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21.01.2010 by Zoltan 
Make your own Cameron poster
Very funny little Cameron mash-up from Andy Barefoot that allows you to make your own campaign poster for the upcoming UK general election. I especially like the fact that you have full control over the logo – some much needed respite for Cameron’s unashamed re-hashing of Obama’s ‘hope’ message which I simply can’t stand!
Whether you love or loathe the Tories, this provides endless fun.
via @mattyboomboom
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21.01.2010 by Zoltan the UK open the doors to public data (finally)
Following both the USA and London, the UK government has just released data.gov.uk – a whole tranche of public data free to all, and importantly including commercial applications. A great move in the right direction! Can’t wait to see the output generated from this…
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18.01.2010 by Zoltan Creative Handbook goes free(mium)
In a somewhat unusual move, CR has just waived the annual fee for the Creative Handbook. Any and all flavours of creative can now use the site gratis as a proxy-folio, presumably with the hope that a fair portion renew their membership come the following year after.
I guess that gives you a year to see the value (or lack thereof). Either way, the barriers to entry have been removed, and you’d be nuts to let it slip.
via CR Blog
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18.01.2010 by Zoltan You can’t script this shit
or can you… i would love to know if this is pure unadulterated fan-art or if it’s got something to do with the reported USD$200 million marketing budget of what was a predictable rip-off of pocahontas, even if it was set in space (which automatically makes it awesome)? Any thoughts?
via @benshaw
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16.01.2010 by Zoltan Laptop Friendly Cafes goes all-iPhone on us
Back in June we blogged about a (then-new) service called Laptop Friendly Cafes, which basically wants to formalise what the global creative nomads amongst us already know – that offices are soooooooooooo 20th Century.
Well, they’ve just released an iPhone app which has saved me on more than one occasion during the past few weeks as i was waiting for broadband to be re-connected after moving. Using the inbuilt GPS, the app finds your location and within moment is pointing you towards the nearest free wifi via google maps.
With an ever-expanding database of cities such as New York, London, Melbourne and Sydney, its USD$0.99 well spent IMHO.
The only drawback is the lack of the ‘add new cafe’ functionality. It seems a no brainer that the fastest way to build this database is through on-the-spot UGC, sitting in a cafe and feeling inspired rather than having to go online and do it via the website. But i’m sure its coming soon…
Get your local free wifi on with Laptop Friendly Cafes.
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16.01.2010 by Zoltan Interactive baubles
AnalogFolk gets all interactive for Xmas. Nice idea, nicely executed. They could’ve thrown in a few smiles though, looks like the band master was a real task master!!!
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06.08.2009 by Zoltan Visible Tweets
Visible Tweets is one of the better Twitter visualisations I’ve seen. It is a very soft, very gentle presentation of data. There are 3 different views or animation styles, but to be honest the only one the matters is the rotate one.
As stated by it’s creator The Man In Blue, “[Twitter's] beauty is the cacophony of the masses – a sea of voices that gently washes over you and allows you to savour the zeitgeist in 140 character canapes.” Indeed…
With all the constant buzz about the service, its strikes me as strange that no one has created the ultimate Twitter-viz. No doubt its in the works as we speak, maybe even by yours truly… Anyone want to help?
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04.08.2009 by Zoltan Tru Blood Is Much More Than a TV Show
Until now, Tru Blood was nothing more than a good idea on an addictive TV show called True Blood. In case you’ve been stuck under a rock recently, Tru Blood, the drink, is the central conceit of HBO’s wildly popular series: a synthetic blood-drink invented by Japanese scientists that allows vampires to enter mainstream society without fear of them gorging on hapless humans.
But all that changed last week at Comic-Con, when Tru Blood was launched as a real product – a bona fide drink made of blood orange (naturally) though sans haemoglobin, for the non-vampires of this world. Available from September 10 in your local bar and for pre-order online now, although only in the USA.
Obviously the fanboys and girls went wild at the chance to mark their allegiance. But when you consider that HBO is not historically in the drinks business, Tru Blood the drink suddenly stands as a watershed moment in the advertising and marketing industries.
It is a stroke of marketing genius mixed with a healthy dollop of business acumen. It inverts the traditional notion of product placement, and becomes all the more coveted because of its previous non-existence. Dare I say it: Tru Blood the drink represents the very future of advertising – unpaid media.
Imagine all the fake vampirism this drink will spawn: Facebook pictures, Youtube videos, and endless blog posts. Why buy media space when you can sell something that people will willing create content around, all the while turning a tidy profit for HBO?
