Chewing Gum Artist: Ben Wilson

(Images via Kuriositas)

Ben Wilson takes his canvas on the pieces of chewed up gum that pedestrians discard on the streets of London. One part bringing some color to this discarded material, the other, bringing some notice to the problem of people spitting gum on the streets. Whatever the result, this is very creative.

Dentsu London: Canon

The kids at Dentsu London just launch a campaign for Canon's PIXMA colour printer range with the work of biochemist/photographer Linden Gledhill.

The video features paint captured with macro lenses that have been brought to life by the use of soundwaves. Balloons were stretched over speakers to create a surface that would allow the paint to move with the soundwave. A single sharp note was played causing the paint to bounce for a fraction of a second. After this is slowed down they ad the beautiful results seen in the video below:

Canon Pixma Sound Sculptures from Dentsu London on Vimeo.

via Dentsu London Blog

Artist: Joshua Datu

via joshuadatu.com

Joshua is a multidisciplinary artist and designer specializing in the areas of visual communication and idea development. He is a graduate student of Fine Art at Central Saint Martin's College of Art & Design, London.

To see more of Joshua's work visit his website here.

Artist: Nikki Farquharson

London-based graphic designer and illustrator, Nikki Farquharson.



via The Cool Hunter

Street Installations: Mark Jenkins

This man fully understands the potential of a mannequin.
More here.

Mag: Monika

There's a new kid in Magazine Town, and she goes by the name of Monika. You won't be catching her wearing any 8 3/8" X 10 3/4" ads to class; Monika is the smoking-pot-while-painting-under-the-bleachers type o gal.

Curious? Read more here.

Artist: Charming Baker

London based Charming Baker is doing some interesting work and I especially enjoy the human bodies with animal. There's always somethig oddly creepy but interesting when artists do this. You'd think it wouldn't illicit such a reaction. He's exhibited at New York Art Directors Club (NYC), Pentagram, Cargo, Truman Brewery (London), Opus (Newcastle), White Walls (San Francisco), Cork St Gallery, Signal Gallery (London), Carmichael Gallery Of Contemp Art (LA).

The Unicorn Awards

One horn to rule them all. Introducing the One Shot Film Festival, a recently launched online award fest to celebrate creativity in the midst of recession.
The premis? Budgets may be diminishing, markets may be crashing, but the OSFF aims to award the innovators who refuse to let the industry die.
Completely FREE to enter, the OSFF will award Gold, Silver and Bronze Unicorns to winning entrants. More info here.

Music: Chief Pinkton

Glastonbury starts tomorrow and for all of you situated outside of the UK needing a great Brit rock fix, look no further than London's Chief Pinkton. They've yet to headline any festival, [maybe even their own gig?] but this band feels like Coldplay in the making.

Have a listen here.

Music: Don't Wait Animate

Remember when Nu Rave came out? This just reminded me of The Klaxons. I present to you Don't Wait Animate coming from the London Underground. I really enjoyed the band member listing:

Joe (vocals, guitar)
Bex (electronics)
BT (guitar)
Edd (bass)
Tak (drums)


Myspace: www.myspace.com/dontwaitanimate

Watch: Sorry I'm Late

In about 50 seconds, this image of a man lying on the floor with a newspaper in his face will make much more sense to you. Written and directed by Tomas Mankovsky, Sorry I'm Late is a live action stop motion short filmed from an aerial perspective and acted out horizontally on the floor. It's all about a man's journey to get back home. Man, if only it were that easy! Now's there's no excuse to get home late!


To view the film, click on the image below:



Definitely worth checking out the Making Of page here.

Helvetica!

On a recent visit to London's Design Museum [which if you're ever planning on visiting, don't. Save your £8.50 and go to the gift shop instead], a friend of mine and I agreed that the only thing remotely exciting about the museum were the stark white walls with occasional directions painted in gigantic, Helvetican text. "WOMEN'S" was definitely a fave, as was "EXIT".

Even though that was the most exciting part about the museum, I couldn't help but feel that that was also the most dated. Negative space has been huge in graphic design across the last 10 years; minimalist styles always seem to go hand in hand with some sort of Helvetica Bold / Helvetica Neue / Helvetica Neue Black Condensed / Neue Bold Condensed combo. Helvetica essentially is the Starbucks of the font families. Uber trendy, functional and would probably own a home in the Beaches if it could afford one, you can order your Venti Helvetica Neue Ultra Light, and bold it if you're feeling a little bit on the gluttonous side. But one has to ask, with over fifty years of use, when will Helvetica be done with being the trendy trend?

So far there are no signs of the font slowing down [the signs written in Helvetica themselves], so we might as well give in to the celebration. Our own TA2 logo is in Helvetica [shames, shames], I've also named my first born after the font*, and the truth is is that there just ain't a font out there as purty.

