Do I have to dress as an inventor? - GeoVation Challenge: Inventorium

Matt (Fribrax) and I are taking part in the GeoVation Challenge: Inventorium Idea & Team Generation Day on 1st March in Bangor.

Entrepreneurs, developers, community groups, innovators – enter the ‘How can we transform neighbourhoods in Britain together?' GeoVation Challenge for a chance to win a slice of  innovation funding to help develop their ideas. There is £115, 000 worth of prizes for good ideas on  ’How can we transform neighbourhoods in Britain together?’ and even more prizes for ideas that can support visitors and communities on the new ’Wales Coast Path’.  These prizes are part of Ordnance Survey’s GeoVation Challenges.

On St.Davids Day, Inventorium invite innovators to an informal workshop aimed at forming teams with ideas which can crack the GeoVation Challenges. GeoVation Challenges will be solved by teams with diverse knowledge of technology, business and the needs of society. Ordnance Survey will fund the ideas making best use of Ordnance Survey data, including OS OpenData and OS OpenSpace.

I'm sure that when we get there we will find lots of little sheds for us to invent in. Can't wait, I'm sure we'll meet loads of interesting people and hopefully this might generate some network opportunities for Mako Creative as well. If anybody else has been before please let us know what it's like.

We'll let you know how we got on.

For more information visit www.inventorium.org and www.geovation.org.uk/geovationchallenge/

Something for the weekend - What does 'virgin' mean?

Last Friday in February already - only 10 months to go till Christmas Eve. Can't believe it...

Here's something that's already a couple of years old but still makes me smile. Hope you like it too.
Have a lovely weekend everyone.

‪Choices for Girls - interactive bus shelter ad‬

Plan UK's campaign just launched a groundbreaking interactive ad on a bus stop in Oxford Street that uses facial recognition technology. The ad is placed in a bus shelter outside Selfridges and will be available for consumers to interact with for two weeks.

The facial recognition technology determines whether a man or a woman is standing in front of the ad. Women will see a 40 second advert featuring girls from the UK, Mali and Thailand, while men will be shown a plain script including the message "We are choosing to show our advert only to girls to give you a glimpse of what life could be like without choices". Men are denied the choice to view the full advert in order to highlight the fact that many women and girls around the world are denied choices and opportunities due to discrimination and poverty.
The advert forms part of a wider campaign 'Because I am a girl'.



Plan UK's interactive bus stop ad was also featured on BBC London.



For more information about the campaign visit www.plan-uk.org/choices-for-girls

Infoshop Wrexham - School Counselling leaflet and poster

Here's some recent work we did for the Infoshop in Wrexham where they provide all kinds of information and services for young people as well as a free and confidential counselling service.

This project was specifically for school counselling and started out like a bit of an origami session in the studio. The reason for this was that it had to be a bilingual leaflet and folded from a flat A4 size to an A7 (slightly bigger than a business card). The challenge was to find the right way of folding it and placing the text so it makes sense for both languages. And there are a lot of different ways of doing this I can tell you...

This was the final conclusion we thought works best. The leaflet and poster had to appeal to young people so we chose bold colours and graphics for the design.

English cover of the folded leaflet

opening up

inside of the leaflet

reverse of the unfolded leaflet

accompanying posters in Welsh and English

"Alaaf zesamme!!" - German Carnival

Today is 'Weiberfastnacht' (Carnival Thursday) an unofficial holiday in Rhineland, Germany, that marks the beginning of the actual Carnival week that ends on Ash Wednesday. We also call the whole Carnival season 'Fifth Season'.

The celebration started today at 11:11am and commemorates an 1824 revolt by washer-women. Women storm city halls and cut off the ties of men - the tie being a symbol of the men's power. The men wear the blunt of their ties and get a 'Buetzchen' (little kiss) as compensation. People wear costumes and celebrate in the streets with music and drinks, children go in their costumes to school and have a little celebration there.

Cologne Carnival is the largest and most famous in North Rhine-Westphalia with its peak being 'Rosenmontag' (Rose Monday) where the biggest and most popular Carnival parades are held.

