Scribbler

I came across this months ago and it's been cluttering up my desktop ever since. It's my attempt at Scribbler, you doodle on it and then it scribbles over your doodle, you can change the colours and line thickness but it's a little tricky. See what you think, here are my efforts, happy scribbling.

Where's Wally?

Simple execution, quite engaging and only takes a few minutes, find Wally and potentially win a ski holiday.

How to tell a good story

I'm just off to week 2 of creative writing now, but I'll leave you with the best and possibly cutest story teller, ever.


Once upon a time... from Capucha on Vimeo.

This is my bag

Oh yeah, right up my street, probably horribly impractical but I like it.

Faceabook

Simple little advert for a bookstore. It gets my vote, boo Facebook, boo.

"Disconnect for a while. Read a book."

Advertising Agency: Brickman, Ramat Gan, Israel
Creative Director / Art Director: Yotam Sharon
Copywriter: Ronni Azulay
Studio Manager: Shay Rimon
Account Manager: Lee Tishler
Published: December 2008

Via ads of the world

Sleep walking

For all you somnambulists out there... indulge in some beautiful sleepwalk stop-motion. I believe it's the music video for the song featured, but I know little else about this video, sorry.

Watch it here.

Men at work, rest and play

Just what does that hard working man do when he gets home, now we know...

Dear Mr Branson, I am writing to complain...

I was sent this link about a now infamous letter of complaint addressed to Richard Branson.
It's a brilliantly penned letter, I wanted to share it. Read it here.

Welcome to Happy Lovers Town

The mayor of Happy Lovers Town is Jonathan Calugi and he's making sure the population is handsome and well turned out. Quite a tenous link, sorry. Jonathan is a graphic designer and he's got a plethora of gorgeous stuff over at his site, simple, bold and characterful. I can't pick a favourite, so enjoy the smorgasbord.

Bannecker's boots

Ok, shoes not boots, but I wanted some alliteration and in any case he knocks the socks off many illustrators with a beautiful use of texture and a personal colour palette. I've been hanging on to this image for months and need to tidy my desktop, so may I present Andrew Bannecker, represented by CIA Illustration.

What's in a name?

I started a creative writing course last week at City Univeristy and thought I'd share the fruit of my labours. One warm up piece involved interviewing each other about your name and then writing about your own, we had 5 minutes and only one draft. It's only an exercise but it's a uselful one to loosen up, meet new people and get writing.

The questions were:

What is your name? Why were you so named? What does it mean? Do you like it? Do you have any nicknames?

Me and my Name

Michelle, Meeeeechelle, Muhshell, Shell, it doesn't abbreviate well or even sound that pleasant in your mouth. But in French! Oh! Michelle! It's all flounce and passion, my belle, it's Beatles song lyrics and most definitely not a hairdresser with a bubble perm.

You may have guessed I don't like my name, je n'aime pas, so I'm off to St. Pancras to hop on a train where my name doesn't offend the ear and I may offer the true meaning of my name in a flourish, God's right hand.

Cadbury is raising a few eyebrows

Fallon has created some buzz worthy adverts for Cadbury of late and the latest dose of 'a glass and a half full of joy' is eyebrows. In short I never really 'get' these adverts, I don't like them but many, many people do including children. You just know that children up and down the country are going to be practising in playgrounds and giving school photographers hell. A glass and a half full productions are organising JiveBrow '09, enter if you have bouncing brows.

Frustratingly this advert is growing on me, there's just something about those kids' faces. Although I'm suggesting Cadbury change it to 'a glass and a half full of weird', I'm trying to stay neutral and professional but I'd like to draw your attention to Daito Manabe's videos that were featured on Boooooom last October. Spot the difference.

When neighbours become good friends...

Do you have nothing better to do with a few earth minutes of your time?
Could you fill in this mini questionnaire? Pretty please?
Do not press this link.
Thank you neighbour, the good people of Digit salute you.

Image credit: stella mango

911 Piano Concert

Does exactly what it says on the tin. Via estupipedia

Press button, get bacon.

I'm still chuckling. God bless people. You have got to love this slanted view on the world. I will never look at a hand dryer in the same light. Thanks Henry.

