shelves of plastic (and stuff)

I'm nearing the end of house hold renovations now. One of the last tasks was to put the shelves of plastic back up. They're now taking pride of place in the living room.

Here's some highlights...

A nice drawing and stickers by Stefan Marx.

A Geoff McFetridge plastic thing, an orchid, a drawing (axe and arrow) a plectrum by the mighty Mike Shank.

Another orchid, a bottle of Pocari Sweat from my first trip to Japan and a mask from Ghana hiding at the back because it's a bit scary.

Some Michael Lau plactic things, Cigars from Cuba and Panda russian dolls.

And tattoo me Keith.

a shell films production

I've just been watching the 'EUREKA' short film (propoganda) by JWT for Shell that came with the Guardian yesterday.

A few thoughts in my usual 'everyone's a critic' kind of way.

Nice
That the film is based on a real life story about Jaap Van Ballegooijen. Again nice to see some good old fashioned story telling. When we trust the story, we trust the product, we trust the brand type of stuff.

Not so nice
The DVD's interface has obviously been designed by a nice little digital agency who like 9pt text and white space (so do I). A bit of a short sight though that 9pt text doesn't look so good (it doesn't look atall) on an actual TV screen. A shame that no one thought to test the DVD on a TV before they published a few hundred thousand and secured a distribution deal with a major national paper. Oh well.

The same nice little design agency seemed to have a bit of a problem embeding the interactive parts of the DVD onto the actual film so made a seperate presentation version for computer use only. A bit of a 'relevance to bloke on the street' miss on the implimentation of this though in that they name the files MAC_runme and PC_runme.exe mixed in with a few other random files and folders. This could have very easily been tidied up and the presentations called something like 'Mac users click here' 'PC users click here'.

The Guardian also came with a great guide to camping on saturday. I want to go camping this summer now. Great little TV spot for it by Wieden & Kennedy aswell.

V&A part four: friday night discussion group

Lastly I signed up to take part in a small discussion group about V&A friday night late openings. It's going to be facilitated by an external research agency and apparently there will be no one way mirrors stuff.

I've always wanted to join in one of these ever since being on the 'dark side' of the mirror a few weeks ago at an innocent discussion thing. I'm quite keen on sticking my ore in on things that haven't got a lot to do with me. It's quite nice just to spout out ideas/ insights and moans whilst knowing that you won't have to impliment any of it for once. It must be what being a consultant is like.

It's also quite relevant in relation to what Russell wrote in this week's campaign about research groups and open discussion as comments in blogs (McDonalds gate being the example). With that in mind im going to approach this discussion group as a blog post.

Here's my starting thoughts (the assumed brief being what do I think of V&A late night fridays and what else could they do)...

It's not broke
At first I thought about coming up with loads of event and happening based ideas but then I realised the V&A have actually got one of the most interesting and ground breaking London museum experiences already. Take their summer fete, surrealist ball, late bar and DJ's, themed events (ritual/ animate/ retro bollywood etc). I think they just need to document and publicise these things a bit more. A blog and youtube channel?

hidden gem
Time Out do the best kept secrets in London once a year or so featuring hidden gems. V&A could maybe market their friday nights like this. Whilst I was there it was so quiet you didn't have to que for Kylie, you could have the whole of the Asia wing to yourself, you can eat a good meal for under £10 in the magnifisantly decorated Morris, Gamble and Poynter Rooms (the first museum resturant in the world) whilst listening to live piano playing and do some people watching. In short it's a lot cheaper and more interesting that going into town town. Plus everyone is very friendly from the people on the tills, to the security and exhibition staff to the head chef who I had a nice chat to about his revolving menu.

exhibition and meal combination
Most museums and galleries offer combined exhibition tickets these days but none I know of do an exhibition and meal combination. If the theme of the meal matched the exhibition they'd really be onto something. For example the posh and strange french resturant les trois garcons have created a surrealist menu to run along side the surrealist exhibition. They have a Ghanaian exhibition coming up so create a traditional Ghanaian menu etc...

night markets
Night markets are great. If you've ever been to a night market in Thailand or pretty much any where else in south east Asia you'll know what I mean. V&A could set up a themed (for example Ghana agian) friday night market in the gardens outside with authentic street food, produce, crafts and entertainment. If done well and authentically it could like going to another country for a few hours.

alfesco eating
The court yard/ garden at the V&A is great. The Volume installation alone proved that but again of course the fete. The V&A could to a big push on alfresco eating over the summer with a decent rotating menu that could include world street food and stuff. I'd go.

