(small) creative initiatives that challenge (big) traditional ideas
• ( egoistic ) • activistic • architectural • audible • cinematic • conceptual • graphic • strategic • surface • urban • wireless
Posted by Sebastian on Aug 23, 2006
Advertising agency TBWA in New Zealand recently made a poster for the national rugby team, which was printed using blood from the players.
8000 limited edition prints contains DNA from the player's sterilized blood samples. Each poster comes with a numbered certificate of authentication.
A video documenting the process can been viewed online.
The 'users-as-designers' meme continues to spread.
The KBC bank in Belgium, now offers its customers the opportunity to personalize their own bank cards.
Via the KBC website, customers are invited to submit an image of own choice. After a few days they can pick up a new card at the bank that has the selected image imprinted (if it is approved of by KBC that is).
Related: Design Your Own Luggage Labels
• KBC Bank
Continuing the trend of engaging users as participants, Dutch airline KLM recently introduced a new concept that allows passengers to design their own luggage labels, free of charge.
When booking a flight via www.klm.nl passengers get the chance to design two luggage labels, using their own images or a pre-defined image from a KLM gallery.
Luggage labels and straps are subsequently sent to passengers who submit their designs at least two weeks before departure. The service is for Dutch residents only.
• KLM
Posted by Sebastian on Mar 14, 2006
Achterland ('backland') is a series of news-photographs, altered and manipulated by Dutch artists Persijn Broersen & Margit Lukacs.
The central subject of each photograph has been photoshopically removed, thereby creating a mysterious landscape of media-backgrounds.
Achterland is commissioned by the newspaper de Volkskrant for their online gallery OOG (eye).
Missing link: Around 10 years ago a US-American artist did something similar with pornographic images. Does anyone know who it was?
Posted by Sebastian on Feb 16, 2006
At Snapshirts.com you can buy customizable T shirts inspired by the word cloud navigation system that is sometimes used on websites to reflect the popularity of a tag.
Simply enter a URL (such as your own blog or favourite site), whereafter a script collects the most frequently used words from that page.
The result is presented as a word-cloud which you can have printed on a T-Shirt.
Posted by Sebastian on Jan 29, 2006
At Shine, a bar in San Francisco, they recently installed a Photo Booth that automatically uploads pictures to Flickr.
The clever concept seems to be a big hit and it illustrates quite well Flickr's potential and growing success as a social network application.
Even Flickr's founder - Stewart Butterfield and his wife Caterina - appear in the Photo Booth gallery, looking sweet and happy!
• www.flickr.com/photos/shinesf
Posted by Sebastian on Jan 05, 2006
Everything I Have Ever... is a customizable poster designed by Ross Cooper & Nic Woodley.
The poster contains over 400 detailed silhouettes, printed first in bright orange and then overprinted in silver 'scratch-off' ink. Hence, the silver silhouettes turn orange when you scratch them.
The poster enables you to create your own subjective system. You decide whether to reveal the things that you own or lost or, perhaps, simply the silhouettes that you like the most.
Finally! I have worked on this concept for 2-3 stressful weeks and now, we are able to launch the MMS xmas calendar (MMS julekalenderen) - probably the first service of its kind:
A new day = a new artist = a new artwork for you and your mobile phone.
Each day, between December 1-24, subscribers of the xmas calender will receive an MMS-artwork made of text, image or sound. The artworks are created by 24 different international artists, specifically for MMS enabled phones.
The MMS xmas calender is realized in collaboration between the design agency 1508 and the art foundation Artnode - the price of the wireless calendar is 100 kr (14 Euro) and the profit goes directly to the Danish Red Cross.
• www.1508.dk • www.artnode.org
Madonna.com has launched a tagging project with the objective to build the largest photo archive ever devoted to a single subject: Madonna.
Fans are encouraged to submit any sort of Madonna-related photographic material, such as scans of concert tickets, autographs, drawings and photos.
Curiously - when googling the project for more info - it turns out that a similar project with the same title also exists at Flickr.com.
So, did someone clone someone else's idea? Or has Madonna simply discovered the possibilities of social software and created herself a strategic Flickr account?
• www.madonna.com/taggingproject.html
• www.flickr.com/groups/taggingmadonna
Singles Wallpaper is a product for the lonely.
The wallpaper is imprinted with a 1:1 picture of a person, which will stimulate the sense of physical human presence in your home. But in contrast to real people, the imprint is always friendly, it won't smell, be noisy or complain about your bad habits.
So, if you are the lonely type and have some social problems this product could either solve them - or multiply them.
The wallpaper comes in a few different variations depending on your visual and social preferences.
Contact: Sebastian Campion