Creativity and Community: the response to the #londonriots

When the purse strings of government are tight and budgets are scrutinised, invariably one of the first things to vanish is the arts funding. This is wrong and the importance of the arts should be noted.

If there is one thing that people need during hard times its a sense of community. Art and creativity bring people together; raising morale, showing that there are other ways of seeing and encouraging people to step up and create things.

The recent #londonriots have shown that our captial is in dire need of refreshing its community spirit. Residents need to have pride in the area that they live in, an atmosphere they help to create.

I love this photograph taken by David Levene in Peckham. It shows a message board set up by local theatre company Peckham Shed outside a Poundland store that was damaged during the rioting.


Spontaneity, a splash of colour and bucket loads of community spirit. More please.

Saville Science

Great to see that Prof Brian Cox & Jeff Forshaws's shiny new book The Quantum Universe: Everything That Can Happen Does Happen, is all encased in beautiful book jacket design thanks to Peter Saville.

This book deserves to be a display piece on everyone's bookshelf!
You can buy a copy here or read a review.

Not one but TWO Black Pencils!

Fittingly the Old Spice campaign created by Wieden + Kennedy strolled away in a manly fashion from this year's D&AD awards. Rumour has it that as well as the TWO Black Pencils received, other items being carried were a big fish, a candle stick and I think one of them was... wait... riding a horse?!
If you have somehow missed the whole campaign do have a little peruse on YouTube to seek out the gems of this campaign. Whoever was responsible for the casting of Isiah Mustafa should be given a nod of gratitude and a small swoon from ladies everywhere.

A hint of reality

Recently there has been a buzz around a new way of using a very old method of animation. The good old animated gif has been hauled out from the shadows and given an airing in a fine spring breeze. To find it you need to search for its shiny new name "Cinemagraph" termed so by the animated gifs' re-inventors Jamie Beck and Kevin Berg.

I've produced a couple of cinemagraphs, both from the same source images but using different areas of focus. Subject matter must be chosen carefully; movement of some items/objects you would not necessarily expect can leave your cinemagraph looking a bit odd but if you are going for the poltergeist look then I guess that is fine!

Here are my cinemagraphs, they are my unpolished first attempts but I'm pretty pleased with them.

Firstly, the one with the hair...
and secondly the one with the skirt...

There are a number of other cinemagraphs on the web, do check them out. Good ones can be found on From Me To You and Feel Guide

If you fancy making a cinemagraph yourself them you might like this tutorial by Fernando J Baez.

Using Space

The use of space is of great consideration for all kinds of designers in our daily work but do we always remember to apply this to our workspaces?

Do you lean over books, magazines and papers with sketches and notes and marked chapters supporting your thinking. Do you only have a tiny area in which to move your mouse or get frustrated because your hand always catches on some piece of desk detritus.

Maybe you have told yourself that you'll tidy your work space right after the next pitch goes well, your latest deadline is met or maybe after next Thursday's de-brief meeting... excuses, excuses.

Take up the challenge now! Put as much considered space into your work area as you would into your work.

This blog post Decluttering as Zen Meditation can give you some motivation if the task seems more than a little overwhelming.

Before and after photos welcome!

Implication of simplicity

A good article on using the emotive power of implication and the start of the #clienttweaks trend on twitter. Enjoy :)

Read the full article here.

Bumped into a great thing

Did everyone else enjoy the Mr Men and Little Miss themed Google headers today?
Couldn't resist a copy of my favourite sporting Mr Bump and a very wobbly set of letters!