If you love a social network so much, why don't you marry it? Or at least wear its logo on your feet?
Everyone loves a cool pair of kicks, but these concept sneakers may be a little out there. These keds were designed to represent different social networks in the design. But hey - if your'e really that passionate, go for it.
Or add your profile links to them and watch your friends and followers grow.
It's winter. Leaves are missed everywhere right now. So here's some leafy eye candy for you in these dreary months.
Oh, yeah, and they're part of a campaign for Plant for the Planet, where different carbon-emitting scenes are cut out of the leaves to remind people about the importance of leaves in absorbing CO2, which is excellent for our environment.
Put this in the whoever thought of this has way too much time on their hands file. That doesn't mean it's not totally cool. These colorful images of streaking light were created by using super long exposures while a Roomba did it's thing. So not only can you create a work of art but your carpet will get clean while you do it. Heck there's even a Flickr group devoted to this movement.
Bored with the sudden trend of minimalist movie poster re-design? Well just in time for Oscar season awesomely named UK movie website TheShiznit might be on the leading edge of the next trend, movie posters that tell the truth.
Apparently the young adults of Stockholm, Sweden are among the worst at practicing safe sex. Sure, you can hand them all condoms and hope for the best, or you can take it a step way further and turn sex into a fun, competitive game... as long as it's safe of course.
That's exactly what Swedish agency, Ester, did with this campaign. They handed out 50,000 condoms to young adults with QR codes on them (yeah, I know, but it's actually a good use of them). The QR code downloads an app that measures your sexcapades for motion, rhythm and duration. Just turn it on when you start, get a countdown clock reminder to put on your condom and have at it! After your sack session's done, just upload your performance to their website and compare it to other's performances.
Awesome right? But they didn't stop there. They also overlaid personality traits with the sex performances to create lighthearted "stereotypes" like "dog owners are louder" and geo-locations to create fun stats like "76 people got laid in this area," printed them on posters and plastered them all over the city.
It's pretty easy to love comedian / filmmaker Mark Malkoff. Apparently so easy that he convinced 13 celebrities to let him sleepover their houses, including Dave Coulier (cut. it. out.), Kate Walsh (who is clearly not attracted to Mark) and the adorable Lisa Loeb, who reads him a bedtime story from her book. You can't help but smile when you watch this fun little video.
Most of us are sick of Superbowl commercials already and it's not even the Superbowl yet, but this one from FirstBank gets a pass. Why? Because it's pretty awesome without even trying too hard to be awesome.
Playing off the fact that since commercials are now just as much part of the "show" as the football game, we no longer have a free second to pee, this simple ad features a man in a recliner who remains silent for most of the commercial so that you can go take your bathroom break. Then it just ends with "Better Customer Service."
They've joined forces with Call of Duty: MW3 to take the campaign further with seamless in-game advertising and potentially reach millions more potential volunteers and supporters.
Players can buy the Amnesty Rescue MOD (additional map) for $1, which gets donated to Amnesty, and players can rescue and save people suffering from human rights violations.
And let us thank Amnesty for giving gamers a chance to contribute to society. (What - too harsh?)
Who says pharmacies have to be so cold and clinical?
Swedish Design Labs doesn't. They have designed new collateral for pharmacy chain Vardapoteket in Sweden that is full of vivid colors and fun designs that incorporate organs and body parts in a fun way.
The design isn't just a pretty face either. It's also informed by research that proves positive environmental factors help lessen anxiety and promote overall well-being. Now there's an idea.
Mattel has released various versions of Barbies over the decades, some being borderline questionable, and in recent years has been scrutinized for its inaccurate proportions and depiction of what's beautiful.
A project created by Jocelyne Grivaudis anything but questionable - in fact, is unique and inspiring. Muse Barbies is a series of images Jocelyne created that portrays altered images of Barbie as her favorite artist's muses, demonstrating various forms of beauty are inspiration to many. But it still celebrates the iconic doll in its own way.
