Floating on heaven

Selfridges has opened up the roof of its Oxford Street building in celebration of the UK launch of Truvia, the calorie-free sweetener made with the best-tasting part of the stevia leaf. Created by Bompas & Parr, the Truvia Voyage of Discovery installation invites visitors to row across an emerald green, stevia plant-bordered boating lake whilst enjoying panoramic views of the capital. Guests are invited to drink from the creative menu of Truvia-infused cocktails which are specially concocted by The Experimental Cocktail Club’s waiters and served from both the island and boat-up bars. A tropical soundscape written by composer Dom James, also provides the perfect background to the adventure, inspired by the South American origins of the stevia plant.

My last experience of the culinary mad scientists was a chocolate waterfall you walked through and then got to bottle up some of the chocolate to take home with you. Massively Willy Wonka in everything they do but what could possibly be wrong with that? Nothing, I say, although adding more marshmallow based ideas into the equation would be no bad thing.

Still, Bompas and Parr, I salute you.

Cinema on the streets of London

This is a trailer for my most recent project which was the second collaboration between Stella Artois Black and Punchdrunk theatre group.
This was the creation of a wonderful team at Mother London and I'm very proud of the final outcome which was a seven scene story that took place across a number of locations around east London.
I'll post up a film of scene one shortly but for now this is a bit of a teaser as to what happens.

The story is playing out until the 1st September so there's still plenty of time to get in on the action - and I promise it is action filled. Think action, thriller, fear, beauty and tearjerking romance and you're nearly there.

In love

As someone who really can't stand the overuse of the word 'amazing', in this instance I'm breaking the rules because I think this is truly amazing. And also beautiful.
National Geographic Channel have created a real-life version of the animated film Up — launching a house thousands of metres into the air using balloons.
Why I'm not sure, I guess I'll have to watch the program to find that out.

A team of scientists, engineers, and two world-class balloon pilots successfully launched a 16' X 16' house 18' tall with 8' coloured weather balloons from a private airfield east of Los Angeles, and set a new world record for the largest balloon cluster flight ever attempted.

If scientists are keen on bringing glorious animation to life then I say next in line is a real-life flying elephant ala Dumbo.

There's nothing quite like the sound of a typewriter

I love this piece of work and I'm so glad that I discovered such a subtle guerrilla gem because it's reminded me that for all the fancy pants 3-D, secret mobile phone codes, tagging and whatnot sometimes the best stuff is really the lovely simple stuff centred around a sincere message.
Of course I accept that we have to move with the times and therefore technology is a very important factor in the world of media and especially brand experiences but I always have that slight niggle in the back of my mind when I see those posters that you have to wave your phone in front of in order to see 'exclusive stuff' that's asking me "do people really buy into this stuff"?
I guess they must do, otherwise why would brands continue to do it?
Anyway I'm probably just being a luddite who will start all my sentences with "when i was young we didn't have... blah blah blah" so I should shut up now.

So yes, back to the subject at hand and I just wanted to post this because for me it's a highly effective, personal and inspiring piece of guerrilla marketing for a brand that we know don't exactly have buckets of cash to spend.
In fact I know that the beautiful shutter artwork pieces that Mother did for Penguin Books not so long ago. was paid for in books instead of cash. Who says advertisers are only in it for the money?
Regarding the typewriter campaign I'm not sure of the coverage they got in terms of hitting physical stores but it's obviously caught the imagination of the online community so either way it's done the job perfectly.
So all together now: long live the book worms!

If my bank were a living breathing bank...

... I'd like it to look like this one. (I'm with First Direct so thankfully I don't have to deal with the grey 80s-ness of British banks)

Pretty incredible isn't it?
This is first-ever, bank concept store for BNP Paribas in Paris, created by Paris-based architect Fabrice Ausset of Zoevox.
It has everything you may have ever dreamed and I suspect quite a lot more given than all most people want from their bank is less queues, more smiles and perhaps a slightly bigger overdraft.

The ultimate black swan

As a special treat I took a trip to the theatre last week to see the Scottish Ballet's interpretation of the childhood classic Cinderella.
If you are ever in Scotland and one of the Scottish National Ballet's productions are on do yourself a favour and go along.
Tickets are mega cheap, the costumes and set design are eye-poppingly beautiful, original and cool, the orchestra are incredible and the performances and totally and utterly amazing.
And thankfully no dark twisted murderous endings like a particularly popular film that's out right now.

A boozy energy-filled Christmas treat

Wouldn't this be a nice treat to get from Mr Postie of a morning?
These are the extra special gifts that I worked with Creative Trust to design and produce for Red Bull's biggest and bestest customers this festive season.
We sourced antique briefcases and filled them with booze, a bit more booze and a few cans of trusty Red Bull and Red Bull Cola.
So energy, alcohol, fashion and festive cheer all wrapped in one gift.
Let's hope it beats the branded mouse-mat they were expecting.

And on that note

I realised how much I like animated gifs - especially ones that look really nice.
That's all I have to say.

Just mucking about

I seem to be very busy at the moment but nothing is quite finished yet so I have nothing to share here that would be of much interest. Just lots of nearly finished projects.
The Becks Music inspires art short films will be done next week so that will throw up some good things for me to share and the next issue of the newspaper i am editor for will be done in the next two or three weeks as well as lots of other fairly exciting things.
Oh and I joined the Labour party today. Cost me a fiver. Bargain!

Please, somebody stop them

I'm no Jeremy Paxman when it comes to politics but one thing I do know is I don't want this nutjob running the country I live in.
Just look at his stupid massive moonface and his skinny dribbly lips - you know what they say about people with thing lips too... mean types never to be trusted. Pah.
I can so imagine him staring into the bathroom mirror every morning punching the air shouting "YES DAVID. YOU ARE THE BEST. YOU ARE A WINNER. WIN. WIN. WIN"
At the end of the day all political parties are a lot of lying, scheming, money hungry hounds but for me Labour are the least evil of three predominant evils. Depressing but true. Those good old Liberals have shown that they're not quite so hip and down with the real people of Britain haven't they?
And in actual fact, for right or for wrong I really quite like Gordon. When he's left to his own verbal devices he actual seems to be the most genuine and sincere, by far the most intelligent and the one that seems to be in it for others rather than for his own ego.
Oh and all this Gordon bashing from The Sun, Sky News, Simon Cowell, The Times etc ... does Rupert Murdoch really not realise it's ridiculously obvious he's behind it all?

Anyway, rant over.
On that note I just bought one of his books on Amazon.

Oh and these brilliant images are the handiwork of the lovely Verity Keefe. She shares many of my views but articulates them far better than I would through the use of pretty pictures.