* I'm lying a terrible lie, but Helvetica Fletcher does have a certain ring to it.



So here goes the celebration of Helvetica! Because without it, the Design Museum would just have white walls [which wouldn't be a bad thing, considering the rest of their exhibits]:



Lars Muller's 2005 book on the typeface showcases over 400 uses of the font. For more info, click here.



Gary Hustwit's feature length documentary coincided with the 50th anniversary of the font in 2007. Learn more here.


Photo of the Design Museum from The Curated Object.

We want SPOTIFY!

The next big thing to be making it across the music industry is Spotify, a search engine-esque jukebox of practically every song ever written. All you need to do is download & install and you can be listening to any song your wee musical heart desires FOR FREE. Move over, iTunes! You can even make playlists for friends and coworkers. The only problematic thing to Spotify is that you can't download the music files themselves, so they make a permanent home only within your Spotify account. No MP3 or iPod transfers here. As well, in order for that "free" bit to happen, a good ole advert pops up every five songs or so. If this annoys you, you can purchase an ad-free Spotify account for a monthly fee.

Sounds too good to be true!! Unfortunately for us CANADIANS, Spotify is not yet available in our country due to licensing restrictions. However, send them your email address here and hopefully due to maximum Canadianus volume we can get on that sh*t.

For the rest of you non-Canadians, enjoy Spotify! Know that we're deeply jealous of your free playlists and hate you.

Street Art

Some new Jeff Soto pieces recently put up in the streets of London.



Via Wooster Collective

Artist: La Roux

Although La Roux may appear like a solo act, they are actually a duo made up of singer and synth player Eleanor Jackson, known as Elly, and co-writer and co-producer Ben Langmaid. Based in London and making synth electropop that the hipster kids are eating up.

Embedding on there video for "In The Kill" has been disabled, but you can watch here.

She Dreamed a Dream

Chances are on the way to work this morning you heard something about Susan Boyle, a volunteer church worker from Blackburn, Scotland. The 47-year-old sweetheart was a contestant on Britain's Got Talent, a reality talent show in the UK.

Ms. Boyle is perfect lesson as to why you should never judge a book by its cover. She surpassed the audience's snickering to blow away the crowd:



Does anyone else feel like crying?!!
Amazing, amazing.
I hope Andrew Lloyd Webber is listening and casts her in her own show!


For more on Susan Boyle, click here.

Portfolio Night 7

Y&R Toronto have announced they'll be hosting this year's Portfolio Night 7 in the T Dot, woot! Designers, get them portfolios all shiny! The fun kicks off on June 11th, 2009. For those of you who've never heard of Portfolio Night, it's the brainchild of our friends over at ihaveanidea; an evening where aspiring Art Directors or Copywriters [i.e. students] are given the opportunity to show their portfolios to 3 different Creative Directors. Each student spends roughly 20 minutes with each of their 3 CD's. This is a great opportunity to get some feedback on your work, and for potential recruiters to see what's out there, so please try to check it out.

Not in Toronto? Don't worry. Portfolio Night is happening all over the world. For more information, click here.

Life's For Sharing: T Mobile

How much do you wish you were in Liverpool Street Station in January?!!

T Mobile's Life's For Sharing Campaign [2009] kicked off with 350 dancers secretly and strategically placed around London's Liverpool Street Station, who busted out into dance as soon as music started blaring across the concourse. The ad was filmed by 10 secret cameras on January 15th, and aired on Channel 4 on the morning of January 16th, 2009, going on for a decent run on Youtube.

The idea is nothing new - we've seen staged breakouts like this from Improv Everywhere in New York [remember Grand Central Station in 2008? Click here to view] and even our own little Subway Dance Party here in the T Dot, but lack of originality doesn't make it any less fun.

I propose we learn the moves and meet up at Union Station... anyone?

Agency: Saatchi & Saatchi, London

Date My Single Friend

I love the premis behind British dating site mysinglefriend.com, for who knows you better than your besties?

I've been given the nicknames Heather Bailer and Chancellor Canceller before as all whom I love know I'm prone to a bit of what they like to refer to as - ahem - "cancelling". I prefer the term "plan procrastination". But these little insights about yourself that you may have overlooked while writing a "Me! Me! Fabulous Me!" online dating profile before have no room at mysinglefriend.com. There the truth [and probably a more accurate connection] awaits for you, based on whatever your beloved pal writes about you.

Happy Matchmaking! Visit mysinglefriend.com here.
Unfortunately this only works for our UK buddies... Sarah Beeny, can we work on getting a North American site?

Ad Video: Skype - 4D Conversations

We love Skype's first ever global TV campaign. Talk about Art Direction at its finest:



Agency: Albion London
Art Director: Liz Moss
Copywriter: Aimee Lewis
Production: Stink London