Would you ever commit to trying to visit all of your "friends" on Facebook? Probably not. You hide most of them anyway.
Unlike most, Arlynn Presser made the commitment to try and visit all 325 of her Facebook friends as her 2011 resolution. So what? Arlynn suffers from agrophobia, so for her, it was an essentially large feat. What transpired and transcribed on her blog is now becoming a documentary, and the trailer is now available.
Proof that Facebook could be more of an inspiration than time suck? Eh.
Want to wow guests at your next dinner party? Buy china that comes to life with augmented reality.
Ok - so it's not available at retail, but British ceramic designer Andrew Tanner collaborated with Unanico Group and Royal Winton to create a dinner plate design that animates when you hold up an app to it. Pretty interesting and could be revolutionary for home decor and dinnerware (uh, ok maybe not), but interesting to see AR moving into other industries.
Although, not sure you want to feel like your eating of a real bird's nest. You might feel like you're eating twigs and dirt.
What does a kid's brainwaves look like? What does anyone's brainwaves look like? Have you ever actually thought to ask that question?
Varier furniture has taken that question to task and created a line of patterns and designs to be used on a line of its chairs by measuring the brainwaves of three kids, while sitting on its Balans chair that helps improve concentration and well-being. They explain the tactics and premise behind this uniquely creative experiment in the video on their website. Created by Swedish production company B-Reel.
It would be awesome if everyone could get their own custom fabrics.
Know someone who is so un-photogenic that they refuse to join any social networks, and are therefore missing out on virtual friendom?
Internet Service company Fibertel is here to the rescue. In this ad, you see Patrick take picture after picture with amusingly unsuccessful results.
Fibertel claims they can save even the most un-photogenic people, like poor unfortunate Patrick. They are promoting a campaign to offer professional photographs to anyone who needs help so they can finally join that social network they've been avoiding.
Maybe they can give some people who think they're uber-photogenic some real talk while they're at it.
So now that the SOPA uproar is quieting down (for now), everyone's taking a look back at how the social world reacted. Some recaps are pretty darn funny, while others just really cool data visualizations like this one. Kind of beautiful to see how the country banned together at one time now that we know we actually made a difference. Yay to the power of the internet.
... especially when they go off in the middle of a beautiful classical performance. But how this one Violinist handles it is absolutely brilliant.
When coworker @domitron first posted this over the weekend my spidey sense told me it was probably a fake created by Nokia, but supposedly it's real, recorded by GREATMILAN at a synagogue in Presov Slovakia. Now that that's confirmed, you can officially think it's awesome.
Back in 2010 Tropicana brought sunshine (and free orange juice) to the Arctic (where it's dark all day in the winter) with a ginormous lighted helium ballon.
Now they're back at it again, this time bringing 3 extra hours of sunlight to London with an even bigger ball of light that is 30,000x larger than a football field.
Sure, it's all stunty and stuff, but who can argue with more hours of daylight in the middle of the dark and depressing winter?
The classic design school challenge; to make an image out of a word using nothing but the letters in the word. The results, an amazing collection of typographic imagery.
A clever collection by Greg Stefano featuring the desktops of 6 creative professionals. From Foursquare co-founder Dennis Crowley (photos above) to RISD President John Maeda, we get a look at what shapes the modern creative workspace. Greg, if you ever do an article about the messiest desktops in the creative industry, feel free to shoot me an email.
BMW is popping up large outdoor projections in major cities in South Africa and inviting passerbys to race their new BMW 1 Series around the projected race track with their tablet as the remote control.
People can simply login to Facebook on their tablet and it becomes the steering wheel, sharing their results on their wall. Maybe not as fun as actually racing the cars, it's still pretty cool!
Love the simplicity of this latest Wheat Thins ad spoofing probably one of the most recognizable and beloved scenes from Family Guy. And of course, instead of bickering over the pronunciation of the "wh" in Cool Whip, it's the "wh" in Wheat Thins. What? WHHHHeat Thins.