Now this strategy is obviously not going to work for every fictitious product ever invented for TV and cinema. But it does prove that HBO realises that they are no longer confined to the screen. Creating culture in today’s world means being present in people’s lives in whatever way you can, even if it means entering the drinks business.
Pasted from the original article penned for blogcritics.org
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23.07.2009 by Zoltan Sueños de Papel by Cristina Guitian
The wonderfully talented Cristina Guitian has just finished a new mural behind her studio in Dalston, London. Poetic and irreverent as ever, its called ‘Sueños de Papel’ or ‘Paper Dreams’ in English.
Apologies for the shitty low-res camera phone shots, it’s all I had on me! Anyway I’m always amazed at how naturally her style transfers between the radically different scales of paper and wall. Something which is much more difficult than it sounds.
And if you’re interested in learning more about her process, she was recently interviewed by Don’t Panic
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17.07.2009 by Zoltan Future Routers
Future Routers is a great little colab design project between Goldsmiths and Talk Talk (appalling customer service, even if they have interesting corporate comms projects) that re-imagines the humble broadband router into something nicer/smarter – essentially designed around people rather than technology.
My favourite is the snappily titled ‘Energy Saver’ above, which has 4 hooks for house keys. When the last person to leave home takes their keys, it switches itself off. Presumably it switches on again when the keys are deposited back, but it doesn’t actually state that anywhere :(
via CR Blog
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15.07.2009 by Zoltan The Power of the YouTube aka United Breaks Guitars
I don’t normally go in for country music, but this is something else.Dave Carroll got screwed by United Airlines, they refused to take responsibility for breaking his guitar. After 12 months of useless phone calls appealing to the corporate beasties, he decided instead to write a song and post it on the youtube.
Nearly 3,000,000 views later and after coverage on CNN et. al., United decided to play ball. To Dave’s credit he told them to fuck off, because by now he was having fun and they were hurting badly.
Major PR hassle (read: expense) and serious customer fallout over a $3,500 dollar guitar. Go figure. Another case of big brands with zero understanding that the balance of power has shifted away from them and firmly into the hands of their (creative) customers.
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06.07.2009 by Zoltan Next time someone asks you for a viral…
…send them this absolutely fucking insane video and ask if they’re really prepared to make the same tenuous link of association between their brand and *something* mind-bending or unbelievable and of interest to their target.
And if their answer is no, then you can tactfully turn the conversation towards something like (ineffective) display advertising which is probably what they really wanted anyway…
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30.06.2009 by Zoltan Batman VS Joker BBoy
Interactive youtube vids have been around for sometime now, and whilst there have been some notable exceptions – boone oakley and Youtube Street Fighter – the majority of them are pretty crap.
Cue the ultimate BBoy battle between arch-enemies ‘the’ Batman and the Joker. It takes the Street Fighter concept several steps further in terms of both interactivity as well as out-and-out production values.
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29.06.2009 by Zoltan BillieTweets
I promised myself I wouldn’t do a MJ tribute post, but Billie Tweets is just too good…
Its definitely the coolest use of twitter I’ve seen in ages – basically a mashup of we feel fine’s keyword search and twitter’s real-time-y-ness with a good dose of MJ-rhythm for good measure – in short, Billie Tweets searches Twitter and then pushes the resulting tweets out word-by -word to the beat of Billie Jean.
Very very very good and brought to us by the talented kids over at 9astronauts
I wonder how long they were sitting on this idea before poor MJ (R.I.P.) kicked the bucket and they thought fuck it its now or never! Like the truth about MJ and those kids, I guess we’ll just never know…
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26.06.2009 by Zoltan the-affair, the thinking man’s brand
the-affair is an indie label out of East London striving to rid the world of boring and dumb popcorn tees. They produce in limited runs of only 200 per design and each one is based on literature – hence their slogan “the thinking man’s brand”.
They’ve just dropped Batch.04 / Obscurity in time for the northern summer. The 3 new designs were begun from slightly more obscure sources than usual, but the results speak for themselves.
Strange Aeons is based on H.P Lovecraft’s very particular form of tenticled horror in The Call of Cthulu.
Whilst We comes courtesy of their insatiable fascination with dystopic fiction, this time via Zamyatin’s novel of the same name, widely agreed to be the inspiration for Orwell’s 1984.
And finally Corto’s Crash SS09 is a brand new aqua colourway of their best-selling (and now sold-out) Corto’s Crash.
Get on over there and grab yourself one before they’re all gone…
Full disclosure: I am one half of the-affair with my partner in crime Dave Black
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