And obviously the costume is one of the most important things and there is a whole industry depending on it.

So here are a couple of impressions - some of them are quiet embarrassing:

Believe it or not -
that's me 32 years ago.

Back in 1987.

Rosenmontagszug (Rose Monday Parade)
in Bonn, Germany, 2006.

Rosenmontagszug in Cologne, Germany, 2006.
Photography by Rolf Hahn

Oh, and 'Alaaf!' is the official Carnival greeting in the Cologne/Bonn area.

"German Tuesday - Deutscher Dienstag": Happy Valentine's Day!!

Yes, it's Valentine's Day (Valentinstag) in Germany too. And contrary to popular believes, Germans are actually quite romantic. But unlike English speaking countries and France, we have not been celebrating it in a commercial way for a very long time.

It doesn't stop with heart shaped cards, red roses and chocolates though. Zoo Cologne, Germany, is running “Tour D’Amour” this Valentine’s Day, promoted in a series of posters with romantically inclined animals, a gorilla, owl and camel. “Visit the Tour D’Amour at Valentine’s Day”.
Even the animals get romantic...

The Tour D’Amour campaign was developed at Preuss und Preuss, Berlin, by creative director/copywriter Michael Preuss, art director Zuzana Havelcova, graphic designer Denis Junemann, consultants Nina Preuss and Janina Gutermann.

[via adsoftheworld.com]

A Designer's Confession - The honest truth

There have always been preconceptions about what designers think and do behind closed doors.

In her project 'Confessions of a Designer' Anneke Short has collected quotes that she has either found herself thinking or heard her designer friends say and created minimalist posters with them. The messages are hilarious because of their straight-up honesty and set the record straight about what it means to be a "real" designer.

And these are so true… Probably the only one missing would be
"Oh, you went to school for this?"

[via trendhunter.com and blog.ams-designstudio.com]

Toy Fair Olympia

 (A few days in the life of a designer turned exhibition contractor)

We produced the stand at the Toy Fair for one of our clients Tolo Toys. After an early (4.30am) Sunday morning start we arrived in convoy at Olympia ahead of schedule. It has been a while since I had been to Olympia and had to get my bearings all over again. Ah yes... here was that tiny loading area to get 2 large vans in and transport all the (extremely) large packing cases, exhibition boards,  pallets and everything else for the stand in a small lift to the gallery floor. Not that difficult I here you say, but the problem was there were about another 50 exhibition, catering and stand companies all wanting to do exactly the same thing and at the same time as us!! I have never witnessed Lift rage before, and it wasn't pretty let me tell you. Anyway after much waiting, cursing, clock watching and sweating (those crates weren't light) we finally managed to get everything to the site.

The space was 8m x 4m, not a small space but not a particularly large one either as everything we had unloaded took up far more room than the space itself. That famous expression - "I think we need a bigger boat" came to mind. Soon the two of us were well under way moving things around so we could lay the carpet down first, which I must say went down like a dream (note to self - add carpet laying skills to other talents).

Once this was in place the front wall went up and was swiftly followed by the back and side walls enclosing the whole stand - it was beginning to look a lot like an exhibition stand already.
Time check - 9.30pm not bad, only a 15 hour day so far.

The next day was spent building in the shelves for all of the stock and merchandising and dressing the stand with graphics, and displaying models etc, just managed to get to the train station on time and arrived back at 11.30pm.

Exhibitions are very hard work (I know all you exhibition contractors out there are nodding in agreement) but it is incredibly rewarding when you see all your efforts come together to make something from nothing. All in all some very good work by everyone I think you will agree.

The Toy Fair lasts for just three days so we had to go back and do it all again, but in reverse.

Roll on next year!

T-Mobile: What Britain Loves

T-Mobile has unveiled a new advert, voiced by Harry Hill, to promote its Full Monty plan. Created by Saatchi & Saatchi, it shows all the things that Britain loves, such as old people, fake tan and the countryside etc. 

 

And as a Non-Brit I have to admit some of it seems to be quite true...

Watch the weird and wonderful things Britain loves.