Bye Bush

I have nothing more to say. Great contextual adverts. 

Veet: Agency: Sudler & Hennessey

Philips: Agency: DDB

Don't make me think

I'm putting on my web designer hat now to tell you about the web without words. Imagine, a web, without, words.

Pause to gasp.

A very clever man called Paul Armstrong takes well known sites, removes their content then analyses them. It's design in reverse, when we create sites we do this process, to see how content flows and feels in certain layouts. It's like scamping out an illustration or composition but with boxes and lines instead of images and words.

Anyway, you might or might not like it, but I enjoy his insights and design is design is design.

web.without.words

The Lost Generation

Truly inspiring stuff.

In other news, Lost season 5 starts tomorrow. I'm a very excited geek right now.

Test your colour IQ

Follow instructions to see how good you are at discerning differences in hue, I scored a respectable 28. 0 is perfect. The image above shows my attempt and the analysis, I have more trouble with the blue/green part of the spectrum. Bad news for a Bowerbird who collects blue objects I suppose.

Share your scores in the comments please.

Take the test.

Tweet seat

Oh how I'd like to perch myself here! Wrap it up, sold to the Bowerbird with a smile on her face. Via Ffffound.

A rolling stone gathers no Moss

I've got a little design crush on Olly Moss, he keeps cropping up and keeps impressing me with his consistency of design and ideas, I'm enjoying this sloth parody of Shepard Fairey's OBEY.

If you want to develop a little design crush for yourself indulge yourself here:

Flickr

Ffffound

Website

Thank God you're a man!

Thank God I'm not offended by this little advert for booze. Part of a series that continue the Yorkie 'it's not for girls' attitude, made me chuckle, in all these days of doom and gloom, some gender home truths aren't the end of the world really, are they? Nice infographics incidentally.

“Thank God you’re a man.”
Advertising Agency: McCann Erickson, Tel Aviv, Israel
Creative Director: Ido Ben Dor
Copywriters: Asaf Zelikovich, Elad Gabison
Art Director: Geva Gershon

More here.

Get it on

To give and receive....



brilliant viral videos...


And very funny out takes here:

Client: Durex
Agency: Fitzgerald & Company, Atlanta
Chief Creative Officer: Eddie Snyder
Chief Broadcast Officer: Christine Sigety
Associate Creative Director: Jerry Williams
Group Creative Director: Fernando Lecca
Director: Superfad

A cut above the rest

An ingenious advert for a children's hairdresser. Top marks. I'm a big fan of outdoor and ambient advertising, much room for creativity.

Advertising Agency: Y&R, Toronto, Canada
Creative Director: David Houghton
Art Director: Zachary Muir-Vavrina
Copywriter: Sussana Forieri
Photographer: Jeremy Kohm

From I believe in adv

I love sketch

The future of sketchbooks? I Love Sketch is a whole lot of clever technology, but how much room is there for happy accidents? This is not for me, but I can appreciate this very impressive demo and the possibilities it could mean for, say, product designers or architects.

Thanks to Dez for the link.

Pablo the drug mule dog

A powerful advert, which is just the right balance of wit, fear, and information. Such an unusual spin, really made me take note, the use of David Mitchell as voice over is inspired too. Now that I think about it, the series of FRANK adverts are pretty memorable, remember the brain warehouse one?

www.talktofrank.com

Self promotion is the key

I saw this over the summer but it's been brought back to my attention. It's a beautifully crafted piece of self promotion by Joe Baglow.

His USP was 'Job needs a Joe' clever really.

5minute doodles

5minute doodles, take a wind-up key for inspiration and what it could become, a whale's tail, a penguin's face, opera glasses or a music-stand base. Just an exercise to loosen me up, it's been such a long time since I drawn for fun.

iPhone apps that I actually want to download.

Brushes application on iPhone iPod touch. Clever. There's even a Flickr group, and they are impressive, well some of them atleast.

Some beautiful images created using this app, over at flip flop flyin'.

Table-oh!

tableau |ˌtaˈblō|
noun ( pl. tableaux |ˌtaˈblōz|)
a group of models or motionless figures representing a scene from a story or from history; a tableau vivant.

