Is it a shoe or a sculpture?

Like most women, I absolutely adore shoes in all their shapes, sizes and colours. I make snap purchases, without even considering whether they'll o with anything, or the practicality of them..but these, yes these people are SERIOUS un practical shoes. But I love them! They fuse my love of shoes and art in one.
Created by Israeli born footwear designer, Kobi Levi, these creations are a visual feast, forcing you to look twice and work out how this object can actually fit a foot inside it. Levi says of his work, "The piece is a wearable sculpture. It is "alive" with or without the foot or body".

 Amazingly, all the shoes are hand made in his studio. Follow more creations on his blog.

Making music look good

So I managed to get on down to GLUG the other week & I wasn’t disappointed. The theme was music videos with top directors from the likes of Partizan, SkinFlicks, and Sony Music showcasing some of their best work. It really made me stop and fully appreciate the creativity and crazy amount of hard work that goes into producing some beautiful mini films that you never fully see or just catch a glimpse of.

Here’s a selection of my best video’s & the odd fact or two:

Phil Tidy who has produced some well known videos for the likes of Lily Allen, The Ting Tings, Dizzee Rascal to name a few, showed this great story of a hypocritical TV presenter in this video for Chase and Status. 

Mike O’Keefe of Sony revealed Jonathan Glazer had a budget of around £100k to produce Jamiroquai’s floor sliding Virtual Insanity. He then went a quarter of a million over budget creating the 3D creature coming out of the sea in the opening sequence of Deeper Underground.

Aside from these facts he showed us the brilliant piece of marketing for the launch of Kasabian's new track 'Underdog'. By recreating Guitar Hero on a massive scale and getting a West London football club to hits the notes at the right time by kicking a football at the relevant colour dot. Hours later of practise, the team manage the full version of the track. You can only imagine their elation.

Directed by Dan Henshaw.

Found Collective have produced some highly creative & powerful films for Pendulum, Depeche Mode and LadyTron. What caught my attention though was this cool viral made for Vodaphone to show The Evolution of the mobile phone. 

Found collective also collaborated on this piece for the Director's showcase in Cannes, making a kinect performance that can only be explained here. The effects produced as you can see are quite intriquing. 

We also got a sneak peak into some of the test video tricks from Henry Schofield of Partizan which was a highlight for me.

And I'd like to leave you with this beautiful film created by an upcoming Mexican Director, Alberto Gomez whose response to Saatchi's 'Hello, Future' music video competition no doubt won him some fans in Cannes where he was announced the Winner. His stylish and beautiful art directed interpretation of Moby's track takes the viewer to another realm.

After - Moby from Alberto Gomez on Vimeo.

Psychedelic invigoration

Loving the tribal inspired work of Bristol born illustrator, Ben Newman as profiled in last month's Creative Review. Yes I'm a month behind. Work, holiday, you know how it goes. So I have about five 'drafts' to pop up here - Expect more action! Anyway, a visual feast while you wait... 

The bold graphic shapes and colour palette have quite a retro style about them, while the symmetry plays havoc with your eyes - Love them!

Top TV

Well BETC & Evian had a job on their hands to better their dancing babies ad of last year, but I think they've done a good job with the latest 'Evian Baby Inside'. This one uses a stop frame technique of adults waering t-shirts with babie's bodies printed from the neckline in various positions, giving the illusion that these people with 'young' bodies are dancing around. Ending with the famous 'Live Young' strapline. Well resolved.



Another fav I have put up for my own purposes is the 'Cats with thumbs' ad for Cravendale released earlier this year. I must've missed it as only by chance saw it through a youtube link. But it did make me laugh out loud:



By W+K London

Oh crap.
There almost always comes a time in a creatives' career when an idea that they had many moons ago sits idle in their book/ bottom drawer and it isn't long before someone goes and bloody makes the thing. Is that flattering or just a case of ideas existing out there somewhere and people tapping into it as and when appropriate? In my case it was a campaign I thought up for Topshop to make the shopper's experience more bearable and convenient for those with fast paced lifestyles. It was more a technological solution as such than a conceptual idea, but it was based on the frustrations many feel (especially in winter) at having to undress and re-layer up to try on an outfit, This way,m with my special mirror, shopper's can try on clothes of their choice with minimum effort.
However with ever changing technology and brand competition it was only a matter of time before something similar was made:

Created by Russian agency AR Door

Using Microsoft Kinect and augmented reality, Topshop's flagship store in Moscow installed their very own virtual fitting room last month. A built-in camera recognizes a human body and superimposes a 3D model of a garment; allowing shopper to try outfits, switching clothes using simple gestures.

And below was my campaign thought up last November, quietly shown in my portfolio:

(All work shown above is original ideas by myself and not reproduced to the best of my knowledge at the time of production)

Had I had the contacts in the right places, who knows my 'Topshop Express' could well have come to fruition!
Oh well. Back to the drawing board.

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DIN DONG!

For anyone who gets obsessed with type to the point of actually being turned on by it - these are for you. Tart cards are the small flyers prostitutes advertise their services, and place in phone boxes. Yet these are designed with a twist. Using the names of well known typefaces, Fold7 design studio created these inviting you to be teased, spanked or dominated by a font. Although written with such wit, there is a serious cause being highlighted here. The sexual criminal underworld often subjects many to violent and horrid experiences. The Helen Bamber Foundation helps to rebuild lives broken by human rights violations, and an exhibition was held by all designers invited to take part in the project.

 

Monstrous update

I'd like to give a little nod and hoorah to the Ministry of Stories where I volunteer occasionally. It's been going for six months now and all involved have done a fantastic job in getting it up & running, spreading the word and making it it a huge success already. The Hoxton Street Monster supplies is fast becoming the place to go in the East end, (five-eyed creatures have been seen to queue up in an orderly fashion of a saturday afternoon). And the kids who visit benefit hugely from the many workshops held to assist their reading and writing skills and generally provide them with a fun place to go to get excited about books. The children from the drop-in sessions have published their first title, "Green Wobbly Things Dancing", which I myself found to make an entertaining night-time read. A group also worked on and produced a local newspaper, The Hoxton A.M. over the Easter break. Interviewing locals along the market and reporting on the history of the area.
The volunteers all got together for a knees up recently and were graced with entertainment from a variety of talented literaries. My favourite was a few performances by acclaimed poet/actress/writer/illustrator and all-round funny lady Laura Dockrill. She spoke and rhymed in character with such wit, it totally changed my sterotypical view of performance poetry.

Writers and design agency WeMadeThis have all been nominated in the upcoming D&AD awards in Writing for Design category for all the wonderful products and branding that make up the Hoxton Monster Supplies.

So please visit, volunteer & purchase anything from this wonderful project & keep the Monster work going!

Arr-yoo-spee-king cl-ee-er-lee?

I'm loving the phonetic ads scattered around for Google Voice search - they really make you stop and literally 'speak' the words in your head. The campaign is based on the insight that when you usually speak to automatic search technology on the phone it normally takes three attempts for the woman in an extremely posh recorded voice says - "Did you mean Lancashire?" when you were clearly saying 'Leicester Square' in your best Queen's English. And so with Google voice search for mobile, you have to say it to get -phonetically, in order to get the right result.

My Favourite: