The night we made the most of now
Look around. It’s all happy people with big grins on their faces. Let’s admit it. Winning feels good.
Yesterday night we, the lovely people at Dare, enjoyed a bit of the sweet feeling as the agency picked five awards at the Campaign Digital Awards including a very well deserve one going to Mr. Collier as the biggest achiever of the year. Congratulations Mark. It’s not that usual to see every single member of a team being that honestly happy for their boss.
But above all, the night was a very special one for those of us working for the Vodafone account. Picking awards for the three nominations we had (including the one for the best ongoing brand campaign) is a fantastic result for a wonderful and bright team of people who work really hard in a daily basis and not always enjoying the recognition that this huge effort deserves.
Well done and many thanks to everyone involved. You are the best and most talented team one could dream of.
Can London be both big and beautiful?
This is the question that some few intelligent people (including Richard Rogers) aimed to answer during the discussion board hosted at the Tate Modern as part of the “Debate London” event organized by The Architecture Foundation.
No doubt this is an interesting question and therefore some interesting points were made here. However none of them were definitive from my personal point of view. Perhaps the subjectivity of the terms big and beautiful didn’t allow more concrete and inspiring opinions.
First of all there was a need to define the concept of beauty better. It’s difficult to progress in a discussion about beauty if for instance we restrict it to speak about aesthetics. I find London beautiful although I’m sure my reasons for that are rather different to any other London citizen. In fact, speaking from a pure aesthetics approach I would say that I don’t find London as beautiful as other European cities such as Lisbon, Prague, Barcelona or Paris. It’s not the aesthetic side of London that I find blowing but its soul, its inner beauty based on my very personal living experience. And this is a personal feeling that it’s very difficult to rationalize but it still maintains certain important relevancy.
It’s almost certain that my experience of London is highly influenced by my daily doing and the level of easiness that the city provides me with so that I can stop worrying about the mundane in order to focus on more creative paths to develop my personality. I wonder if this is an important layer of our perception of beauty. And I could argue that this is generic enough to set a starting point on this discussion.
So, can London be both big and beautiful? It certainly is big already so there doesn’t seem to be many problems from that side. But can it be beautiful too? Yes if the city covers the basic expectations of its citizens. A city with a good public transport network, a generous cultural offer, a reasonable community care (health, education, minorities integration and other social services, local infrastructures, etc) and open professional opportunities will result on a better experience and a more positive perception from most of the citizens. And once people feel happier, the city will automatically become more beautiful.
So the solution doesn’t lie only on architecture (perhaps more on planning). It has very little to do with how many skyscrapers will define the skyline or how high they will be. Or with how many Victorian buildings we preserve or how cutting edge the Olympic ring will be. This surely has its space but it’s not a definitive answer for most of the people. This is because beauty is not only about aesthetics but about function. And if London functions well, no doubt that it will be a big and a beautiful city.
The internet is now mobile
We are finally done with our latest job for Vodafone. This campaign to promote the mobile Internet services is their biggest digital campaign ever and it has required a huge effort from the team at Dare to put it together and bring it to life on time. Massive thanks go to everyone involved.
This is what Campaign says about the work:
Dare has created a digital campaign to promote Vodafone’s mobile internet service, which launched last week with a road-block above-the-line campaign.
The campaign includes a website, banner ads and homepage takeover ads to demonstrate how websites can be used via Vodafone handsets.
The takeover ads fold up whole web pages including Yahoo!, lastminute.com and Tiscali and then drop them into an image of a mobile phone to show visitors how the service enables them to “take websites
with you”.The banner ads promote Vodafone’s tie-ins with media owners including MySpace and Google by using colourful cartoon animations to explain that customers can use the services from their mobile phone.
Finally, the website offers a tour of a fictional street in London. As visitors scroll over the scene, text appears explaining the benefits of mobile internet in everyday life.
The computer behind my blog
A while ago I read this post at Iain Tait’s blog and I found the idea of showing the computers behind the blogs quite sweet.
So this is the little corner where I normally do my southbites blogging. The spacious desk was built by a carpenter friend and it’s nearly three meters long. The glass and lamp are from Ikea and are standard size.
Flo goes receptionist
Tired of the demanding role of Creative Partner, Flo has decided to make a move on his career.
My London
Recently I have been quite entertained playing around with the “My maps” new feature in Google Maps. As a result of this I have started marking up some of my favourite places in London.
This is, more or less, my London…
Plumage
This is how my Flickr account would look like if it would turn into a peacock:
The Angels of Southbank
You only need to look up the flat roofs to discover them around. I ignore who they are or where they come from. They don’t move. They don’t respond to me when I shout at them. They’re just like angels from a Wim Wenders movie.
Fish & chips with a difference
I took these pictures last year during an interesting event called “Giants of Steam“, organized by the Bluebell Railway. We were lucky to travel in the ‘City of Truro‘, believed to have been the first locomotive to achieve 100mph.
This year they’re organizing a series of events where you can have fish & chips on board a steam-hauled train; served with bread & butter and a cup of tea. How cool is that? So yes, I’m planning to go and have my lunch in style so if you don’t have any plans for the 8th of June and you fancy joining the adventure just give me a shout.
The Piffles
I feel very honoured to introduce “The Piffles”. This movie is the first international release by 9 year-old animator Anoush Stanboulian, a young talent who, on top, is the daughter of my colleague Barret.
Check it out and watch this space to see what she comes up with in the future. :)
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Wieden + Kennedy + Fischli + Weiss
I’m just back from one of the D&AD President’s Lectures by Dan Wieden and David Kennedy. I very much like the brilliant work that their agency has consistently delivered during the past 25 years and for that they’ve got all my respect and professional admiration.
The lecture was death boring though. It lacked of rhythm, both guys seemed to be pretty uninterested about it and I didn’t get much clear from their sometimes vague answers (the format was an interview conversation). I really had hoped for something more inspirational. Shame.
But the highlight of the night was about to come; when in the Q&A round Ron asked this in front of over thousand assistants:
(Read more…)
The Swan Lake
Act I
When Tchaikovsky composed the music for the Swan Lake back in 1876 no one could predict that these four acts would become the most famous classical ballet of all times.
The Swan Lake was his first commission as ballet composer and many didn’t trust on his abilities to make a good job.
In the highly competitive world of advertising many new agencies find extremely difficult to build a good reputation and obtain the credit they deserve. Often they are forced to face the establishment of an industry where the weight of your name is sometimes heavier than the quality of your work.
The future of the Internet (I): Interfaces 3.0+
Early this week I read a couple of very interesting articles about a) the future of digital marketing and b) the evolution of website interfaces. I have been thinking about it and now I am ready to share some thoughts:
Interfaces 3.0+
I believe the biggest impact on the future of the Internet will come from the development of new user interfaces.
Nowadays most of the users browse the Internet on their personal computer screens, where they are forced to deal with a complex system of nested interfaces. Browsing on your pc requires the use of at least four different interfaces:
My QR-Code
This is my own QR-Code.
Be honest. You might not be quite sure about what this is yet but you can’t wait to get yours. Well, don’t panic. You can easily generate your own one here.
Say Hi!
DoubleYou has a new website and a small space where you can say hello. It reminds me of the electronic panel we had at Randommedia. People lost their interest after a while and stopped posting new messages so some days you would have the same lines scrolling left to right again and again and again.
Anyway, I said hello.
