Hasta La Ideas

Designer: Kelsey McRaeIn issue #8 we featured a collection of matchbooks by Margaret Van Sicklen. We also asked our UPPERCASE community to participate and send in their own modern take on traditional European matchbox labels. Karin Jager of Capilano University and her student Mustaali Raj sent in images from class project along a similar vein.Designer: Mustaali RajKaren explains:
“My survey of design course begins with the industrial revolution and the Victorian era—a time of dramatic economic and social change—and eclectic ornamentation. As a way for students to experience the Victorian aesthetic and to gain some understanding about the social, economic and cultural impact of the industrial revolution, I assigned a ‘matchbox’ packaging project.”Designer: Brayden EshuisMy curiosity was piqued by the information Karin sent along with the images so I did a little research of my own.

Early matches ignited with the slightest friction and their manufacture involved the toxic chemical white phosphorus. Consequently for the match maker, ‘phossy jaw’ was an occupational hazzard. In the later stages of this condition, where phosphorus accumulates in the jawbone and brain, the patient’s jaw would start to glow in the dark, due to a chemical reaction between phosphorus and air. (Note to reader: Do not google phossy jaw.)

Some of the earliest known commercial advertising on matchbooks was created by guerilla arts marketers. In 1895 the cast of the Mendelson Opera Company created ads with photos, glue, and some mighty fine wordsmithing. The only surviving example of these creative evenings reads:

A cyclone of fun – powerful caste – pretty girls – handsome ward-robe – get seats early.

(Source)

Cocktail Party Fact: Matches were invented in 1827 by John Walker but were first marketed by Samuel Jones as ‘Lucifers’.

Infographics are a powerful tool for communicating vast sums of information, but a far more compelling way to express data is through the unnamed combination of number-crunching, cartography and digital imaging that we first saw in Aaron Koblin’s 2009 project (which we dubbed “The United States of Airplane Traffic”).

Three years later we have an even more comprehensive version of this, done by Canadian anthropologist Felix Pharand. Pharand spent 13 years inputting not only every flight path on Earth, but every road and shipping route as well, using publicly available data and a home computer. The result is this astonishingly beautiful film entitled Anthropocene, presented chronologically and starting 250 years ago. Watch it full-screen:

(more…)

In this cylindrical ceiling and pendant lamp, the external opaque injected polyurethane casing gives internal support to the glass diffuser, which is ..

You go into design because you want to create things, and you go into industrial design to create things that will be mass-produced. And mass production, by definition, involves factories and marketing people and finance guys and sales forces, and everyone gets a say. So you quickly learn that unless you’re a design superstar, you don’t really get to create things on your own terms. Unless you keep things small.

That’s why I find this story so fascinating. Joel Allen was a Canada-based software developer who bottomed out financially after his company went broke in the ’00s. He taught himself carpentry, and soon set his sights on building a killer treehouse. The rudiments of a design were provided by architecture student friends, and Allen subsequently set about making his dream a reality.

The story is insane on so many levels. First of all, the treehouse is illegally sited on “Crown land,” or what’s known as State land in the United States—government-protected forests. Secondly, Allen had to hand-carry all of the materials out to the site (and carry the construction waste back out to fulfill his goal of keeping the site as pristine as possible). Thirdly, when his construction was interrupted by helicopter traffic from the nearby Olympics, he had to partially dismantle the structure and camoflauge it to avoid detection. Fourthly, building something structurally sound—let alone level—on a tree clinging to a sharply-sloped mountainside is an engineering feat you’d expect to farm out to a firm specializing in such. Allen pulled it off largely by himself and later, with the help of a girlfriend.

(more…)

The winners of the 16th annual Webby Awards have been announced, honouring the most exciting developments in digital over the past year. There are a vast number of gongs awarded at Webby, but here’s our selection of the ones most relevant to our readership.

