Dream on (TBC)

My mum and I went to the Hare Krishna curry place in Northbridge today, which I thought was pretty awesome! I went into the toilets to find some pretty awesome stuff written on the back of the toilet door, I just had to write about it!
Photos still to come.. (the best part)

I dream of my children's happiness and hope they have a long loving life because I love them. Ring your mums. xxx <3

I dream of a life and a world without Prozac

I dream of marshmallows

I dream of Swami

I dream of ciggarettes (reformed smoker) sigh.

I dream of waves

I dream of true compassion. people living in the knowledge that every human has a beautiful inner world full of dreams and fears.

give.

I dream of everything good and bad

I'm living the dream

I dream of northern lights

I dream of a Barcelona summer

I dream of black and white together

I dream of Jeannie

I dream of something better

I dream of inner peace and self acceptance

I dream of peace and happiness

I dream of waking up

I've forgotten how to dream

I dream of creamy peans competing for sunbeams (?!)

I dream of colours

I dream of a solution

I dream of contentment

I dream of music

I dream of glory

I dream of losing 12kgs

I dream of Jeannie

I dream of naked Irishmen

I dream of cottonwool

Tonight I'm tangled in my blanket of clouds, dreaming aloud. Things just don't do without you. It's a matter of fact. I'm on your back.

I'm dreaming of cockroaches

I dream of a world without banal and infantile graffiti

I dream of a future for my children

I dream of a world without wankers who misappropriate big words

-DREAM ON-

Redundant!

Today I'm posting on the 30th of March, just over a month after being made redundant (22nd of Feb) from my old agency, 303. As you can imagine, I was extremely shocked and upset, but within a week I began to realise that although 303 was my pride and joy, it really wasn't the end of the world. In fact, I began to see that the old saying is true: that when one door closes, many more doors full of new paths and new opportunities will open for you.

After a lot of pep talking and time to reassess my situation, a new idea was brought to life.
Europe 2010!

I've got a European Passport - why wouldn't I get out and see the world :D Still haven't met my relatives in Germany, Ben is coming with, the duffman will be in good hands with my brother, and I've got no job that I feel I'm married to holding me back!

So I've just accepted my first permanent full time job lined up for 2 weeks time in a post production agency in west perth when I get back from Melbourne. So, January 2010, I'm outta here!!

Saatchi's NY & London, expect a visit :D
Wooooooooooo!!!

Simon McQuoid

Last night I was amongst many who went to Double Lucky to listen to Simon McQuoid talk about his career, his philosophies and give an insight into his work. Simon worked as an Art Director in Perth in the 1990s, and returns to Perth every couple of years for holidays from his base in New York where he is one of America's hottest directors. In the past year he has risen to #3 in the world in The Gunn Report rankings.

Simon was the director of the highly awarded Microsoft Xbox 360 / "Halo 3" video game internet campaign named one of the two Film Grand Prix' at Cannes in 2008.
He showed some of his awesome work for HBO - The Sopranos, the launch of Blu Ray, an LG mobile ad, Holiday Inn Express and of course Xbox Halo.
Some interesting comments:
“Nothing ever comes to me in a perfect state. It's a battle no matter what. Every job is labour intensive. Make every single job an opportunity.”
“The ones with the biggest problems are the ones that end up on my reel”
”Be honest but polite” (when faced with a challenging client)
You can view some of his work here.

Some favourites of his work.. in order of preference :D

Holiday Inn Express
My favourite ad of all that he showed us! Could not stop laughing. The search for the perfect actor was a hard one, they cast in LA and Boston over a number of days and went through about 600 people when they found this guy. He looks a bit like Steve Carell. Apparantly the guy that they chose to do this ad was way too 'cool' so they had to put a fat suit on him and give him a combover to appear nerdier. This ad turned out to be such a huge hit that they ran it in Cinema and on the opening of Saturday Night Live where they usually play the SNL Skits.. and everyone thought it was one! The last part of the rap (the best part) he actually made up himself. ("Now how you gonna let a marketing rep rip ya rep...") Best. ad. ever. !




HBO Sopranos
This was for HBO to promote The Sopranos on DVD. For this ad, Simon didn't want people to act, he wanted them to actually cry. So he spent two days in casting, watching over 300 people crying. (!) As they shortlisted people for the spots, he asked them to tell him the most emotional piece of music that would make them cry. Once he got these songs, he downloaded them onto an ipod and set up a motor home next to the set on the day to play it right before they shot each scene. Apparently the girl in the first shot was beside herself and was crying uncontrollably! He sort of just let them do their thing as he didn't want to interfere and ruin their moment 'in the zone'! I liked the way this way put together.. how melodramatic!

