Posted via email from BGreen-Now™

This stuff is awesome – it’s part of a show from Harvest by Haroshi called Skate and Destroy currently showing at plsmis gallery in Tokyo, Japan until the 27th Feb. All the artworks have been created with old worn, or snapped, skateboard decks.

via designweak.com

Interesting project by Steve a Plan-B Studio. To celebrate 10 years in business he is going to donate 10 days a month to a different Non-Profit/NGO organisation each month. He’s offering to do anything from give up his creative expertise to working in the soup kitchen – will be following this one to see how it all goes for him.

If you are a Non-Profit/NGO organisation drop him a mail and see if you can take part steve@plan-bstudio.com

Posted via web from arcd

nice simple concept by VW – great way to highlight they are a think outside of the box kind of brand, while producing some great viral activity.

After a time, ‘Fun’ can no doubt turn to ‘Novelty’ and we all know ‘Novelty’ easily wears off, but I love the notion of causing changes in behavior with positive actions rather than threats or consequences. So far in the climate change debate, for example, too many messages are about ‘Massive Doom and Gloom Scenarios’ – for one reason or another these messages are rarely a catalyst for change with the masses – subconsciously overwhelmed they all too often continue with behavior as normal. VW may well be onto to something here with their Fun Theory…

Posted via web from BGreen-Now™

9/10 October sees the Semi-Permanent design conference heading to Melbourne. As always there is a great mix of international speakers offering up a more colourful mix than many of the more serious design related conferences on the annual calendar.

Speakers for 2009 include:
Grafik Magazine
Collider
Industrial Light & Magic
Three Drunk Monkeys
Jeff Soto
Hammer & Tong

for a full list of details, tickets and more got to the event site

Posted via web from arcd

One interesting aspect of this identity will be how strong it is compared to the actual Metropolitan Melbourne identity. Essentially this is a brand that only applies to the CBD not Greater Melbourne which seems a shame as it is a very comprehensive and adaptive as a brand system which would certainly answer the challenges of a brand working across a whole Metropolitan area.

F/F are looking forward to seeing the brand in action here in Melbourne – but note the local reaction so far (including the desing community) has been a little frosty.

Can’t help but noting that it also has a little nod to the system Wolff Olins developed for NYC earlier this year.

http://www.wolffolins.com/nyc.php

Posted via web from tony’s posterous

the one and only Andy Bobbin goes live with his excellent bobbindrawthis illustration blog – “more tea Ern?”

Posted via web from tony’s posterous

Start of a new series of experimental packaging solutions for Creative Review subscribers – will have to wait and see if the overseas subscribers get this as well – F/F hope so.

Posted via web from tony’s posterous

Last Friday provided one such moment. I have to say in general getting out in public spaces can be a great way of gleaning information for a project or about a certain demographic – a stealthy bit of eavesdropping can be just as valuable if not more so than a well constructed focus group or user workshop.

On this particular occasion I had the chance to listen to two first year college students (19yrs old or there a bouts) discuss in great detail the real life everyday trials and tribulations that gave them most concern: everything from ‘not hating on people who are easy targets’ to ‘how MySpace sucks so much time, just cos I want to feel some love and attention when I should be doing my college work!’

There was little that was surprising about what these two young guys had to say – but it was a quick reminder in how we in the creative industries tend to generalise too quickly. These two young guys as said were about 19, were both skaters, from their conversation and observations were certainly educated and articulate. They were very thoughtful if not a little introspective, but certainly sensitive to their place in society. In many ways their interests and opinions were typical of self marginalised youths who had chosen to pursue interests outside of the mainstream ‘normal’ culture. However it was plain to ‘hear’ that while they relished their self imposed identities on the edges of teenage culture – they also had a need to be accepted, to not be hated or disliked by the mainstream they had opted out of.

While the mainstream wasn’t for them – they talked about understanding that ‘different people move to different strokes’. In short they were happy with their choices but keen not to be critical of others just for their differences. Their concerns and dilemmas were the same regardless of their chosen interests in life.

It highlighted and reminded me why often the creative message misses the target with youth culture. In short often as an industry we try to hard to be elitist or exclusive in the message – we try to make it too cool, and in doing so we miss the core sentiments that are shared by the demographic. The same age old trials and tribulations of life as a teenager, where you are still looking for an identity, still wanting to be liked – no matter how angst the world makes you feel.

It was only because I’m between books and my iPod had gone flat that I caught this conversation – but it reminded me of the importance as creatives of not only ‘keeping out eyes open’, but also our ‘ears’ after all listening is good…

They are a young bunch, full of love and great ideas, and F/F are happy to be their friends.

We tellstories, is an impressive experimental project in online story telling. Six stories are being posted online over the course of six weeks, each has a different theme and execution and is based on or inspired by a Penguin Classic.