Superbowl ads are coming soon and the internet is flooded with supposedly rejected ads, supposedly "leaked" ads and EPIC teaser ads (yay Volkswagen). So you might find yourself wondering, which Superbowl ads get shared the most? Ah, thanks to this infographic, you have the answers.
In honor of the epic day of internet protesting yesterday, it seemed appropriate to share something related to it.
It's hard to choose between all the instances of protests and blackouts, but this video is pretty amusing and captures the sentiment of millions of worried folk.
If you or people you know haven't signed the petition against SOPA or PIPA, just listen to the music, and reconsider. Before Monday.
Brands loooove to celebrate fan milestones they reach on Facebook, even though consumers could care less about how many fans the brand has.
Every brand has its own variation, but Cadbury Dairy Milk created an entire "Like" icon out of its sheets of milk chocolate to celebrate reaching 1 million fans.
Impressive feat, but worth the effort, or just wasted?
Is one of your resolutions to donate more to charity in 2012, but just aren't motivated by the ingenuinely sappy b-list celebs pleading on behalf of someone else to the point where it seems a little like a sham? Join the crowd.
Enter a campaign that might actually motivate you: check out this latest endeavor by African Angel who created an outdoor print poster that allows people to see immediate effects of what a donation to their organization will do. By scratching off one piece of the poster at a time, the image is transformed into the change donations make.
How creative can you get when your business is based on going out to people's houses and fixing their furnace, water bursts. etc? It's pretty functional work.
So that's what makes this fake horror movie trailer created by Rubber Republic and McCann Erikson so creative.
See how Jack Frost terrorizes this family's home and find out the "big reveal" here sometime today. We know, the suspense is killing you.
You've actually probably seen this presentation at least 100x before. You know, the standard, formulaic, lame powerpoint presentation given by a generic, boring speaker, presented to the typical apathetic, jaded audience... like the ones in this video. But don't worry, there's a book for that called Habitudes for Communicators by Dr. Tim Elmore. Point taken.
We've seen an agency use Foursquare stalking to recruit great digital talent away from competitors, so why not pizza and QR codes (hmph)?
Basically, the agency partnered with a local pizza shop and asked them to add a special pizza to any digital agency that ordered pizza for their after hours work. The extra pizza had a QR code on it, made from sauce, that directed the recipients to their job postings.
How the sauce didn't run, making the QR code unreadable is beyond me, but pretty darn clever.
Getting new Twitter followers can sometimes be a fun little surprise in your day, but it's even more fun when you get a new follower and a sugarific gumball is sent right to you down a whimsical little chute. And, if said gumball chute was caught on video and shared automatically with the new follower as a thank you, it would be even more fun.
That's exactly what brand communications agency, Uniform, did to build a stronger connection between their Twitter followers and their studio. Fun!
Last year, Swedish graphic designer Viktor Hertz recreated well-known brand logos and altered them to be a bit more accurate as to what they stand for, while maintaining their design. He has released a second set of these logo, named "Honest Logos, Part II."
You can view all of the logos from both Part I and Part II here.
Digital is truly making its way into every facet of our lives. Including this prototype of a digital rug that changes patterns as someone walks across it to give the illusion of movement.
It should probably come with a package of Dramamine.
German artist Sebastian Schmieg is using Google Image Search to create some of his latest work, and the above video, titled "Search by Image, Recursively, Transparent PNG, #1,″ is a brilliant result of it.
Sebastian tasked Google Image Search with finding a match to a transparent .PNG, and it came back with an image of outer space. He then compiled all the matching results to that outer space image in a video to complete his work.
"Two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun."
Those words alone make my stomach rumble, but have you ever wondered why the fast-food you crave looks so good in the ads? The answer of course would be false advertising! Dario D. of Alphaila.com has put together the ultimate visual comparison of fast food in advertising and it's real life counterparts. The results, the real deal looks about as good as it ends up tasting.
