EuroGel
This September the Gel Conference travels from NYC to Copenhagen.
Computers and ceramics
By Scott Rench.
Metabiotics
Subtle urban interventions by Alexandre Orion.
Knitting Art
Pretty bloody stuff.
The Bubble Project
Transform corporate monologue into open dialogue.
C’ENTRO
A shoe specially designed for italian politics.
The ‘users-as-designers’ meme continues to spread.
The KBC bank in Belgium, now offers its customers the opportunity to personalize their own bank cards.
Via the KBC website, customers are invited to submit an image of own choice. After a few days they can pick up a new card at the bank that has the selected image imprinted (if it is approved of by KBC that is).
Related: Design Your Own Luggage Labels
• KBC Bank
BMW recently launched a TV commercial featuring Dutch artists/scientist Theo Jansen.
Jansen is reknown as the charismatic creator of the kinetic sculptures that behave as artificial animals and BMW teamed up with him to profile their leadership in the fields of technology and innovation.
It’s quite normal that advertising finds inspiration from the arts and vice-versa but its far from normal that artists are actually profiled in this way
Last year, Honda created a popular commercial, which was a replica of the exceptional 30 minute cinematic artwork Der Lauf Der Dinge (The Way Things Go) from 1987. In contrast to Jansen in the BMW commercial, the artists (Peter Fischli and David Weiss) were not credited in any way.
• BMW commercial • Honda commercial • Der Lauf Der Dinge
Construction Site is the title of a prize winning outdoor advertising campaign for LEGO.
Real construction sites were transformed into LEGO-like universes, simply by adding a few colorful containers shaped as overdimensional LEGO bricks.
Construction Site is also the name of one of LEGO’s toy products.
Adidas recently placed an oversized shoebox in the middle of Leidseplein (Leidse Square) in central Amsterdam, to promote its newly opened concept store; adidas Originals.
The always-crowded square is not only known for its numerous sports bars and tourist traps, it also happens to be the public stage of the most famous football-freestyler in town who performs mesmerizing tricks all year round.
• adidas store • Football Freestyle
Continuing the trend of engaging users as participants, Dutch airline KLM recently introduced a new concept that allows passengers to design their own luggage labels, free of charge.
When booking a flight via www.klm.nl passengers get the chance to design two luggage labels, using their own images or a pre-defined image from a KLM gallery.
Luggage labels and straps are subsequently sent to passengers who submit their designs at least two weeks before departure. The service is for Dutch residents only.
• KLM
Hewlett Packard (HP) recently launched a temporary on- and offline artgallery, located in Amsterdam.
Untill April 28, anyone can submit an artwork (image or video) to either gallery as long as the title of the artwork contains the letters H and P, respectively.
Some of the titles in the exhibition so far, includes; “Happylicious”, “High Pitch” and “Harbour Pearl”.
At the physical location in Amsterdam’s Post CS building, the latest artworks are printed on huge high-res printers before being mounted on the gallery walls where they replace the oldest ones.
Hence, Hypegallery is a constantly changing (advertising) space.
To promote its adicolor concept, Adidas recently launched a clever interactive billboard campaign.
First step: Adidas put up blank white posters with their logo, encouraging people to write or draw on it.
Second step: After a while, the Adidas crew comes back and cover the billboard with a second poster, which contains wholes in the shape of shoe-canvas. Consequently, when placed on top of the first poster, the underlying graffiti becomes an illustrative part of the second poster.
More images available at Wooster Collective.
In the boycott against Danish products, muslims in Saudi Arabia – and possibly other countries – have launched a viral anti-marketing campaign using SMS. The SMS contains information on how to determine whether a product is Danish by looking at the first two digits of its barcode (the country code for Denmark is 57).
In response to the boycott, member of the Danish parliament, Louise Frevert tried to catalyze a counter SMS campaign, which encouraged Danes to boycott muslim owned stores. The campaign was a total failure and has been ridiculed by all sides in Denmark – including her own right-wing party.
Related: Mediamatic runs a mini-feature on the cartoon subject. They give credit to the blogger who discovered that a delegation of Danish imams where circulating a phony Mohammed drawing during a visit to the Middle-East. You can also find a ‘stay out of trouble’ guide for the ignorant cartoonist.
Inspired by the current pixel advertising craze, two students at the International Film School in Wales are asking people to donate money to fund their first feature movie.
In return, those who donate £3 or more will receive a screen credit as executive producer.
The students aim at raising a million dollars by involving thousands of sponsors. And while they are at it, they also hope to get in the book of Guinness World Records for the movie with the longest list of credits.