It is also a beautiful table I was drawn to in Spitalfields Market's Elemental, bit of a hefty price tag attached to it, it contains antique letter press blocks set in resin. It is a beautiful and unique piece of typographic history, it's also in the SALE so if anyone has a spare £4k and a generous nature, please get in touch.

A Penguin Princess

Um, that title may need some work, but I went to a Penguin talk last night at The Design Museum and came away thinking that Coralie Bickford-Smith is a truly remarkable designer. There's a great interview with her here. Her Penguin Classics hardback designs are simply sublime, her designs hark back to other times and yet are so modern in their execution.

I would also like to heap praises on Jim Stoddart, the art director of Penguin Press for an impassioned yet calm, witty and truly knowledgeable talk that made me want to join the ranks of Penguin Towers even more. Okay, I'll stop gushing now.

Overview of the talk:
PENGUIN COVERS THEN AND NOW

Over the decades Penguin has sustained a reputation for generating innovative and influential cover designs as seen in the work of Alan Aldridge in the 1960s. In this cross generational discussion, celebrated Penguin designer David Pelham and former Penguin editor Judith Burnley will talk about the factors behind their particular Penguin heyday to be compared with recent achievements and future direction described by current Art Director Jim Stoddart.

Inks beautiful inks

The brilliant Cass Art had an incredible sale on, I bought these gorgeous inks for £8, I'm now thinking of any excuse to use them.

National Pharmacist Day

Happy National Pharmacist Day! If you pop in to Boots (or any other branded or unbranded pharmacy) be sure to greet your kindly pharmacist.

National Bird Day

Shame on me, I'm a Bowerbird and I didn't celebrate National Bird Day last Monday. I was sat at my desk in my 'studio' last night searching for a muse and I think I may have found it in the form of the National Holidays website, there are infinite amounts of useless holidays we should be celebrating. So this could become a regular post, I did a few in advance last night, excuse the dates/holidays I've missed so far, but there are some brilliant ones on the horizon.

New Digit website

Hurrah! The new Digit website is up and running, we've had a brand overhaul, introducing the Digit D, it'll be cropping up quite a lot.

Featured above is the National Gallery Grand Tour, this project was my baby, under the brilliant art direction of Andrew Dean, it even picked up a D&AD Black Pencil last year. My illustrations were used in the site, print, adverts and merchandise.

My role has grown recently at Digit so some of my copy writing skills make a small appearance here too.

The landing page changes dependent upon the time of day, so check back in to see how it differs.


www.digitlondon.com

I've got the whole world in my hands...

You may or may not be familiar with tilt-shift photography, simply put it's a way of taking pictures of real life in a particular way to look like miniature models, and now there's a super simple way to do it, just upload a picture and let the site do the work for you. It's normally a lengthy process playing with blurs, depth of field, colour saturation and focus but with this site it takes seconds, enjoy. Thanks Toby for the link, even if you don't think it's that successful.

www.tiltshiftmaker.com

Plenty painty

I'm fairly smitten with the painterly talent of Olivier Tallac, I would love to see some of this animated it has such a vivacious quality, I was sucked into his website, hope you like it too.
Found via monstermunch.

The Raftman's Razor

Sit back and enjoy this captivating film. I don't want to analyse it, or over think it, but it is beautiful it its own unique way. Thanks Jemma for this fabulous find.

Steal, but with integrity

This struck a chord with me, via ffffound.

This is no mere advert

I have yet to see this advert on tv, but I have just spotted it over on Scamp's blog and had to post it too. Comparethemarket.com have created a wonderful spoof site to mirror it's own and drive custom back to themselves. However it's win-win for them because if you stay on comparethemeerkat.com you are actually learning how to use it's doppelganger's site too.
10/10 to the copywriters, Aleksandr is a superb character and there are some very clever details woven in to the site too.

A studio is emerging

I'm finally getting around to making half of my room into a studio, my inspiration wall is starting to fill up, I'm going to aim to shuffle it around every month, but we'll see what reality brings. It's a bit hard to make them out but I have my Penelope Dullaghan print, Marc Johns print, Jon Burgerman original and even some personal work in there too. I just need to start the work...