Week one ‘The 21 Steps’ is a Google Mash Up that takes in cue from the classic ‘The 39 Steps’.
Week two sees a story, ‘Slice’ told through a series of blogs and Twitter entries.

It backs up an already impress list of online launches including amillionpenguins.com (a Wiki novel), Spine Breakers (a book community for teenagers) and Blog a Penguin Classic (blogging and user-reviews for Penguin Classic).

Good to see publishers getting online and embracing digital media in such creative ways.

Great motion work for the new Radiohead video. Filmed entirely with lasers rather than cameras – to create some amazing realtime 3D capture work.

Here is the amazing interactive version
Behind the scenes here.

Disturbed by the statistic they have taken action with this simple downloadable desktop image produced by DDB Sydney.

Though a very simple and somewhat ‘old school’ device it makes total sense here to hit the users at the heart of the matter, on the device from where all the needless printouts are sent. F/F find it particularly depressing that far from creating a paperless working environment for many electronic communication like email and the internet have just added to pile of things that need to be printed and filed!!

Remember folks BGreen™.

It would be fair to say the poster has never really gone away, from gig posters to general fly postering public spaces are generally adorned with this visual medium. But over the last couple of years the poster has really hit back hard amongst the design community itself. For many posters have become the affordable art form of the day – limited runs, high print values, metallic inks, exclusive designs by rock star artist/designers what more could we want.

And so it is that the popularity of designing posters has seen a resurgence. Every other design graduate these days has a handful of witty, satirical, well crafted posters in their folio. There are galleries and websites dedicated to new and classic designs alike. And we are now seeing re-issues of rare and hard to find typographic masterpieces like Wim Crouwel’s – Vormgevers design from 1968.

At F/F we like this a lot, as avid collectors of all things art and design we have a veritable collection of our own favourite poster pieces.

In the meantime for fans of typographic/design posters there are some great collections to see at Flickr:
Swiss Sports posters
Gig/club posters by Pinch
Experimental Jet Set
Olt Aicher classics and more at Blanka

Please post your favourite poster related links to us below…

Pownce – essentially an instant messaging app with better options for sending and sharing larger files + an online presence like a mini blog. Built with Adobe Air

Ebay Desktop – a slicker richer experience than the now very out of date Ebay website. This has the obvious benefit offline interactions when not connected to the web. Built with Adobe Air

Google Analytics – this best of class analytics system ins brought to the desktop again as an Adobe Air application.

Destroy Flickr – brings Flickr to the desktop, providing a richer experience for viewing your photo-content. It includes uploading tools. Built with Adobe Air.

Evernote – pretty essential to getting the most out of Evernote is it’s desktop app. This allows you to drag and drop organise, edit and add content from your computer and syncs between it and the online account when connected to the web.

Continuing the theme of introducing great people we collaborate with, let us take the chance to introduce the ‘Royals‘ – a digital collective.

Set up very recently by Dave King, founder of NetX’s strategic practice here in Melbourne, this group share the great collective spirit that we here at F/F just love. F/F met the ‘Royals‘ through our work with Feedcorp, where they have been instrumental in pushing strategy and innovation on a number of recent projects.

They really have some great ideas and while some say nothing is ever really new, we do think these guys are taking the thinking in the digital space that little bit further than most.

We especially like this little line from their new blog which sums up where they are coming from quite nicely – Our guiding principle is “Attention must be earned, it can’t be demanded”.

Of these two are worth a belated mention: 1) Nicknack and 2) Feedcorp.

1) Nicknack – F/F worked with this great Adelaide studio on the re-brand of the Land Management Corporation, a South Australian quasi government agency. F/F were invited by Nicknack to assist in bringing the re-brand to life online through the main corporate site and soon to be launched micro project sites. In every sense Nicknack are one of the leading independents in Australia and it is refreshing to see such a great agency making some big noise over in SA.

2) Feedcorp – with a top 8 position in the BRW 2008 Top Web 2.0 apps for their Gnoos search engine and a second commendable mention at 26 for their contribution in developing the 2Vouch job referral system, these guys are true digital heavy hitters in the Australian market. F/F have had the pleasure of assisting in Creative Direction and Application Concept Development for the last 10 months. It’s been a real blast and we have come in touch with a number of great innovative thinkers in the digital landscape – ones that at times are probably a bit too big for the Australian landscape as it currently stands. If all goes to plan watch this space and expect these guys to explode in the remainder of 2008.

Of the great features two stand out: first is the text identification feature – which can identify text in images, on a business card of flyer, so that these hard image based uploads become index searchable by the words they contain. Second is the web page clipping tool allowing you to just clip the parts of a webpage (windows only at time of posting) you are interested in to store in your notes.

Essentially with a web enabled computer and a mobile camera phone with web access we you can now save and manage notes from both the online and offline worlds with ease.