World Design Guide launched

Dezeen has developeda guide to all the architectural and design events in the world. The World Design Guide is still in it's infancy and it will grow and develop more as time goes by, but the idea is a simple and fantastic one.

Quite simply, it's a map of the world with markers on it, not too different from the markers on Google maps, these markers represent an event. But it doesn't stop there, you can filter events by location (not just by zooming in) or date or even name. The events listed only currently cover 2013 but more will be added as time goes by.

Last September Dezeen published a map of events at the London Design Festival which was viewed by over 500,000 people in a week. It's now the highest ranking map of the festival on Google. Earlier last year it also mapped all the architecture and design studios in the east London borough of Hackney as part of its Designed in Hackney project. This map has been viewed over 2.5 million times. Dezeen is now working on more map-based apps and tools that it hopes to launch in the coming months.

Check out the guide for yourself here.

Get the latest weather from Comfortable Weather Guy

Have you seen the Southern Comfort ad with the tanned and rotund guy wearing Speedos and drinking, of course, Southern Comfort? No, then you can see it here then come back and see the brand extension.  

Right now you’re ready for this, the New York based office of Wieden + Kennedy has now given this character a new lease of life, as your own personal weatherman. The idea is simple, go to comfortableweatherguy.com, type in a location and the cheeky chap will be whisked to an environment with the same weather as that location, it could vary from a beach, or a foggy cityscape to a snow covered landscape. The premise of course is that regardless of the weather he is suitably comfortable in just his Speedos.  

This campaign is a great example of taking a memorable ad with a simple protagonist and transferring them into a digital marketing campaign. There are even some videos to help with the campaign, which can be viewed below.

100 Years for Formica featured in The Guardian

2013 marks the 100th Anniversary of the iconic Formica brand, best known for laminates. The product was developed in USA in 1913 as a replacement for the mineral product 'Mica' and thus was called 'Formica' and did you know that laminate is made from paper? Many people don't.

The Think Tank has worked with Formica in the UK and across EMEA for the past 10 years providing a range of marketing services including PR and as a part of the 100 years celebrations we have been working to raise the profile of the brand and its history through the media and yesterday saw a great article published on the website of The Guardian Newspaper.

Formica is an iconic product that is used all around us in our everyday lives and, judging by the fantastic comments posted on the Guardian website, many people have very fond memories of the brand. One of the pictures featured takes us right back to when The Think Tank was based in Soho and used to frequent the Piccadilly Cafe - we remember it well.

The article, titled 'Shiny, happy households: Formica turns 100', is written by Oliver Wainwright and looks at the history of the brand, and how it has developed and been used over the years.

To find out more about the history of this iconic brand click here and read the full article or alternatively click here to see 'Formica: our century-old laminate love affair – in pictures', also published on the Guardian website.

You can also click below to view the article in PDF form.

Shiny, happy households_...pdf




Shiny, happy households_...pdf (957 kb)

Hélène Binet - a master of architectural photography

It's Nice That has featured inspiring architectural photographer Hélène Binet on their website.

The piece covers her relationship with some of the world's top architects and her amazing ability to capture their creations in a truly unique and breath-taking manner. Due to her stunning work, she is regarded as one of the best architectural photographers in the world and when you see the images she has taken it is no surprise that architects such as Le Corbusier, David Chipperfield, Alvar Aalto and Zaha Hadid have all used her to document their work.

Read the piece and see more images here.

Not your normal tube announcements

Time Out London's blog, Now. Here. This., has teamed up with Annie Mole, writer of the Going Underground blog, to present some of the best announcements heard on the London Underground.

These announcements vary between being heard on the trains or on the platforms, and are not the usual "mind the gap" or "stand clear of the doors" you would normally encounter whilst circumnavigating the tube network.

Here's a selection of our favourites, see the rest here.

“Ladies and gentleman, I’m sorry for the delay. I have just been informed this is due to people on the ROOF of the train ahead. Yes, you are probably thinking some of the things I am, but that’s what I’ve been told by my control.”

“Ladies and gentleman, I do apologise for the delay to your service. I know you’re all dying to get home. Unless you happen to be married to my ex-wife, in which case you’ll want to cross over to the Westbound and go in the opposite direction.”

“To the hilarious gentleman that just showed me his bum. I suggest you join a gym or go on a diet before waving it around in the future”.

“Would the lady going down the escalator please lower her umbrella. It doesn’t rain underground.”

Top 10 Super Bowl ads of all time

We at The Think Tank love two things, Top 10's and great adverts, so here's Marketing Week's Top 10 Super Bowl Adverts of all time!

With the Super Bowl only round the corner (3rd February in-case you were wondering), Marketing week has done a round up of their favourite commercials that have aired during America's most-viewed sporting event, with the cost for the ad space reaching astronomical amounts.