Among the winners are some of the biggest online platforms of the past few years, including Pinterest, Google+ and Spotify, which all picked up their first Webby Awards this year. Björk (shown above) was awarded as Webby Artist of the Year for her Biophilia album and app (see CR’s post on it here), while Instagram was named Webby Breakout of the Year. Instagram was of course recently purchased by Facebook in a $1 billion acquisition deal, demonstrating how quickly a company’s fortunes can change in today’s fast-moving digital landscape. Another big winner this year was BBH, which won nine Webby Awards for four of their entries, as well as the overall Agency of the Year award.

The full list of Webby Award winners can be viewed online here. Below is our list of highlights from the Websites and Interactive Advertising categories:

Best Use of Animation or Motion Graphics: Draw A Stickman

This delightful website from Hitcents.com invites you to ‘draw your own adventure’.

Best Use of Photography: God’s Lake Narrows

This website was commissioned by the National Film Board of Canada and created by artists Alicia Smith & Kevin Lee Burton. It documents the God’s Lake Indian Reserve through use of text and stunning photography.

Best Use of Video or Moving Image: Asos Urban Tour

BBH created this website for clothing brand Asos, which uses interactive videos of street dancers to promote the Autumn/Winter 2011 menswear collection.

Best Automotive/Navigation/Visual Design: The 21st Century Beetle – Rock ‘n’ Scroll

Tribal DDB Berlin’s website for VW has picked up numerous awards. The site uses nifty design to give a history of the iconic car.

Corporate Social Responsibility: Ben and Jerry’s Fair Tweets

Amalgamated created this Twitter project with Ben and Jerry’s to help promote World Fair Trade Day. Participants to the project allowed any leftover characters in their Tweets to be automatically used to promote the Day – the film above explains in full how it worked.

Games: Androp Bell Music Video Game

Party’s beautiful website-cum-music video for Japanese band Androp won the best Games award.

Netart: BLA BLA

Another commission from the National Film Board of Canada, BLA BLA is a truly charming piece of interactive art, created by Vincent Morisset and his studio AATOAA.

Augmented Reality: The Sound of Football

Created by Akestam Holst, this project formed part of the Pepsi Refresh campaign. It uses technology to help blind and visually impaired people play football: the documentary above explains how it works.

Best Integrated Media Plan: The Inside Experience

Created by Pereira & O’Dell, The Inside Experience was an integrated campaign for Intel and Toshiba. Described as a ‘social film experience’, it invited viewers to participate in the action via Facebook. The site is no longer live, but the case study above explains it in more detail.

Best Use of Online Media: The Chase HTML5 Experience

Nexus Interactive Arts directors Smith & Foulkes created this spot to advertise Intel’s Core i5 processor. Agency: Venables & Bell.

Best Use of Social Media: The Museum of Me

Another winner for Intel, The Museum of Me site draws info from your Facebook page to create an exhibition of your life. By Projector Inc.

Corporate Social Responsibility Campaigns: Nike Back For The Future

Wieden + Kennedy’s spot for Nike saw stars from the classic Back To The Future movie trilogy reprise their roles to help raise money for the Michael J Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research.

Online Campaigns/Viral Marketing: Skittles Touch The Rainbow

BBDO Toronto’s online films for Skittles required minimum interaction to create big laughs.

Online Commercials/Rich Media: Google Dear Sophie

BBH New York and Google Creative Labs’ film Dear Sophie shows how Google products can be used to help bring families together.

Online Guerrilla and Innovation: Take This Lollipop

Whereas the Museum of Me uses your Facebook info to fun effect, the Take This Lollipop website by Tool makes it scary.

Rich Media: Non-Profit/Educational: Greenpeace A New Warrior

DDB Paris’s website for Greenpeace allowed visitors to purchase specific parts of the new Rainbow Warrior ship, instead of just giving money to the cause.

To view the full list of winners (as well as the winners in Online Film & Video and Mobile & Apps), visit webbyawards.com. An awards ceremony will be hosted in New York on May 21, and will also be streamed live on the Webby Awards site.