Lots and lots and lots of staples! Baptiste Debombourg has created these incredibly detailed artworks by using up to 35,000 staples. They are a series of two artworks entitled, ” Air Force One” and ” Air Force Two “.

Described on his site as “The protagonist Icarus, the Mannerism of the Renaissance and the symbol of sublime power Air Force One -the plane of the American President- are the main points in this work”. More really nice work on his site too.

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.

Spent an afternoon at the V&A this week taking a look at the Decode: Digital Design Sensations exhibtion that is currently on.

Really reminiscent of the early experimental Macromedia Shockwave and Flash work that came out in the 90’s by the likes of Anti-Rom, Joshua Davies (Who exhibits), Tomato, Show Studio etc.

For me the best work was the Processing exhibits, even though it’s been around for a while I think it’s time is coming and it’s gonna really take off. Worth a visit to the V&A go take a look.

If you’re going to buy one book this week/month then Creative Mischief by Dave Trott is the one I would pick up. I can’t recommend it highly enough. It works for every creative discipline.

I won’t tell you why. You’ll understand once you’ve read it. Genius.

Dave Trott’s Blog

Super cool inflatable bag monsters by Joshua Allen Harris’ on the street of New York City.

The giant animals are taped to grates on the sidewalk and come to life when warm air is pushed up from the subway. The giraffe is cool and the one that looks like it could be the US equivalent of the Loch Ness Monster is excellent.

Another great find whilst doing client research is The Web Strategy blog by Jeremiah Owyang.

An incredible source of knowledge and insight into web strategies. Written by Jeremiah Owyang who was a Senior Analyst at Forrester Research, and is now Partner of Customer Strategy at Altimeter Group.

Good reading:
Companies Should Factor ‘Social Influence’ Into Total Customer Value
Four Social Media Trends for Business in 2010

I hope he won’t mind but I’ve pinched his “To Be Successful, Companies Should Focus On Four Key Trends in 2010″ to share with you.

Don’t fondle the hammer.
Understand customers, focus on objectives, not develop strategies based on ever-changing tools. Companies really need to understand their customers first, see our recorded webinar to learn more.

Live the 80% rule.
This is a movement: get your company ready. 80% of success is getting the right organizational model, roles, processes, stakeholders, and teams assembled –only 20% should be focused on technology.

Customers don’t care what department you’re in.
Customers just want their problem fixed, they don’t care what department you’re in. Yet, now, nearly every department can have a direct relationship with your customers using social tools. As a result, provide customers with a holistic experience Start to investigate how brand monitoring, community tools and CRM systems are merging.

Real time is *not* fast enough.
Companies cannot scale when it comes to social media, for most companies, you cannot hire enough people to monitor and respond to the conversation, As a result, lean on advocates, by building unpaid armies, and anticipate customer needs through advanced listening techniques.

The image above is from “The Future of the Social Web” Forrester Apr 2009.
The Five Eras of the Social Web.

I have been doing some research for a client brand workshop and have come across some really insightful information that I am going to have to post up including this handy little graph on screen resolution saturation.

Until a couple of years ago screen resolution used to be a huge factor when talking to clients about website design. There was a period of shift over a number of years from 600×800 to 1024×768, and trying to convince clients to make the jump to the larger resolution was like trying to get blood out of stone.

Providing multiple designs over two formats, illustrating cut-off points, explaining grids, trying to explain benefits of static versus fluid templates, text re-sizing blah, blah, blah. This was not only time consuming but soul destroying. Oh how we laughed and cried behind the scenes…

With 57% of screens now above 1024×768 could we be swiftly approaching the next jump up to 1280 or even 1680?

Let the pain begin again!

Well it finally made an appearance yesterday!

A brilliant quote to start the proceedings by The Wall Street Journal “Last time there was this much excitement about a tablet, it had some commandments written on it.”

It was obviously one of the best leaked or worst kept secrets ever. The best description I have heard of the iPad is that it’s basically an iPhone on steroids.

I think that Apple have found themselves in a difficult situation with the iPad, if it did too much (multitasking as everyone presumed) then they would have potentially wiped out demand for their MacBook range and possibly the MacBook Air.

The biggest revolution with a screen of this size and resolution must be how we’re going to be able to consume more effective rich media. Newspapers and magazines will become far better engaging experiences and with Apple’s desirability factor making their products mainstream could this be the biggest opportunity for brands to push personalised content and advertising based on profiling?

This collaboration between The Wonderfactory and Time, Inc. is an example of how people have been pushing the engagement levels of the digital versions of magazines.

The worst thing about the iPad – still no support for Flash?

Steve really mustn’t like someone at Adobe.

Well the day has finally arrived!

For lovers of all things shiny that come out of Apple, 1 Infinite Loop, Cupertino this has the promise of being one of the biggest events ever. The rumour mills have been in overdrive lately with talk of a revolutionary tablet, with blogs and forums posting supposed leaked photo’s, url registration forms, patent applications etc.

The event kicks off at 6pm GMT so lets see if there’s enough bandwidth to watch!

The Third & The Seventh is stunning piece of CGI by Alex Roman. I don’t know much about the history of this but it must have consumed a monster number of hours to produce. You get an idea of how much effort has gone into this by watching the composition breakdown.

Amazing to think that everything in the film is computer generated and that it has been produced on a desktop machine by one person.