Hasta La Ideas

Illustrator Elliott Quince has won the Edinburgh Festival Comedy Poster Awards with a series of 21 designs promoting Michael Stranney and Olaf Falafel’s standup show, Expect the Unexporcupine…

Expect the Unexporcupine runs until August 31 and is described as “an hour of fun filled silly comedy” with a mixture of “off-beat characters, one-liners, outlandish tales and an irrelevant spinning wheel.”

Quince was asked to create posters and flyers to promote the show, and came up with a different design for each day of its run. Posters depict the comics as fictional characters and famous figures from art, history and popular culture. The pair appear as severed heads, Roman busts, hot dogs, Wayne’s World’s Garth and Wayne, Batman and Robin, Vikings and leprechauns, as well as the woman and farmer from Grant Wood’s American Gothic, and Breaking Bad’s Walter White and Jesse Pinkman.

“[Stranney and Falafel] approached me with an interesting concept. To reflect the variety and unexpected nature of their show, instead of just the one poster that most comedy shows have, they wanted 21 different ‘remixes’ of their show poster, a different one for each day of the run in Edinburgh,” explains Quince.

“I worked closely with the comedians to come up with the themes for the different illustrations which include Irish and Viking variations to reflect both comics’ nationalities, plus a hotdog costume poster that references a segment of their show. Both comedians love the posters. Michael Stranney sent me an email saying “These are brilliant, so funny and they perfectly sum up the show, I just hope our stand up will do the posters justice!” The show itself is a great success with packed audiences every day (they’ve been having to turn people away a lot of the time), so the posters, flyers and stickers have worked a treat,” he adds. Quince was awarded £1500 for winning top prize in the scheme, which was set up last year by producer Gina Lyons.

Despite being made to promote funny and often shocking or provocative content, most comedy posters are surprisingly bland, following the same formula of ‘comic’s photograph under show title, great review and list of previous accolades/TV appearances’. Quince’s posters still adhere to this layout, but his illustrations offer a more playful take on the format. The different designs help create a sense of intrigue around the show and, most importantly, they’re fun. They’ve clearly been a hit with audiences and passers-by too, with Falafel’s twitter feed filled with snaps of posters, stickers and flyers taken by festival goers.

Expect the Unexporcupine is on daily at the Edinburgh Fringe. For tickets, see tickets.edfringe.com

They’re the cool kids of social media whose eye for the new (or the recycled) makes them vauable partners for brands. For our fashion issue, Amy Scrimshire picks out 5 Instagram ‘influencers’ to watch while Sarah Penny argues that, to get the most out of such relationships, brands need to go niche

Isamaya Ffrench
Instagram @isamayaffrench
Recently named YSL Beauté UK Makeup Ambassador, and already Contributing Beauty Editor at i-D magazine at 25, Isamaya is a makeup artist/illustrator with a bold approach to makeup (see above). She’s worked with creatives including designer Tim Walker and photographer Nick Knight, and with clients including Chanel, Selfridges, Liberty and Vogue.

Cover of Mushpit 7 from June 2015

Eve and Ellie by Eloise Parry, Bertie & Charlotte
“We shot a group of 13 year old girls (who did their own hair and makeup) on a drizzly day in Redcar, North Yorkshire,” the Mushpit team say. “They were incredibly smart and self-aware and we love how well that comes across in the story.”

The Mushpit
Twitter: @themushpit
Instagram: @themushpit
Aka Charlotte Roberts and Bertie Brandes, The Mushpit is a tongue-in-cheek zine that has been described as ‘J-17 meets Private Eye’. Charlotte is a stylist and consultant, Bertie is a freelance writer, i-D Contributing Features Editor and former VICE Fashion Editor. The pair have strong industry relationships, championed upcoming creatives and so far have forged collaborations with brands including Claire Barrow and Baby G.

Images from the Instagram feed of RoryDCS

Rory DCS
Instagram @rorydcs
Fashion photographer Rory DC has worked with titles including the Sunday Times Style, Observer Fashion, Glamour and The Debrief. A graduate and lecturer of London College of Fashion, Rory’s stylistic, dreamy images of girls feature in the coffee table-friendly ‘visual self-help’ tome, How To Be Fun, which was released this year.

Images from jeanieus82’s Instagram feed

jeanieus82
Instagram @jeanieus82
Jeanie Annan-Lewin, or Jeanius82 as her Instagram moniker goes, is a freelance fashion editor and consultant with a strong presence on the social photo sharing platform. A frequent contributor to fashion and music titles, Jeanie has worked with i-D, Wonderland, NYLON, Burberry and Topshop.

Josh Quinton and Andy Bradin aka Disco Smack channelling Roxie-era Brian Eno on their Instagram feed

Disco Smack
Instagram @joshquinton
Josh Quinton and Andy Bradin teamed up through their love of disco music. First championed by Princess Julia and Katy England, they’ve been wholeheartedly embraced by the fashion crowd for their fun attitude and individual looks, playing for Mario Testino, Fran Cutler and Kate Moss to name a few. Between them they’ve featured in British Vogue, a Lanvin campaign, walked for Saint Laurent and are frequently dressed by Meadham Kirchoff.

Fashion bloggers brought a wave of fresh, democratic air to the industry, writes Sarah Penny. The lucky ones were able to turn their thousands of followers into a business, with brands paying to feature in their Instagram posts and YouTube videos. In the first waves of influencer collaboration it was a numbers game, with brands scrambling in hot pursuit of the mass market influencer elite. But now that we have reached saturation point, both brands and bloggers are turning to a more focused approach in order to make an impact.

