredible, Beautiful, Amazing

Apparently no scene has been repeated and everything was uttered as is on this keynote (with even a few 'amazing's taken out).

Thanks to my 'Mac buddy'. Avishay for this.

Google splashes out $5m on Super Bowl with a beautifully simple ad

Google's aversion to advertising its search engine on TV ended with a bang on Sunday night as the company paid an estimated $5m to run a commercial during the Super Bowl.

The minute-long spot marks the biggest venture into mainstream advertising for a company that has become notorious growing almost exclusively through word of mouth and online exposure.

Google's "Parisian Love" commercial, which featured a variety of plugs for the company's search engine played out as a virtual love story, was aired during the game's third quarter and lasted a full minute.

As one of the world's most-viewed TV events, the Super Bowl is a opportunity for advertisers to reach huge audiences in one swoop - and a notorious cash cow for the NFL. With companies charged around $2.5m for a 30 second spot last year's game, which lasted just over three and a half hours, made $213m from advertising alone.

While is not the first time that Google has ventured into mainstream ads – in recent months the company has promoted its web browser, Chrome and run an international campaign to publicise its web-based software - it has done little or no external marketing of its search engine for most of its life.

Indeed, such has been the antipathy towards promoting its basic products through traditional channels that senior executives have even launched attacks on the company's rivals for using advertising.

In an interview on Fox Business News last summer, Schmidt railed against Microsoft for trying to spend their way to a market-leading position.

"You don't buy it with ads," he said. "You earn it, and you earn it customer by customer, search for search, answer by answer."

According to advertising experts, Google's Super Bowl debut was a hit: Tim Calkins, a professor of marketing with the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University in Illinois, said Google's advert proved the most successful during this year's event, according to their tests.

"The Google spot laddered up to the emotion but maintained function," Calkins said.

Latest Work: branding for the new generation of kidswear for Marks & Spencer

Logo, branding and web site landing pages for 'Rock Royalty', the new generation of kidswear for Marks & Spencer.

See the branding live here and the design for 'Behind the Scenes at the photoshoot' here.

Brilliant stop motion: Oren Lavie Grammy Award nominated music video

JUST BRILLIANT: Oren Lavie, the Israeli singer, has just won a Grammy Award nomination in the Best Short Form Music Video category. His video is showing a girl in bed using stop motion technique. It was made of 2,096 still photographs, which you can now buy for $250 each. Is it worth it?

Nice envelope design

Great idea by Beste Miray. Design it, then post it from your exact location

What a great ad: Honda do it again with their latest 'Everything we do'

The TV spot was created to support the British-built Honda Civic launched on 17th December 09. The ad showcases the breadth of Honda's engineering experience; from ATVs, to marine engines, motorcycles, and the humanoid robot ASIMO.

Another winner from Wieden + Kennedy

Supermodels Kate Moss, Naomi Campbell and Lara Stone on eight separate covers for LOVE magazine

Condé Nast has produced eight different covers for the latest issue of its fashion and lifestyle magazine, Love, featuring naked cover stars including Kate Moss, Naomi Campbell and Lara Stone.

Each is photographed naked in an identical pose by photographers Mert Alas and Marcus Piggot and feature in a 40-page shoot.

The other models who will appear in the magazine, published on Monday next week, are Natalia Vodianova, Amber Valetta, Jeneil Williams, Kristen McMenamy and Daria Werbowy.

Katie Grand, the Love editor, said the magazine had chosen the women who are generally acknowledged to be the most beautiful in the world for the "fashion icons" issue of the bi-annual magazine.

"For this issue of Love, we took eight women who are generally acknowledged as the most beautiful in the world, got them to show off their bodies – widely regarded as the most perfect in the world – and photographed them in exactly the same position for the cover," Grand added.

Alas said: "It was interesting to study them naked, all in the same pose, as they are all so different, but all so powerful-looking."

The new Macbook

What's in a name? The iPad mocking begins...

Are there too many men in Apple's marketing department?

That's what droves of women on Twitter and other social media sites are wondering as they consider the name of Steve Jobs' new lust object, the iPad. The name sits uncomfortably close to those cheesy commercials promoting the light and breezy features of feminine hygiene products.

