Agencies: Mother Goes Regional, RGA Lays Off

Mother Goes Regional

The establishment of Mother Productions will extend their NBC creative partnership further. The new arm will have a staff of 12-15, including writers, motion designers, editors, producers and others, and will also draw from the agency’s existing talent pool. It will orchestrate everything from station brand ID and promos to digital efforts and ads, while also creating locally-based content and relationships. “For us, it’s exciting to have a client in 10 of the largest markets across the U.S,” said Andy Deitchman. “We get that much more ingrained in those communities. We’ll explore what the best solutions are to connect across all platforms. Maybe it’s finding a great blogger who lives in that community who becomes an on-air personality. It’s creating things for people to feel more connected to their community.”

Really Giant Assholes

A disgruntled RGA ex-staffer writes: “Unlike most advertising-related copy, this is actually true. It’s not my opinion of what happened, back-of-the-box puffery or an attempt at advertising fan fiction, this crap happened. I hope anyone who stumbles on this site and reads this enjoys it as much as I did living it.”

Street Art: Willoughby Windows, The Knitted Convenience

Willoughby Windows: Vacant Brooklyn Block Becomes Street Art Gallery
Rather than have an entire block of empty boarded up storefronts, local arts group Ad Hoc Art and non-profit community development organization Metrotech BID partnered to transform the row of stores into a gallery for street art. Over 15 artists were invited to create site specific installations in the windows, many of which nod to the former businesses they inhabit.

the knitted convenience

Sydney-based suburb of Darlinghurst recently received some of their own knitted magic from the hands of Newtown knitter Denise Litchfield. Wrapping Sydney’s oldest functional underground “heritage toilet” in Taylor Square, Litchfield started planning the project back in May 2009.

Pin Up Drinks

Pin Up Drinks

Loving the mashup. Someone took a cocktail picture from my blog and incorporated it in to a collage…

Image Credit: huto

New Font, Street Art, FreeGreen, Internet Gaffes

New York Times Chooses New Font To Cope With The Great Recession
The New York Times June 14 issue of their magazine was 9% smaller to cope with high paper costs and their decline in revenues during what they are calling the “Great Recession”. To ensure that there is still the same volume of content though, the New York Times has changed its typeface to Lyon Text which it says allows them to print almost as many words on the page as the previous format.

3 More Types of Legal Urban Street Art

Cool street art on manhole covers.

FreeGreen Architecture

Free green home designs … FreeGreen’s goal is to “give our users house plans which simultaneously provide design and product options that meet or exceed existing third party standards, while giving users choice and options in the realm of cost, style, and environmental commitment.”

In The Internet, Everyone Can Hear You Fart

Unfortunately for Grey and for Doc Morris, not everyone thought their “Evil Sperm” ads were funny. Quite a few people thought they were racist, insensitive, offensive and inappropriate — and now those adjectives are associated with Doc Morris pharmacies in people’s heads.

Experiential: Eyebeam, wetagyou

Eyebeam’s Reclaim the Streets
Art and technology incubator Eyebeam will be hosting an interesting series of workshops next week, that will teach how to curate instant outdoor art exhibits. Eyebeam resident artist Christina Kral will help participants reclaim the streets and incorporate street art and everyday elements into an ad-hoc outdoor exhibition. Helping to lend participants a critical eye to their neighborhoods, the program is “an exercise in public intervention, curatorial practice, documentation, and locative media”. Reclaim the Streets is free, and happens November 3, 5 & 7th at Eyebeam, 540 W. 21st St., NYC

Wetagyou
BBH has unveiled ‘Wetagyou’, a tongue-in-cheek ‘analog photo tagging platform’. Reversing the usual tagging process, where photos are taken and then tagged online, BBH asked partygoers to first tag themselves with geek speak stickers and then have their photo taken. With a choice of over 150 nonsensical tags, ranging from memelord to lolcat to pedophile, partygoers could then search for their photo at www.wetagyou.com.

I Love Sleeveface

Sleeveface, The Book
What a bloody good idea. Beautifully simple, and especially pertinent to those of us old enough to remember the joy of 12″ vinyl sleeve art.

For those of you not familiar – sleeveface is a popular online meme that encourages participants to obscure a portion of their body with a record sleeve so as to merge the image with reality. Thousands of people have tried their hand at the optical illusion and there are loads of great images filling up flickr pools. There is even a youtube video tutorial. (Of course!)

Now someone has had the brilliant (I wish I’d done that!) idea of making a 192 page book out of it. It comes out on the 17th of November (two days before my birthday, folks!).

Obama’s Inspiration

Art, Design and Technology for Obama
Of the many history-making aspects of Obama’s run for President, the art and design that’s come out of it isn’t insignificant. From the identity of the campaign itself to Shepard Fairey’s pioneering grassroots poster, the Obama brand has taken on a life of its own.
(tags: technology president politics obama design culture creativity socialmedia)

Android, Phil Toledano

T-Mobile Android Handset Revealed Today

Around 9am this morning, T-Mobile unveiled the first Android-powered “GPhone” to members of the press. See video of the event. The handset features a touch screen and a full QWERTY keyboard. It boasts a three megapixel camera, one-click contextual search and a zoom-ready browser, as well as wi-fi and 3G capability. Support for YouTube is built-in. All users will have access to Google’s Android Market. The unit costs $179 for existing T-Mobile customers. Pre-orders will be shipped to users around October 22. T-Mobile expects to unveil the phone in 27 3G markets by mid-November.

