I’ve mentioned the quality of Web Designers Toolbox before. But I’m always asked what a web safe area is and what are the variations between browsers and platforms.
There’s a whole host of tools and templates at this site – including platforms and browsers templates at Web Designers Toolbox.
Get your creative minds down to Shad Thames and visit an excellent exhibition on till the 4th October. The Design Museum are showcasing the best British creative projects and people over the past 30 years. It was fascinating looking at all the 90s work and remembering that this was the very stuff that inspired me to work in design.
There’s also a fantastic exhibition by the talented Javier Mariscal. All of this mans best work spanning 30 years is on display till the 1st November. Really great stuff.
The North West Forth Plinth in Trafalgar Square is open for volunteers. At this very moment a rather wet lady is releasing helium balloons for all her loved ones who have done a good deed, as well as entertaining passers by with high-pitched sung songs.
I’m a great advocate of this little site Quidco. Simply search for your shop on Quidco, click through to the shop using their link and make the purchase as normal. Within hours your transaction is tracked and a few weeks later it’s paid directly into your bank account. There are some great deals on there – I’ve recently cashed in on £70 when I signed up to O2 broadband for a year and £15 for LOVEFilm to send Free DVDs to me for a month. It’s a hard ole credit crunch!
Microsoft have come up with a lovely vision of the future here.
Fast Tube by Casper
After playing with Microsoft Surface earlier this year, I can see alot of this wizardry becoming reality in the very near future.
The above demonstrates a lovely video conference, whilst sharing files between users. Haven’t we been waiting for this since ’3′ brought 3G to us in 2003! Apple are getting there, but looks like they are holding back on the patented front facing iPhone camera that was rumored on the iPhone 3GS. iChat mobile will be with us next time. Until then, MS Surface it is…
Congratulations to everyone who made it into nma’s annual Top 100 Interactive Agencies guide this week. I love the idea of digital specialists, but want to discuss why we at AMV think it’s time to blow apart the myth of what a traditional ad agency thinks about digital.
Let’s start by being very clear on two things: first, advertising is constantly evolving; second, ad agencies are all about tapping into consumer behaviour. In the 1930s, BBDO broke ground with creative programming of radio ads. In the 1950s TV ads were new and hard to understand, but someone cracked it and we all know where we’ve ended up. Ad agencies respond to new technologies, sometimes driving consumer take-up, sometimes following the consumer.
Digital is ubiquitous and has truly infiltrated life in so many ways. Thus, it’s very normal for ad agencies now to have a real role in driving digital forward in the lives of our brands and their consumers. The perception that we sit here in an ivory tower merely looking to put a TV ad online via YouTube is just not accurate. We understand consumers and so have permission, and indeed the commercial need, to build digital elements into strategies and creative work.
So what about the practicalities of getting into a world where people have been nurtured on a diet of TV, radio and print, all wrapped up by the wonderful invention of the retained account? It’s true to say that adding digital into a place like AMV is no small task, so from a structural point of view the first rule about AMV Digital is that there is no AMV Digital. We’re more of an insurgence than a department, with digital specialists dropped into the disciplines that make up AMV. This way we can have an osmotic effect on the whole company and be open for business right from the start, avoiding being in one corner and ignored.
We’re now at a point where the agency understands that digital isn’t free, might not be the quickest turnaround and that we have to take time to cut through the 90% that’s crap to find that Really Brilliant Thing.
And here is where I see a major difference in what an ad agency or a digital specialist can deliver for any brand. Creativity is the thing we live or die by. We can take time to get to the perfect solution and more often than not would rather not do something at all if we didn’t feel it was right for the client. This is what, if anything, digital agencies can learn from ad agencies. Some are doing this already, I’m sure, but if more borrowed this tried and tested route it might help us achieve our common goal of getting digital first on the agenda of every client.
Charlie Cannell, Director of digital services, AMV BBDO
(Taken from http://www.mad.co.uk)
Charlie makes a good point. To sum up the above – just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should, something many agencies forget. Really great work comes from a simple, pure, human truth or insight, this is not AMV’s sole domain but the responsibility of us all.
An innovative way to recruit from our friends at Conchango. Hijack an oppositions beer fridge and give people something to think about over the weekend. (Incidentally, this was not me.)
The new Ad from Logan, the folks who have been working with Apple creating all the latest (and in my opinion, greatest) vibrant iTunes/iPod adverts over the last year. The Ad also features one of my favourite bands Coldplay and a song off their new Viva la Vida album, which is out on Thursday.
Watch the AD in HD here. I love it!