The mocking goes along the lines of: Yes, the iPad is small, lightweight and slim. But can you swim with it?

And right now iTampon, Apple, iPhone, and Steve Jobs are all trending topics on Twitter but iPad isn't. Go figure Apple marketing department...

Mac in a Book: BookBook Got You Covered

The BookBook is a hardback leather carrying case for your MacBook or MacBook Pro.

"Zip it closed and your baby is nestled between two tough, rigid leather hardback covers for a solid level of impact absorbing protection. The rigid spine serves as crush protection for an additional line of defense."

In addition to the sleek and sturdy design Twelve South boasts that the "BookBook is the perfect disguise," providing "superior security" by masking your laptop as a "vintage piece of literature"

Though it might provide the extra security for your laptop it also might tempt the crooked bibliophile; for many a piece of "vintage literature" has more value than laptop.

I could see it now. Someone leaves their BookBook covered Mac on the table at the library. A book thief sees it, swipes it and is utterly disappointed when they get home, open it, an find they have been duped.

Thanks to Avishay for the pointer.

What Type Are You?

Always wondered what typeface you are? Now Pentagram can help give you an answer...

This site was originally set up as a Christmas message from Pentagram, but those clever folk at Creative Review have realised that the password works for anyone, so decided to share it with us.

Visit the site here, and simply type in your name and the password 'character' and off you go. A psychiatrist figure will then ask you a number of questions about your personality before diagnosing you with a typeface. A short film about your type will then play.

I was diagnosed as 'Letrees Ornees', below, a decorative typeface... Lovely!

Lady Gaga's getting creative for Polaroid

Polaroid are hiring 23 year old Lady Gaga as creative director.

Her role will take her behind the scenes of the 70-year-old company, which retired its analogue camera last year, where she will design and invent speciality projects.

According to Polaroid’s product pipeline, those projects will aim to deliver an easy-to-use or access digital experience, designed for instant fun and gratification…. Hhhmm

She said: "The Haus of Gaga has been developing prototypes in the vein of fashion/technology/photography innovation - blending the iconic history of Polaroid and instant film with the digital era. Lifestyle, music, art, fashion: I am so excited to extend myself behind the scenes as a designer, and to as my father puts it - finally, have a real job."

Latest Work: Valentine's branding for Marks & Spencer

Latest project is now live: Valentine's Day branding and landing pages for www.marksandspencer.com.

See the live designs here.

The most irritating ads of 2009: is being irritating a successful marketing strat­egy?

They may grab our attention and then worm their way into our subconscious, but some commercials are memorable for all the wrong reasons.

While 2009 may have been a tough 12 months for the Advertising industry, it was a vintage year for irritating ads.

The end of Kerry Katona's contract with Iceland did remove one regular fixture from the annual list, but a host of other brands has joined the fray. The morbidly obese opera singer of the Gocompare ad propelled the brand into the top spot of this year's annoying ads.

It was closely followed by Cash4Gold - a company that has become one of the beneficiaries of the recession by encourag­ing impecunious consumers to trade in their trinkets for hard cash.



As ever, many of the brands that top the list relish their most-irritating status. Nicholas Hall, head of marketing at Gocompare.com, says that, because the campaign is ‘not vanilla' it has significantly boosted the price-comparison site's profile. According to Go­com­pare's own consumer research, there has been a 200% increase in awareness of the brand since the activ­ity started in August.

One of the oldest truisms about market­ing posits that the bigger the brand, the harder the fall. Those that have the biggest budgets and shout the loudest also run the greatest risk of offending consum­ers. However, while McDonald's, Gillette and T-Mobile all make an appearance on this year's list, smaller brands are punch­ing above their weight when it comes to annoying consumers. Of particular note is the fact that three of the top 10 most-irritating ads were produced in-house by relatively new brands - Confused.com and Webuyanycar.com as well as Gocompare.com.

The question remains whether being irritating is a successful marketing strat­egy in itself. Proponents of this approach suggest that, like any strong response, irrit­ation equates to aware­ness - the ultimate aim of all ad campaigns. However, Simon White, joint man­aging director of ad agency Grey London, points out that brands that have been accused of irritating consumers in the past - such as Cillit Bang and Radion - achieved a short-term spike in sales, but struggled to maintain this performance in the long term.