Gigapan viewing

This got sent around at work. Pretty insane!
checkit.



You can scan, double click and zoom to any section of the crowd. The picture was taken with a robotic camera at 1,474 megapixel. (295 times the standard 5 megapixel camera.)
You can zoom in right to the back rows and see the detail on people's faces! Pretty good for security.. Suppose they didn't want another JFK incident..

The New Pepsi Logo

A great representation of the new Pepsi logo!
Plucked from blow at life.


Also, the pinnacle of the entire universe?!.. have a read! hah!

Tori Flower crafts

This chick, Tori Flower is an Art Director from London, she's done some wicked ads (including the 2 time yellow pencil Brylcreem ad, which i'll post about shortly!), but also does some really quirky crafts! My favourite is the Electronic Scarf.. I love it!
Click for more pics..

Taste the colour

Gathering around a bowl of Doritos and Avocado dip in the 303 cafe today with a few people, we spoke about many interesting topics. Firstly beginning with the tragic events that have happened over the past few days in Victoria, onto donating to help out and the GFC, the Kevin Rudd payouts, the trade wars and 'Made in Australia' stamps and the meaning behind it..

The last few chips I found myself with Mark discussing how some foods 'can taste like colours'. I then learnt that this is called Synesthesia, a condition in which one sense (e.g. taste) is simultaneously perceived as if by one or more additional senses such as sight.

So.. imagine that when you see a city's skyline, you taste blackberries. Or maybe when you hear a violin, you feel a tickle on your left knee. Perhaps you are completely convinced that Wednesdays are light red. If you have experiences like these, you might have Synesthesia.

We were trying to imagine 'tasting colours' as you might with Synesthesia, and agreed that Pineapple tastes like the colour Orange... Dark chocolate tastes like deep purple (Cadbury?)..

Some weird facts about Synesthesia:

• Studies in the US show that 3x as many women have Synesthesia than men, and in the UK 8x as many have been reported to have it. The reason for this difference is unknown.
• People with this condition are more likely to be left-handed than the general population.
• They are of normal intelligence and standard neurological exams are normal.
• Synesthesia appears to be inherited in some way, it seems to be a dominant trait and may be on the X-chromosome.

Famous painters with Synesthesia:

Vasily Kadinsky

A Russian painter born in 1866, he was one of the most famous 20th century artists, credited with painting the first modern abstract works.

Vision by Carol Steen;
Oil on Paper; 15 x 12-3/4 inches; 1996. A representation of a synesthetic vision the artist experienced during acupuncture treatment.

Doing some research on the net, I found a girl called Amie Slavin. Amie is a synaesthetic sound artist, she sees names, words, letters and numbers as colours. She also sees sounds, including her own work, as coloured. She explains her newest sound piece, Wave Play:

"WavePlay is a very visual piece for me, complete pictures for one thing, but also the shapes and colours of the waves - predictably dark and browny colours at the bottom, with yellowy gold and a little green at the top"
She also says that she experiences 'empathic synaesthetic', sometimes feeling other peoples' sensations. In addition to all this she has been totally blind for eleven years, so no longer see colours with her physical eyes.

I don't know why.. but this whole topic fascinated me!

Brylcreem.

Awesome.
Done by Oli from OliandAlex.com and Tori from ToriFlower.com.

The making of:


The finished product:


p.s: Check out Oli's sketch book! awesome :D

Blogs I want to follow

... But don't have the 'follow' option on their sites... grr!

http://scampblog.blogspot.com/

What the F**k is social media?

Great presentation by Paul and Nic the other day, slideshow available to view on Slideshare.

Something that will blow your mind...

Get older with an MMS

The Epica Awards were assigned recently, with the winner for the best mobile marketing campaign, for AMF Pension by Forsman & Bodenfors, who are well known for the cool stuff they've done online for IKEA. The aim of this campaign was to encourage people to start thinking about their pension while they were still relatively young.



This booth invited passers by to take a picture of themselves with their mobile phones and MMS it to AMF. A few minutes later they would send back a picture showing how the person might look when they are 70 years old. Obviously this idea would have been done before, but you've got to appreciate the smart use of mobile media. :)

Reversed Beliefs

This video was forwarded to me at work.. it has so much impact!
Apparently.... this video was submitted by a 20 year old in a contest titled "u @ 50"
It won second place. When they showed it, everyone in the room was awe-struck and broke into spontaneous applause.