I can’t wait to have a play with this new iPad app, LetterMpress: A Virtual Letterpress on Your iPad from bonadiescreative.com

This is a great project on two levels.
I think I am probably one of the last group of people to have had a traditional graphic design education. My initial introduction to design was using type gauge rulers, learning about pica m’s, drawing serifs and sans serifs with Rotring pens etc. lots of work training the eye to understand positive and negative spaces, lots of type paste-up work and using small letterpress machines. So I love rolling up the sleeves for a bit of hands on design work.

Also, before seeing this project I hadn’t heard of Kickstarter but what a fantastic idea!
If you don’t have funding for your dream project then Kickstarter enables you to reach out to the wider creative community to get them involved to help fund your project. Great projects from across the globe that before would never have seen the light of day are being funded and developed by very generous backers. Actually the generosity in these hard times is pretty staggering.

In the case of LetterMpress the project has received more than double it’s required funding within half the allotted time.

A great concept, great platform coupled with great support and backing.

A nice social info-graphic from Digital Surgeons. An incredible amount of users are now using these social channels as illustrated by the Facebook world map below (generated by visualising friendships).

Great Interactive bus shelters throughout San Francisco invite commuters to partake in four games based on Yahoo! mobile apps, as part of a neighborhood-on-neighborhood competition. The neighborhood that scores the most points at its shelter wins a block party with OK Go!.

Really nice campaign. People have really taken to gesture driven interfaces and devices (think iPhone, Android, iPad, Samsung Galaxy Tab etc) and mainstream acceptance means the possibilities for great interactive campaigns are almost limitless.

You show me someone who doesn’t love a good mashup and i’ll show you a liar!
This is cool, #uksnow map. UK real-time snow reports using Twitter.

How to join in – Tweet the hashtag #uksnow, the first half of your postcode, and rate the snow that is falling out of ten (0/10 for nothing, 5/10 for steady snow and 10/10 for arctic blizzard conditions).

Optionally, you can include the depth of snow (cm or inches), attach a photo and add a description to your tweet.

Get tweeting UK

This made me laugh out load this morning, I then sent the link around the studio.
Job done!

I spend quite a lot of time at my desk as do a lot of designers. Does it reflect my state of mind? What does it say about me? If my desk is messy is my mind? I think the state of my desk is most reflected by how busy I am but I really like this short film.

A lot of people at Deskography are pretty proud of their workspaces.
Multi monitor porn if that’s your thing!

To some of us oldies that remember back to the Betamax v VHS war and the beginnings of DVD the recent sad news of the demise of old faithful Blockbuster came as a bit of a shock, I guess it was inevitable in this digital age.

It was mortally wounded in it’s last few years with tough competition from Netflix, Redbox, LOVEFiLM and the like, and the killer blow will have come from the phenomenal rise in web video, and people downloading from p2p networks.

The rise and rise of web video continues unabated. A few facts:
24 hours of web content uploaded to You Tube every minute
One third of all web traffic is video, by 2013 it is predicted to be 90%!

Alongside this rise of power come technical innovations that enable brands and agencies to be creative with video like never before. A great examples is the recent Tippex – NSFW A hunter shoots a bear! video that went viral.

The TED talk above is pretty inspirational, Chris Anderson says the rise of web video is driving a worldwide phenomenon he calls Crowd Accelerated Innovation — a self-fueling cycle of learning that could be as significant as the invention of print. Crikey!

Who says the French have no sense of humour. Absolutely loving these!
Sylvie rocks!

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!

I got a link to this info-graphic yesterday from Roz one of Harvest’s user experience team. Interesting and surprising facts on the average ages of people on and using social networks.

A big misconception is that they are dominated by the yoof, the fastest growing demographic are the over 50′s who are embracing technology and new communication channels at a significant rate.

The full info-graphic can be seen on thenextweb.com and more via Flowtown.