one part truth, two parts mixer

Save our cities

When CBGB's in New York closed, Patti Smith gave a TV interview where she lamented the turnover of all space in Manhattan to luxury flats or plush retail spaces. It's a familiar story for Londoners. The Heygate is being turned over to a housing/retail development (not necessarily a bad thing!) as will the Pembury, Angell Town, etc in due course. What upsets me most about the Elephant & Castle development is not the removal of the scary underpasses but the fact that when the shopping centre is rebuilt it will no doubt be filled with the same ubiquitous cluster of shops that adorn shopping centres up and down the country.

Richard Florida has written a good feature in this month's Monocle about how the 'quality of place is not just about consuming'. For a city to attract the creative talent that makes it alluring to the wealthy (great quote by urbanist Jane Jacobs: 'When a place gets boring even the rich people leave'), it cannot be a homogenous, 'generic, flattened-out world'. I find it very interesting that Fast Company made London it's global city 2008 because I feel like the life is slowly being squeezed out of it. Although saying that, the impending recession will probably usher in a new era of creativity.

The end of the big idea

There was an interesting article in last week's Campaign about the restructuring of Mother's strategy department. The restructuring part apparently involves creating junior/senior pairs of strategists and cutting out the midweights, but what I found most intriguing was strategy director Dylan Williams' comment that 'you don't need a big idea'. Quote: 'You need an ongoing, enriching and fulfilling dialogue with consumers, you can't get that through a big idea. It's about rich ideas. It's about expansive, not reductive thought'.
Personally, I'm a big fan of the cohesive idea, which may not be huge but works across all channels.

Pixel pusher

I saw this nice Leica campaign on Lee's blog. It reminded me of some nice street art I saw on PicoCool a long time ago (below). What is it about pixels that make me happy? Is it the fact that squares just look good together, that I am reminded of Lego or that I get nostalgic for old video games?

Apparently the artist is Don Little of NYC (comments section here).

Advertising patriarchs

I was wondering the other day what happened to the advertising patriarch? You know, the Man from Del monte, Mr. Kipling, even to an extent Victor Kiam. I'm quite into these mysterious Keyser Söze-esque figures (in that noone ever knows what they look like), but is there a place for guys like this in today's communications? Or have we come too far?

In black and white

Loving the sleeve for Eight Oh Eight by Black Devil Disco Club courtesy of Non-Format. Front cover image by Géraldine Georges.

via The Style Press

On the subject of originality

There seems to be a lot of chat about originality, lack of, death of, etc, in my RSS reader. Someone pointed out Coloribus' great Ad Mirror, which spots 'mysterious coincidences in commercial prints'. Re-watching the classic Rumble in the Bronx, I think I may have spotted where Fallon got the idea for balls from. Check the YouTube clip here - the fun starts at 3:15.

Graffi-tree (arf)

Spotted on Charlie's Flickr photostream, probably from his recent trip to Berlin. 

Make loyalty pay

The other day my 5-month old electric toothbrush broke. I went back into Boots to see if I could exchange it, but I didn't have a receipt. You know how this story goes. I couldn't exchange it and was told I was a fool for not keeping my receipt (I probably have it, but it's in a large carrier bag with all my other receipts to go through when I fill out my tax return). When I worked at HMV (company policy may have changed since then) we generally treated people looking for straight exchanges as honest - we just sent the faulty product back to the manufacturer to get a refund anyway.

I can't remember which blog it was on, but I remember a story of a guy who sent a complaint about the velcro on his laptop bag to the manufacturers and the customer service rep broke company rules to fix the problem.

Anyway, on the way back to work, slightly riled by my exchange with the Boots staff, I was thinking about loyalty cards. I have a Boots Advantage card which I use almost every time I shop there, allowing them to collate vast amounts of information about my shopping habits for 4p per pound spent. Why couldn't this card double up as a guarantee card, when you scanned in the item that you wanted to exchange it could beep if it's been purchased in the last year. Probably impossible to do, but it would be great.

Love lego more

Saw this on Helen's old blog. I don't really think I need to say anything apart from: Lego. Best. Company. Ever.

Darkness prevails

I'm loving Gisele Ganne's collection of 'divorce and mourning jewellery for black widows' from the RCA show, aiming to 'glamorise death to the level of Haute Couture catwalk'. 'My mourning jewellery illustrates these different forms of death,' says Ganne, 'the widow of the deceased can wear the jewellery in his memory, or in memory of the manner in which he died'.

 

via LifeSigns Network