Influencers are increasingly becoming more niche, allowing them to build audiences that are identifiable and focussed for brands who want to be able to target consumers clearly. Many are also going beyond just fashion itself to carve out distinct lifestyle identities.

Pari Ehsan, an Instagrammer with over 207k followers, combines fashion with art and architecture. Her unique approach is to take looks straight from the catwalk and shoot them against coordinating artwork in New York’s galleries and museums (see above). As Ehsan’s popularity grew, so did the offers from brands to the extent that she has now collaborated with a wealth of fashion powerhouses including Missoni, Barneys, Chanel and Christian Dior.

Karen Robinovitz, chief creative officer at Digital Brand Architects, represents Ehsan as well as influencers such as art director Isabelita Martinez (@isabelitavirtual, 742k followers) and interior designer Athena Calderone (@eyeswoon, 56k followers). “The lens of the fashion influencer has widened to other genres outside of fashion because those who consume their content and brands in general are interested in multiple things,” she says. “Brands don’t market with just their product but larger cultural zeitgeist moments and trends in order to bring their items to life. The same is true with an influencer.”

It’s not just luxury brands that are in pursuit of influencers that offer more than just general fashion. Ever quick to embrace and extend their influencer collaborations, Topshop have spotlighted a wave of ‘New British Influencers’ whose content now plugs directly into the Topshop site (shown).

Credibility can now count for more than quantity of followers as brands become more sophisticated in their use of influencers. Disney Roller Girl‘s Navaz Batliwalla and Yasmin Sewell may have a fraction of the reach that some of their peers have, but they both began their careers within the fashion industry. Batliwalla was fashion director at CosmoGIRL! as well as an experienced stylist, while Sewell was buying director at Brown’s and chief creative consultant at Liberty. This experience cements their reputation and guarantees an audience of industry peers, as well as promising an informed and experienced perspective.

Despite the sheer numbers available, creative influencers are becoming increasingly popular and lucrative channels for brands. Unlike many celebrities, they are not just mouthpieces for brands. Instead, audiences view them as authoritative and trustworthy – which in a world that is increasingly reliant on word-of-mouth over traditional advertising can be priceless.

Sarah Penny is the editor of Fashion and Beauty Monitor for the UK and US. Amy Scrimshire is a Fashion Writer at Fashion Monitor

This content first appeared in CR’s September 2015 Fashion issue. More information here

A few days ago I got a desperate call from a friend. “My computer says ‘disk full’ and basically won’t work. What do I do?” Her laptop’s hard drive was full to capacity. She tried deleting the contents of her downloads folder, some unwanted photos, old emails, and stray files on the desktop and it wasn’t enough. Albeit a good start, I told her, but it’s kind of like using an eyedropper to empty a swimming pool. For real digital de-cluttering, you’ve got to break out the big guns.

While photo and video libraries can take up a lot of storage space, as well as music, backups and more, there are other, space-hungry files on your machine that you can’t see. For keeping those in check, I recommend using a piece of software. I recommend Clean My Mac and Clean My PC by the folks at Macpaw.

Before I explain why, let me quickly discuss memory vs. storage.

Computer memory vs. computer storage

In the 20 years that I’ve been working with computers professionally, I’ve found that memory vs. storage causes confusion for people more than anything else. One refers to how much your machine can physically hold; the other, how much it can do at once.

Here’s an analogy: Consider an office desk. It’s got a broad worktop and many drawers for storing all sorts of stuff. To work on something, you pull it from a drawer and place it on the work top. The drawers are your storage. The more drawers you have, or the more spacious they are, the more they can hold. A desk with six drawers can store more stuff than one with four (assuming the drawers are all the same size). The drawers are your computer’s internal hard drive. The larger it is, the more “stuff” — photos, videos, Word docs, music, etc. — it can physically hold. Back to the desk.

To work with something, you pull it from a drawer and place it on the work top. The bigger the top of your desk is, the more you can spread out and work on at once. The work top is your computer’s memory. The more memory your computer has, the more you can look at one time. There’s a little more to memory than that, but this is a good basic explanation.

Kill digital clutter

As I mentioned, there are big ‘ol files lurking on your machine that many people can’t easily find and drag to the trash. That’s why I recommend using a piece of software to help you find these. As a Mac user, I use Clean My Mac from Macpaw. Clean My PC has a reputation for doing an equally fantastic job on Windows machines. However, since I don’t have a PC, I can’t speak for it directly.

I like Clean My Mac for three reasons: It’s thorough, it’s clear on what’s happening, and it’s safe.

Thorough

I cleaned my MacBook Pro earlier today, and Clean My Mac found outdated cache files amounting to nearly 2 GB, as well as iPhone updates that I no longer need. Additionally, much software is “localized” for several languages. I only need English, so Clean My Mac found the superfluous (for me) language files from my software and removed them — to the tune of 2.45 GB.

Safe

Whenever Clean My Mac conducts a scan, it identifies what it calls “Large & Old Files.” These files are not removed without your review and approval. You might find video projects in there, large audio files, and the like. For instance, the scan I recently conducted found several iMovie files that are quite large but not for deletion. Clean My Mac was smart enough to leave them intact for me.

Clear

This software’s help system is fantastic. Deleting files from your computer should not be taken lightly, even when you’re talking about known junk. The help section defines every term and process clearly and concisely, so you’ll know what’s going to happen. Additionally, the software’s main screen is quite legible and logically arranged.

It can be frustrating when your computer is cluttered. Fortunately, you can be safely proactive about it. Grab a good piece of software and stay on top of your digital decluttering before you end up with a virtual mess on your hands.

Post written by David Caolo

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