This view is echoed by Richard Hunt­ington, director of strategy at Saatchi & Saatchi. He says that while these irritating ads are clearly memorable, whether they can form part of a sustainable commun­ication strategy remains to be seen. Put simply, once a brand has done its best to irritate consumers it is difficult to see where the creative approach goes next.

Given the sharp rise in complaints to the Advertising Stan­dards Authority, it could be argued that consumers are less tolerant of brands on the whole. Not so, according to Huntington. ‘People have become less tolerant of interruption but this is more to do with the entertainment on-demand culture,' he says.

Yet, there has been a shift in advertising strategies during the down­turn and many brands top­ping the list appear to have attended the Alan Sugar school of marketing; by asking their agen­cies to ‘work harder' to help them stand out from the crowd they are effect­ively causing brand­ing overkill, often through the medium of the jingle.

Andy Nairn, executive planning direct­or of ad agency MCBD, believes that it is not enough for ads simply to raise aware­ness if they are not well-liked. ‘Most peop­le have an awareness of Josef Fritzl, but it doesn't mean they want to spend time with him,' he says.

Nairn points to the success of brands such as Hovis that have fostered a genuin­ely emotional connection to consumers rather than focusing on direct response. ‘The standard of advert­ising has dropped as marketers increasingly believe they are working hard through excessive brand awareness,' he adds.

The last word goes to Gocompare.com's Hall, who clearly believes it is better to be on the list than forgotten about. ‘I'd say that the campaign has performed exactly as we'd have hoped so far, and, I'm sure, better than many of those campaigns that weren't memorable enough to make it into the list,' he says. ‘However, as much as you'd like to, you can't please all the people all of the time.' Whether his brand's activity pleases any of the people any of the time remains a moot point.

From brandrepublic

Badly placed advertisements

The result of placing advertisements on billboards, websites and newspapers in unintentionally the wrong place...








Credit: theprodesigner.com

JBW 2010

For the 6th 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.


The new programme launches online tomorrow, 7th January. To book for sessions for the capital's most exciting 'literary extravaganza', visit www.jewishbookweek.com

Obsessive iPhone disorder?

Do you eat, breathe and sleep your iPhone?

This may be taking your obsession to the extreme.

Thanks for this, Avishay! Not that you have OiD of course...

End of year message

Cinnamon Creative has had a fantastic 2009 and we've ended very positively by completing several exciting digital briefs, as well as producing print projects in the last month alone that total print runs of 230,000 pieces.

Check out the portfolio section of www.cinnamoncreative.com very soon for details of all these projects.

Thank you to all of our clients, many long standing and many new, for a fantastic year and inspiring projects. 2009 brought us the greatest number of new clients to date, and Karen and her team cannot wait to build on these old and new relationships in 2010.

Happy Holidays everyone!

Examples of creative barcodes

All created in Japan. Click the barcodes to enlarge

Colour of the Year for 2010: PANTONE 15-5519 Turquoise

Pantone today announced PANTONE 15-5519 Turquoise, as the colour of the year for 2010.

"In many cultures, Turquoise occupies a very special position in the world of colour," explained Leatrice Eiseman, executive director of the Pantone Color Institute.

"It is believed to be a protective talisman, a colour of deep compassion and healing, and a colour of faith and truth, inspired by water and sky.

"It is universally flattering, has appeal for men and women, and translates easily to fashion and interiors."

Hhhmmmm... I am more of a Pantone Red 485 kind of girl.

Nice website design that combines my two favourite things: good typography and chocolate

www.curiouschocolate.co.uk

iPhone Coasters

Real apps icons at full size resolution makes these coasters look just like giant apps.

Buy them online here

Logo swirl sparks 'sperm' jibes

A new logo for a north Devon resort which some residents have likened to a sperm has been defended by a "laid back" council.

The "idiosyncratic" swirl incorporated in the £5,000 logo for Ilfracombe has been criticised on the town's website, but Fresh Bread Marketing, the creators of the identity, said the swirl on the logo was meant to resemble a fish or dolphin. The swirl represents the dot on the "i" of Ilfracombe on the logo "Ilfracombe - curious coastal charm".

