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Stuff, recently

For the last few weeks I've been working with W+K London as the Creative Director on the ad campaign for the relaunch of The Observer.

We made a TV ad which was brilliantly written by Rob Burleigh and David Stevens, brilliantly directed by David C Kerr (from That Mitchell & Webb Look, among other things) and brilliantly acted by Justin Edwards (from The Thick Of It). I mostly stood around telling everyone the objective was to get home on time.

   

We created a press campaign too. For the teaser ads we used quotes from an online campaign set up to save The Observer when it was faced with possible closure back in the summer. Some of the quotes from well known people were amazingly bold things for a brand to say. So we used them as 6 sheets.

 

And there's this.

The whole idea behind the campaign is pause, review and reflect which came from something John Mulholland, the Observer editor, wrote about the role of Sunday newspapers in the future. A few days before we were due to do a photoshoot of the paper I asked the creatives at The Observer to run me off three section headers with pause, review, reflect written in Prelo the lovely font they're using in the paper. I wasn't really sure what they were for, but we shot it and it looked great. So we ran it.

Photography by Jonathan Kitchen.

There was some other exciting online stuff, but I shall talk about that later. The campaign seems to have gone down well. Read more on the w+k blog.

In other news Newspaper Club has launched as a small beta. It's fascinating seeing what people are doing with the platform and we're already working on tweaks, but more about that another time because the most bloggable news is that I'm amazed and proud to report Newspaper Club has been nominated in the Design Museum Design Of The Year awards. Incredible news.

  

  

  

An exhibition of all the nominees (including the iPlayer, the Kindle, a BMW and err, us) is on now until June at the museum. We commissioned the brilliant James Bridle to create a special one page newspaper for us which you can take away from the show. One side features a massive logo, obviously. The other side features a map for a walk which starts at the Design Museum. You can read more about A Wide Arm Of Sea on James' blog.

All good stuff. Good times.

The transparency I'd most like to see

 

There is always lots of talk on the web about privacy. With an election looming we can only expect this to increase.

I'm a teeny weeny bit paranoid about privacy. I shred, regularly. But I'm also an advocate of being open online.

But like a lot of arguments the issue isn't as simple as privacy yes or no. You can say you live in London without mentioning the exact street. Or as Tom said once, "Privacy. Get over it."

Now, I don't want to debate privacy here. I really don't. People cleverer than I have written better things elsewhere. But I do want to talk about a type of transparency that would make my life easier.

We've all experienced frustrating email conversations where you're trying to arrange a meeting with someone. Sometimes they go like this:

A: Yeah let's meet up, when's good for you?

B: Sometime next week?

A: Yeah great. Tuesday?

B: Perfect. Morning or afternoon?

Natural delay of a day or so.

A: Oh, sorry. Tuesday has gone now. Internal thing. How about Wednesday?

B: I can't do Wednesday. I could next Monday though? 10am?

A: Ahhh. I'm free all day Monday apart from 10. Thursday at 3?

B: Perfect. See you then.

Natural delay of a day or so.

A: Sorry. Really sorry, client coming in at 10 now.

And so on.

It seems odd to me that I can very easily find pictures, phone numbers, address, likes and dislikes, marital statuses, of people I barely know and yet there's no easy way to see the availability of slight associates. I'm not suggesting making our calendars available to everyone, but I would like to see a pretty basic busy/not busy thing similar to how Google show you the chat status of people you have previously emailed.

 

And not just inter-company, something broader than that. Something vague. Something useful if you're trying to gauge the availability of someone but useless to a stranger. Something where you can get an idea of hereish, soonish, nowish.

Something glanceable.

 

In this example, because I've had a few emails with Rob I can quickly see his basic availability. No details, just free or busy, like the calendar at the start of this post. I know this is not perfect interaction design, it's just a quick sketch.

<ducks>

FHM redesign

FHM gets a redesign. Take a look. Seriously.

Sky Low Definition

 

This is me earlier today watching Chelsea v Arsenal on my iPhone.

I am the worst type of football fan. The kind you probably all despise. I don't support a team, I couldn't think of anything worse than standing on a wet terrace watching Accrington v Morecombe but I love the Champions League and I'd happily pay over the odds to watch Man U v Chelsea or Arsenal v Liverpool.

However, I have never thought a Sky subscription was worth the money. We don't watch much TV at home and £50 a month seems a lot just to watch the 'big four' games each season. (£50 a month or whatever it is.)

Except now there's a now a Sky Sports app and for £6 a month you can watch all the Premiership and Champions League football Sky have. That sounds reasonable to me. And actually I never really watch the football, I just have it on and glance at it every now and then. The iPhone seems a better way of doing that than some bullshit 50in High Definition TV. I've never really understood the obsession with massive TV's, I think watching TV on your phone or your watch is a much more useful experience than installing the local Odeon in your front room.

So I downloaded the app and signed up.

Today was the first game I watched. And pretty good it was too. The quality was superb and it streamed well for 90 minutes. I think the connection dropped twice, that's all.

Mid way through the game my brother called on Skype. Whilst I was telling him about this something occured to me. Look again at that picture.

 

There are three screens in the photograph. I'm watching TV on my phone, I'm talking to my brother on the laptop and the actual television? Switched off.

Things they don't tell you at art school

 

Photoshoots take a very long time, are hard work and, let's face it, are pretty boring.

Although we got some great shots.

SXSW

 

Picture taken by Matt.

In March, I'll be in Texas with this crew and this crew and these fine fellas. We're speaking on a panel at SXSW about paper, the internet, post-digital and hopefully Deacon Blue.

If you're around do come and say hello.

Profits

The absurdity of much of today's news reporting highlighted in one simple screen grab.

Miss of the season

Here's an ad about traveling on the Tube to football matches.

 

Normally these Tube posters are quite good. Simple enough and nice and graphic. But this one seems like a massive missed opportunity to me. Surely they could have made some pitch markings from the map?

  

 

Dreaming?

 

This is the worst ad I've seen in a long time.

I struggle to believe it was made. It's sexist, unfunny, cheap, badly photographed, hideously laid out and massively inappropriate for the audience.

Old but still valid debate

 

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