We've had great fun this morning artworking our own watches.
Paper Watch by Suck UK (natch) is a great little idea. Made from that tough paper you get on nightclub wristbands, it's surprisingly practical.
I made an Asterix and Obelix watch, 'Asterix Tells The Time'.
At just £7.50 they make great gifts. IMHO.
Most days I cycle round the Elephant and Castle and my route takes me through a housing estate where they have this delightful little elephant in the kids playground.
I say delightful, because this little elephant is a smaller version of the bigger famous elephant and castle sign.
Seen in Lambeth. Lovely idea. Made by Cyclehoop.
Great photo, highlighting many design issues. Taken by 
By chriswoebken
Russell wrote a thing about 'music for shuffle'.
" I really want to see... Music made for the shuffle - pieces designed to appear randomly but still hang together. More than a bunch of songs. And long too, filling up a shuffle, hours worth of it."
And then MIB went and made it.
That's how we roll in the BRIG.
Domino Dancing, all day all day.
We all went to the O2 on Sunday.
It's mental inside. Full of garish.
There are lots of screens.
There seems to be no reason or structure to how they are placed or sized.
The only uniformity is that no-one seems to know what to do with them. The best one, the only one that worked, I didn't manage to get a picture of. It was for Coca Cola and was just a nice animation based on the bottle which was conveniently the same shape as this screen. Nothing too clever just considered. (Something here about Moira Cullen being appointed Design Director all those years ago.)
It's funny really that no-one has worked out how to do something good on these screens. It's not like screens are an unfamiliar medium to agencies, to brands.
Just for the record the best so far, imho, is this. Basically a moving poster. I think that's a good place to start. For now.
Anyone know? Someone must know?
The closest we have so far is this "The name and the face were both Duncan's ideas, put there (in his charming account) because the lonely cleaning armies of the early morning and late night liked to use an object they could address as a friend."
Can anyone shed any light?
I was in a watch shop the other day. On the counter was a book about the history of Omega watches.
It seems like Omega went through a period of making watches for large corporations for example Shell, Esso and Coca Cola. Kind of expensive branded giveaways.
I'd like to see one of these in the flesh.
Jesse has drawn me as part of his project to draw advertising and marketing people across the globe.
Even though it's absolutely terrible I'm really proud to be a part of the project. He did Dan Germain before me and he's doing Rory Sutherland next.
Just the sort of bollocks the internet was made for.
It's World Toilet day. Or something. Domestos have done a thing where you can 'track your flush'. It's good. But what I really like is this little bit of design.
Telling you how many emails you will receive, that's smart. And nice.
This site highlights extraordinary moments from Google StreetMap.
Actually, it's ordinary moments that look extra ordinary when singled out. Loads of mooning and fights and stuff, but the ones of zoos are mental.
This is pretty old, but - the world's biggest crossword.
And lastly. Rainbow.
Have a great weekend.
I think this is a good idea from Amrinder (read the full story here).
I spoke to Iain today and he thinks it's worth trying too.
So let's try it.
I'm going to try and persuade Engineering tomorrow. Wish me luck.
You can see all the Nike Grid data viz films here. We're making one film every day for two weeks from the game data. And we're taking today's data and putting it into a film which will run on Channel 4 as 12:05 tomorrow.
That's pretty cool I reckon.
Last year I kept seeing X's all over town. With your help we worked out it was promotion for the (now Mercury Prize winning) band The XX.
But what about these? Looks like exactly the same font. Lots of people tell me it's not The XX, but I reckon it is.
What do you think? Send me your reckons.
Talking of w+k, I remember seeing this box of old awards there about a year ago. Look what they turned it into.
It's called Beware The Awards Hunter.
The second Nike Grid started last night and runs for two weeks.
You may remember I was Creative Director on the first one with w+k, I thought I'd written about it on here, but I can't find the post. To save time there's a quick overview written by Doug E Fresh. The second one is bigger and bolder and has been aided by Dan Hon joining the team at w+k. So we've plundered his gamification skillz to make the gameplay better and to allow new ways of playing such as team play.
We haven't started from scratch with the look and feel. We built a really strong identity last time and we were keen to evolve that and to make something that still feels like it could go further for Grid 3 and grid 4 (should they happen etc). Last time we kept it to one colour plus black and white, this time we've added more colours, partly to make it feel bigger, partly to help with visualising team play.
Also new this time is the involvement of Stamen. They have worked with us to created a map, using Open Street Map and some awesome data viz stuff which will go live throughout the game. Here's the first of several videos we'll be using to tell different stories throughout the game.
We're using Facebook as a way of logging in, I don't have much to add to this expect that it reinforces my increasing affection for Facebook. I'm starting from a low base, but Facebook increasingly is The Internet for people and the fact that it lets 'them' do all the stuff 'we' do on Twitter, Flickr and Foursquare in one place is a Good Thing. OK, maybe not a Good Thing, but a Thing.
This project seems to be a lovely mix of several things that feel very current. It's a game, but it's not just a game bolted on to a brand. The game is integral to the brands heritage - running. It's got lots of Post Digital thinking, we're not using tech for the sake of it, we're using it to amplify the experience. It utilises Magnificent Bits Of Infrastructure that are lying around (I've worked on another project that does that too, heh) this time in the form of phoneboxes.
It would be wrong of me to talk about stats this early into the game, but as with last time the depth of engagement people have with this is insane.
And there's lots of interesting stuff happening on Twitter and Facebook.
As ever, I'm a very small part of a big team of talented, dedicated people working night and day to pull this off. And not just at w+k, at Nike, AKQA and MindShare.
As I said, Nike Grid is on for two weeks and started yesterday. So there's still time to sign up and get running.
I like this. The ads aren't amazing, but the way they run them together is nice.
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