Ellen Vernon, economic regeneration officer at North Devon Council, which helped to develop the branding project with £5,000 funding, said: "To many, the 'swirl' represents Fore Street, the Harbour, a fish, an ice-cream and even waves. To others it may look like a sperm, which makes it vibrant and life-affirming."

Is it just coincidence that The Mirror reports that this town has a dire teen pregnancy record?!

Typographic Word Clock Screensaver

Word Clock is a typographic screensaver for Mac OS X and Windows. It displays a fixed list of all numbers and words sufficient to express any possible date and time as a sentence. Word Clock displays time by highlighting appropriate words as each second passes.

There are two display modes; Rotary which is shown above and Linear. Click here to download it.

Online Event hosted by Apple

There has been much debate about Mac v PC, especially in business. This event provides the opportunity to meet a small company that experienced the difference the Mac makes.

Apple are hosting a free online seminar with a live Q&A session on the 2nd of December 2009 from 19:00 - 20:00.

It will focus on James Stevenson, Managing Director of Virtual Aviation, who switched his company to the Mac platform after years of working with PCs. Not surprisingly, as it's Apple sponsored, James tells us how the change has helped his company improve operational efficiency, share data with ease and even manage customer accounts and bookings remotely using the iPhone.

Nevertheless of interest to all those contemplating moving to the mac platform.

Register to participate here:

Future Designer laptop

Who wouldn't want an unfurling portable computer? Steve Jobs take note of the flexible display from Orkin Design...

Does anybody know what this font is?

I really like the illustrative qualities to this font and was wondering whether anybody knows what it is? It's Westfield's 1st Birthday logo, so may have been a commissioned illustration, but I believe it is a font.

M&S website voted most user-friendly

According to a new Online High Street Report from web usability consultancy Webcredible, M&S has been voted the most user-friendly website of all UK high street brands.

It is a surprise result for M&S as its site only came ninth on the list last year. Meanwhile, WHSmith came joint second, whilst John Lewis maintained its place of third on the rankings.

The criteria used to evaluate the websites includes browsing, navigation, the checkout process , searching and product display pages.

Despite widespread improvements, there are some basic areas where retailers need to do better on, the report found.

Areas that could be improved include using the same form for logging on and registering, allowing customers to alter the number of products displayed on a page and changing the colour of visited links.

See the article in full on BBC News

Cinnamon Creative in current issue of Design Week

This week, Design Week reports the story of Cinnamon Creative's exciting new brand identity for top London security firm, 1st Class Protection. Karen Cinnamon has developed the new logo, luxury 12pp brochure, stationery and website for the leading security firm. and is currently working on 1st Class Protection's direct mail campaign targeting high-end residents.

Read the full article here, and view a selection of the completed designs here.

Marks & Spencer: new site design

Over the last couple of months Cinnamon Creative has been working on designs for many of the pages of the completely revamped M&S website which launched today.

The main visual difference is the new widescreen '1024' format that allows M&S to create more vibrant landing pages.

The new site also aims to improve the complete customer experience. New features include catwalk videos, fabric swatches and a carousel image suite which brings the clothes to life. The new site also includes stock availability information when customers select their sizes.

Check out the new site here and media coverage of the work here.

New Look TV: what an innovative idea

I'm currently working on an e-comms project for fashion retailer, New Look, and whilst doing so, have learnt about their fabulous new interactive online channel: New Look TV. It's essentially fashion TV that’s styled by their customers.

The shows are a combination of fashion and entertainment that put the spotlight firmly on the creativity and personalities of New Look customers. Their excitement about fashion gives the content its energy and pace while the user generated element of the shows and the channel enable everyone – both staff and customers – to get involved.

What a brilliant idea! Check out the beautifully designed channel here, and a sample show below:

Sexy chair

Good-looking but very uncomfortable (like a lot of 'sexy' attire ;-)

Robert Bradford - Recycled Toy Sculptures

I love these colourful dog sculptures, by Robert Bradford, made from discarded plastic items. The objects are mainly toys but there are also other colourful plastic bits and pieces, such as combs and buttons, brushes and parts of clothes pegs.

Recycling is not his primary concern, but each sculpture certainly keeps quite a few pieces from becoming landfill. Some of the sculptures contain pieces from up to 3,000 toys and sell for around £12,000.

From Cool Hunter