(tags: t-mobile android gphone gaming socialmedia telecoms mobile smartphone 3g)

Phillip Toledano’s America: The Gift Shop
A great virtual exhibition from my old colleague Phil Toledano. “After eight years of government that’s left a sizable chip on America’s shoulder, it’s no big surprise that George W-era memorabilia isn’t exactly flooding the market. Enter Cool Hunting favorite, photographer Phillip Toledano with “America: The Gift Shop.” A virtual exhibition with clever takes on the subjects of torture, special rendition and government secrecy, the book features enough cheek to make you gasp, giggle or groan (depending on your politics).”
(tags: philtoledano “phil toledano” art photography popculture america)

Unsnobbycoffee, Moss Art

• McDonald’s Targets Seattle’s Coffee Addicts With Unsnobbycoffee.com
  While Starbucks has cut jobs and stores this year, McDonald’s has been launching regional marketing to roll out its new specialty coffee drinks. In Seattle, the chain zeros in on coffee aficionados with its website, unsnobbycoffee.com. There, users can stage an intervention for friends who are “addicted to snobby iced espresso.” As Ad Age food reporter Emily Bryson York explains, it might take more than savings for McDonald’s to convert Seattle’s java elite.
  (tags: coffee mcdonalds starbucks seattle digital socialmedia popculture)



• Moss Typeface
  It’s Nice That points us to a lovely bit of public art that just went up yesterday in London: The Mossberger Project by Anna Garforth uses moss as a tactile typeface, a sort of eco-grafitti that can be placed on walls, floors and other public spaces. Mossberger illustrates a verse from an Eleanor Stevens poem on a brick wall near Clissold Park in London. The project is part of YCN LIVE, a two-week long public and participatory art initiative currently underway in London. From the artist’s website: “Being interested in public art and ecology, it led me to thinking about sustainable grafitti. I collected a common moss that grows well on brick walls and glued it to the wall using a mixture of natural (bio active) yoghurt and sugar.” Mossberger will be on view until September 5th and continues on throughout London until September 7th.
  (tags: art streetart design typography graffiti)

Internet Cities, Double Deckers in Japan, Art Ships, Publicis Chokes

• Are Internet Communities Cities?
  “I propose that the Internet is the truest sense of the modern-day city. There are dense populations, a social infrastructure, complex architecture, rules, and culture. I will suggest that there is transportation as well as residences. Drawing mainly on the ideas of Jane Jacobs I will present the Internet as a modern day city that is governed under what I define as “Democratic Anarchy.”
  (tags: internet digital popculture)



• London double-decker cruises to new life in Japan
  The double-decker Routemaster bus, a phased-out London icon, is gaining a second life in a Japanese city that believes the red road giant fits right in. Families and tourists snapped pictures as they queued up at a bus stop to hop onto a double-decker, which has been running on weekends since April in Shimonoseki, on the southern tip of Japan’s biggest island of Honshu. As a summer breeze wafted along the seafront, passengers waved to people on the streets below from the second level of the Routemaster, which stood out conspicuously in the city’s fleet of non-descript buses. “The scenery of this town is totally different when I see it from the second floor,” said Mayumi Nakamura, a 33-year-old housewife. “I hope the London bus will be a new symbol of Shimonoseki.”
  (tags: london japan routemaster shimonoseki popculture)
• Art Ships Set Sail On the Hudson River
  Street artist Swoon has undertaken an ambitious art project named the Swimming Cities of Switchback Sea. Swoon and a motley crew of contributors have built a fleet of seven art boats that will journey down the Hudson river from Troy, New York, to Long Island City, Queens. Part floating city, part sculpture and part performance, the Switchback team will make stops at cities along the way, performing plays and music for locals. The ships will dock in Long Island City on September 7th for a run of shows until September 13th. The boats were constructed primarily out of found materials from junk yards and construction sites.
  (tags: art popculture newyork swoon)
• Publicis Gives Clients ‘One Neck to Choke’
  It isn’t called the “Insight Factory” anymore, but the integrated-agency model Publicis Groupe announced in November is reshaping the way the holding company handles some of its largest clients. Designed to foster greater cooperation between sibling agencies in different disciplines, the group has begun awarding ownership of some of its major accounts to individual shops. Nintendo, which uses Leo Burnett for creative, Starcom for media, Arc for promotional work and Digitas for digital, is now led exclusively by Starcom, with staffers at the other shops reporting directly to a Starcom lead. Kellogg, on the other hand, is now a Burnett-led business.
  (tags: icp connectionsplanning commsplanning integratedmarketing marketing)