Ah the good old days of sketching with pencil and paper. Is it a lost art in the digital age? Harrison Weber makes a pretty good argument for keeping process alive.
"Sure, it’s genuinely tempting to begin each and every one of your projects with a computer, since you’re likely going to finish there in the end. But for designers, this can lead to big problems. Your results will be so quickly polished that you’ll settle too early."
Awesome UI Stencils from www.uistencils.com will keep from twitching too much while going through Creative Suite withdrawal.
Sure, we know Ikea's furniture is pretty awesome for small, urban dwellings, but to really drive the point home, they created a full-on apartment in a 54 square meter (that's 177' for us Americana folk) space inside a Paris metro station. But is it livable? Well, 5 people volunteered to eat, sleep and hang out in that apartment for passerbys to see. So far, so good.
Who doesn't love a good documentary? Especially one about digital culture and creativity. Yeah, PressPausePlay is a win, win... win. Created by House of Radon, a creative agency out of Sweden, this documentary interviews some of the world's most influential digital creators about the impact of the digital revolution on creativity. I'm in!
Not sure if this is really an infographic but it's super fun nonetheless! It takes you on the various paths involved in the creative process. You can literally get sidetracked by details, turned around by over thinking or hit a brick wall by trying to take the easy way out. And who couldn't use a fill up at the motivation station?!
This cat food is named Snookums. I don't even own a cat and would want to buy this for the name and packaging alone.
Would this dfferentiate it from its competitors? Yes. It cleverly captures cats and their actual attitudes towards humans (stop judging me, cans). If only brands actually did this.
You know you have a love affair with pizza. Admit it. Now you can enjoy pizza tantalizing pictures of pizza every month of the year with L'asso pizzeria's 2012 pizza calendar. For purchase here.
These images are from a recent ad campaign done by the Milwaukee Public Library, using popular website logos to encourage people to read more.
Not sure if this is clever, or if it serves as a reminder that you want to go check YouTube or Facebook right now. Playful in some ways, yes, but entirely effective?
I guess either way, it's never bad to be reminded to support your public library - er, social reading networking place?
It's always awesome when agency folks don't have the burden of client limitations and do their own things on the side. Like this ridiculous little app called Crash Corsage created by R/GA's Eric Schlakman that uses public data to show you where and when weddings are in your area, tells you about the couple, and preps you with the dress code so you can crash the wedding.
And of course, what's a mobile app without gamification? Yep, you can even check-in to weddings, rank your achievements and take picts to compete against other crashers.
Concert festival goers could stop by the Heineken tent and get a custom QR code printed on a shirt that, when scanned, revealed a personalized message. The message could be cute, funny, inspirational or just plain dirty - whatever does it for you. The idea is to get people to connect in real life at the event.
Of course, if you've been to any musical festivals in your day, you'll probably agree that the thought of the drunken d-bags that frequent these festivals trying to scan your chest is more repulsive than it is cool.
I'm not a dude (duh) but as I understand it, getting kicked in the nads sucks... really freakin' bad. But apparently it doesn't suck as much as shopping at Gamestop? Um, somehow I doubt the dude in this video for Glyde.com, a site that lets you buy and sell video games, really thinks that.
Basically he agreed to let people repeatedly kick him in his special place while driving home the fact that it's still not as bad as trading your games at GameStop. I hope he got paid well for this.
Here's a video that may provide a little inspiration from a pioneer in the advertising industry himself. This animation was created by Lobo to accompany the retirement speech of Leo Burnett that he delivered to the entire Chicago office in 1967.
Coming from a remarkable founder during the golden age of advertising, he explains why he'd want his name removed, if ever, and disassociated with the company after he left. It might make you ask yourself - are you working up to these standards?
"From its origins as a plain fiber sack, the humble shopping bag emerged as a sophisticated merchandising tool." The Museum of Bags.
