Alex Bogusky one of the world’s most awarded creative directors surprised many when he quit what he called, “the best job on the planet,” at his own agency CP+B to create his latest venture The Fearless Revolution.

This new venture sets out to explore new agreement between consumers and corporations.

A nice film exploring the principles behind the The Fearless Revolution and who wouldn’t want to go to work at the Fearless Cottage – great name!

Ever wondered how on earth some projects have been created?

If you’re a creative, designer, developer or techy working in one of the many creative disciplines then no doubt you will spend a good deal of your time researching campaigns, sites, virals, social media etc from your peers, competitors and rivals.

In my experience of working in agencies there are normally two responses to viewing other peoples work. The first and most common (if creatives and designers are involved) is unfortunately to go straight for the jugular and start pointing out flaws, describe in detail how badly it’s been executed, wonder if they didn’t have the budget to finish it or explain how you would have done it differently and obviously better.

The other response is to sit in awe, to call colleagues over, send an email and to say under your breath “I wish I’d thought of that” or “how on earth have they done that?”.

North Kingdom frequently fall into the latter category, they appear to have won just about every major award possible and now they’re giving everyone an insight into how much work they put into their projects. They’re obviously working with considerable budgets but there is no denying the amount of work and detail that is executed at every level.

If you have a bit of time to kill then I suggest you give their site a visit and have a good study of the behind the scenes.

Recently I’ve blogged a lot more about mobile devices, software, apps and in particular gesture driven technology and interfaces.

I am a fully signed up fan, champion and user of these devices and spend more time than is healthy researching and future thinking how all of these converging technologies and platforms will change what we currently perceive as digital.

All major hardware and software companies are now developing for mobile devices and the market is expanding at an incredible rate. You obviously have Apple with the iPad and Samsung with the Galaxy but both Blackberry and Microsoft are now taking serious considered steps into the tablet arena, and we know how much market share these brands currently enjoy.

MIcrosoft partnering with Samsung have developed the Surface technology into a very powerful platform. Microsoft also recently signed a deal with ARM and demonstrated it’s Windows OS running on ARM mobile chips.

Apple are taking the best elements of their iPhone and iPad OS and interface and integrating them into their latest Mac OS X Lion operating system. We also know how copied Apple are so expect other brands to follow (cue Microsoft).

There are lots of developments behind the scenes too, the likes of Google with the development and merger of AdWords and Analytics, Apple also introduced the iAd platform and with these developments brands will find more clever and innovative ways of connecting to audiences and consumers.

So what does this mean for the end user?

Well if you couple the above (which is only scratching at the surface of what’s happening) with the advances in browser standards, HTML 5, WOFF, JS, etc then websites will go through a huge change in the next 2-5 years. This will be prompted both by technology advancement and user experience and behaviour patterns.

Make no mistake this is already happening! The debate on Web ‘v’ Internet currently rages.
Get ready, the future of digital is changing right before your eyes.

Post Digital? – Rubbish.

I really like this little project on stripping back logos just to simple circles to see if they can still be recognised. Interesting as the more simple the original logo the more recognisable it remains. A note for all brand and identity designers?!

More from the originator Graham Smith here and on the Unevolved brands Flickr set.

I had to make a trip into my loft this weekend to get a few things and while I was there I noticed this black box. I had forgotten all about this box, it holds a collection of graphic material that I have collected since I was at college (15 years ago!). So I obviously neglected what I was supposed to be doing and took a trip down memory lane.

I was amazed at what I had collected over the years. Everything is pre-digital and is an incredible array of books, brochures, leaflets, flyers, business cards, post cards etc. It was lovely to hold and feel tangible objects that had numerous printing and binding techniques, there wasn’t a single printed pdf in the whole box.

Now as much as I love digital and archive lots of digital movies, pdf’s, banners, emails, jpgs etc and using the mac I have numerous ways of efficiently browsing and finding exactly the file(s) I’m looking for I haven’t been this excited about looking through an archive for years.

Above is just a small number of items from the box. If you’re interested or are a graphic nerd then there is a brochure by Jonathan Barnbrook for the Virus font, House Industries type brochure, One Dot Zero film festival brochure, D&AD invite, T26 font leaflets, Zip design promo, Designers Republic (RIP) invite, Fuse 11 typeface postcard, Letraset catalogue (which is about 20 years old) and a couple more items going off shot.

I’ll have to post some more as there is some really lovely pieces of print design, especially one from Artomatic.

This is the book that I am currently working my way through at the moment. Ever since I attended Click London last year I have made it a goal to be more aware of what is happening in the advertising world and to follow the biggest transformation in it’s history.

There are a huge number of blogs, press articles, industry talks etc discussing and debating the demise of the traditional ad agency, the role of the traditional creative director and whether or not creative teams are the way future. I have no answers but I know working in digital for the past 12 years that now is one of the most challenging and exciting times within our industry.

Consumers are now infinitely more savvy, networked, social, and importantly more vocal and critical than ever before. We’re all having to work harder to make our campaigns memorable, persuasive and relevant.

Sometimes my head hurts just trying to keep up with everything these days!

If you are confused by social media or are the sort of person that likes to name drop brands with buzz words into meetings and conversations then this diagram is the one for you.

The Conversation Prism collates a colossal amount of technologies and companies into quite an easy to understand diagram. There are loads of brands I have never heard of before so it will be good to investigate and discover, you can never know everything!

That’s the beauty of this industry, always learning.

A great talk by Rory Sutherland on TED about perceived value. A brilliant speaker, he discusses advertising and suggests that changing perceived value can be just as satisfying and effective as changing ‘real’ value. Look out for Diamond Shreddies, brilliant idea!!

Are we telling stories or are we just playing games?

So the biggest thing that I took away from Click London last year was how advertisers are having to address how they communicate to their consumers and the general public.

In the last decade the huge increase in popularity of the internet, smart phones, and gaming machines meaning there has been a complete revolution in how people communicate. In turn brands can no longer just shout messages at people they have to be much more engaging and reactive to audiences. In short brands have to be become useful to their consumers.

Lee Clow and Alex Bogusky (blog) discuss the merging worlds of gaming, computing, movies and social media and the way that advertising is being born again by becoming much more integrated and engaging.

Turning a ‘Monologue into a Dialogue’ – courtesy of Lee Clow.

Tomorrow I am off to Click London, hosted by Creative Review at LBi’s London Headquarters.

Tomorrow’s theme is – Advertising born again


Advertising is not dead, it’s just being born again by merging with the world of gaming, computing, movies, and social media – in short, advertising is getting closer to, and more integrated, with all the things that people are already using and appreciating in their daily lives. Nowhere is this more evident than in the digital advertising world. In order to become relevant in the everyday lives of regular people, brands need to enter the web that people actually use. With this in mind, we set out to explore how all the external influences will impact the creativity of digital advertising.

A full day’s activity and lectures given by some of the industries big hitters including James Hilton, Chief Creative Officer, AKQA, Johan Tesch, Creative Director, BBH, Nicolas Roope, Founder/Creative Director, Poke London, Matt Ross, Creative Director, Tribal DDB London.

Expect updates on how the day progressed and what were the main topics of conversation.