Micro concerts in the courtyard
Imagine a cross between this and this.

That's my lot for now anyway. If you have any thoughts on the above or any other ideas about V&A friday late nights please post a comment and I'll pass it on to them.

V&A part three: non branded smoothies

Then I found these new smoothies in the V&A cafe (which has just had a posh new re-fit, well worth a visit, there was even live piano playing).

I really liked that they had no branding or labels what so ever making them look really home made. The fact that the colours and texture of each seemed completely inconsistent added to this. They are hand made by benugo (the people who do the V&A cafe) each day. I drank a very tasty blend of strawberry, banana, white peach and organic milk last night and will try the other one which I think has passion fruit (those seeded purple bits) oranges, mangoes and some other nice stuff in it.

I'll have to tell the girls in the innocent kitchen about them.

£2.25 each, still £4 up.

V&A part two: keep calm and carry on

*

I also got this cracking keep calm poster for a very competitive £9.50 leaving me £8.50 up still.

*Facsimile of original WWII poster in Barter Books, Alnwick Station, Northhumberland.

V&A part one: friends in low places

I sometimes think it's better to have friends in low places than high places. Friends in high places scare me a bit, you always have to on best behaviour. Anyway when getting my tickets for the surrealist show at the V&A last night the guy on the till recognised me from innocent. It turned out he comes in temping sometimes to airbrush staff photos and baby pictures sometimes. He gave me a couple of free tickets to the exhibition saving me £18. Better than 2 rounds of expensive cocktails by a friend in a high place in my opinion.

I'm going to see if we've got some more airbrushing to do.

In looking for V&A related images to add to this post I found this great blog by London design practice Fibre. Have a look at the thing they did for the V&A fete last year.

V&A part zero

I took a last minute random visit to the V&A last night with Salma. It was a welcome last minute decision for the above reasons.

some more story telling

I like story telling. I've done a couple of posts about it before here and here. I even did a 15 minute presentation on it for the first of Dan's international creative days out at innocent.

Here's another couple of stories I've come across this week that add a lot more substance and depths to what otherwise are just a greetings card and bed.

I still think 50,620 euro for a bed is a bit too far on the pricey side though.

and the little one said

Something that always gets me is when people use the word rollover to signal to a user to put their mouse over something. Like these (very nicely done) banners for Ask Frank by profero.

Rollover, as far as I know, has always been coding language. It doesn't mean anything to your average guy on the street. I always used to argue about this at lateral. Surely it's a lot more logical to use 'mouse over' atleast? Maybe I'm just getting wound up over nothing though.

leading from the middle

All the stuff about McDonalds recently just got me thinking about something someone once told me about leading from the middle.

Apparently it is a business mantra of a huge global company like Coke, Starbucks, McDonalds or someone like that, I've forgotten who exactly.

The principle goes that even though they are a huge company that can hardly be described as leading markets from the cutting edge due to their sheer size, they can infact lead from the middle. If they make a small step side ways the whole of their surrounding market will shift with them, so in effect they are leading as much, if not more, as a company on the cutting edge.

I also read an interesting bit on Amelia's blog about Rich saying the MD of Greenpeace told him McDonalds used to be Greenpeace's number 1 enemy now they're one of their crucial partners. I've always heard a lot about Starbucks being a lot more socially responsible than people give them credit for aswell. These 2 leaflets I picked up from them recently go away to illustrate they are at least trying.

I suppose what is changing my thinking is that global brands changing themselves slightly for the better could possibly have far greater reaching effects than a few small niche one leading a far smaller audience. Or at least the big ones taking the lessons and examples from smaller companies to make slight changes to their huge business models and markets.