The Museum of Bags is an actual museum, located in McLean, Virginia, dedicated to showcasing the history of this item as an icon of society and culture. You can browse a few items in their collection on their website or make sure to make a visit if you happen to be passing through McLean sometime.
It's a celebration of an everyday item in culture that is often overlooked as such or an example of design.
We recently told you about 365project.org, a site where you can upload a picture a day throughout 2012. But this video captures the amazing feat of Jeff Harris, who took a self-portrait every day since 1999 - 12.5 years.
Now that is dedication, and the resulting video is an interesting compilation and snapshot into his life through all the ups and downs, including a bout with cancer. It's worth a watch and is truly pretty inspiring and touching.
WARNING: please do not take on this type of project if all you're going to do is duckface. Thank you.
Rare is the film with a memorable open credit sequence. Seven and the Island of Dr Moreau quickly to come to mind. Actually, it's the only Part of Dr. Moreau worth watching. Now add The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo to the list of great opening sequences. If you've not had a chance to see the film or you can't handle a movie over 2 hours in length here's your sneak peak. Proof that creativity is alive and well somewhere in Hollywood.
"You tie your shoes, put on your headphones, take your first steps outside. You’ve barely covered 100 yards when you hear them. They must be close. You can hear every guttural breath, every rattling groan - they’re everywhere. Zombies. There’s only one thing you can do: Run!"
Developer Six to Start obviously knows it's easier to get motivated to run when you're being chased. And just because it's the zombie apocalypse doesn't mean you shouldn't stay fit. By launching the Zombies Run! app and slipping on earbuds users will be challenged to rebuild civilization by completing tasks while running in the real world. You'll be ordered to collect items such as medicine, ammo, and batteries in missions that will last 20-30 minutes. Zombies Run! will even work while running on a treadmill.
Gaming + exercise + zombies = way more fun then just running.
This set of devotional candles was created to honor the 3 physicists “whose work was instrumental to the development of time travel later this century,” Einstein, Hawking, and Mallet. Someone alert Marty McFly because they forgot about Doc Brown.
The work was created by Artist Mickey Duzyj and writer Jon Korn and are available at the Time Travel Mart in Echo Park Los Angeles. The time travel-themed retail store benefits the nonprofit children’s tutoring center in Los Angeles named 826LA.
At least that's what the Israel Anti-Drug Authority wants you to believe with their new campaign using a fictional Facebook user's timeline to dramatize the effect drugs have on your life. Using "Adam' Barak's" timeline they show what his life was like on drugs, and how much happier and brighter his life is now that he's off drugs.
Although this is likely a violation of Facebook's policy (timeline is not available for organizations yet), this is a very cool way to use it. It's nice to see an anti-drug campaign that isn't filled with ridiculous scare tactics, but rather snapshots of reality.
New Year's resolutions are pointless--we never stick to them anyway. So instead of a resolution this year, why not make a wish for a good cause?
Web designer Phil Zelnar is hoping to collect 2,012 wishes for 2012 on his website 2012wishes.com. For every wish he'll donate money to Oceana to protect the world's oceans. And, at the end of the year he'll tell you which wishes came true.
Anyone can sign up. It's simple, it's fun, it's charitable and it's something you can actually fulfill in 2011! Sweet.
Introducing a start-up website so genius it's baffling to think it hasn't been created until now.
It's called Never Liked it Anyway and it's a website that lets broken-hearted souls sell stuff that was given to them as a gift from lovers of days past.
Not only do they feature the item for sale, but the juicy details that lead to the descent of the relationship. There's even a Moving On Manual for those who's wounds are still new.
Some of the stories are sad, and some a pretty darn funny, but either way, it's brilliant... and apparently a great place to get some good deals when you compare the real world prices with the break-up prices.
It seems that business cards are becoming more obsolete these days, which seems to make it all that more important that yours sticks out, for the one time a year you hand it out.
And who says business cards should be boring? Take this creative business card for a hairdresser - that's a playful, 'interactive' card that will actually grab people's attention and want to keep it - and maybe use it.