Whilst the Top 10 is for commercials shown in the U.S. some may be familiar to U.K audiences too with the Volkswagon "Force" advert, or the Budweiser "wassup" advert included in the round-up. 

Have a look at the full Top 10 here.

Designs of the Year Awards 2013 Nominations

The Design Museum has announced the nominations for Designs of the Year 2013. Seen as the Oscars of the design world, the nominations will go on display in the museum from 20th March, whilst the winners will be decided by a jury and announced to the public on the 17th April.

Last year's winner was the London 2012 Olympic Relay Torch, and this year still has some Olympic contenders with the Olympic Cauldron by Heatherwick Studio being nominated.

Other nomination's include:

Acrhitecture - The Shard, London, UK
Designed by Renzo Piano
 
Digital - Rain Room
Designed by rAndom International

Fashion -Prada S/S12 RTW Collection
Designed by Miuccia Prada

See the full list of nominations here.

Inspirational ice artwork from China

If like us in the office you've been feeling the cold recently, then these images may not be for you.Otherwise take a look at some of the stunning artwork  taken from the 29th Harbin International Ice and Snow Festival.

The sculptures include life-size buildings and ice slides, which are all beautifully lit up in the evenings. 

The festival started on the 5th January and will go on for a month in the North-East of China, which experiences near-Artic temperatures at this time of year, making it a perfect venue for such a festival.

Within the festival is the Sun Island Park, which is the site of the Snow Sculpture Exposition displaying a wonderful snow world. It has the world's largest indoor ice and snow art museum and it was open to the public from November.

One of the other main
attractions,the Ice and Snow World, came into being in 1999 and is one of the world's largest ice architecture parks. The inspiration for the ice and snow sculptures there usually is derived from traditional Chinese fairy tales or world famous architectures such as the Great Wall, the Egyptian Pyramids, etc.

Do you know any Rising B2B Marketing Stars?

Following on from last year, The Think Tank's client B2B Marketing are searching for Rising Stars for 2013.

The initiative is for people in B2B marketing to nominate a colleague who they feel has made a stand-out difference or special contribution to the world of B2B marketing in the past year. There are no special requirements for entry, they are only looking for talented B2B client-side marketers who are rapidly rising through the ranks in their respective organisations and showcasing real talent.

Some of the 20 featured entrants from last year even became shortlisted for the B2B Marketer of the Year.

James Farmer, publishing director at B2B Marketing, said, “Levels of sophistication in business marketing are growing exponentially, this is down to individuals in the profession."

“There has never been a better time to reward and reveal those at the top of their game, driving the industry forward”.

If you know anyone that deserves to be held aloft as one of B2B Marketing’s rising stars for 2013, nominate them now.

Top five brands that don't need a name

Marketing Week has compiled a list of their top 5 brands that don't need a brand name, inspired by a recent campaign by Selfridges called "no noise".

The idea behind the campaign is to remove the clutter and avoid the bombardment usually associated with shopping, working on a principle put in place since the shop first opened- the Quiet Room, a space where shopper's can escape the hustle and bustle of the shop floor and relax. To return to these roots, Selfridges has worked with some major brands to produce products that don't have a brand name on them, just their usual packaging and logos, thus removing the noise of major brand-names.

The article features brands that, if you haven't heard of, means that you must have been living in a cave for the last 100 years, and makes a valid point that these particular brands are recognisable from their logos or packaging alone, such at the classic colour of Cadbury chocolate, or the distinct "swoosh" emblem used by Nike, or even the classic red cross of The British Red Cross

See their full top 5 here.

Tetra Brik Pavilion Wins Guinness World Record

In an effort to celebrate International Recycling Day, and raise awareness about the cause, the Department of Environment for the Government of Granada joined forces with a waste collection company and broke the Guinness world record for the largest structure built from recycled materials.

The aim was to encourage the public to recycle by example. By turning a common piece of packaging, the Tetrabrik, normally used for milk cartons, into a structure that was 7 metres tall, 30 metres long and 15 metres wide. 

To achieve this, they turned the packaging into a form of 'Lego brick' by clamping them together at a 135º angle to each other, which allowed for the quick assembly of the record-breaking structure.  

The completed structure used 45,000 milk cartons, collected from 100 colleges, and comprised of two major free-standing parts: the wall- a solid latticed base, and the tower- a soaring core section that linked two base walls.

The project took only two weeks to complete, thanks to the innovative method used, as well as the hard work put in by architecture students from local colleges. 

After being on display in the courtyard of the ‘Park of the Sciences of Granada’, the pavilion was disassembled and the taken to be recycled! 

See ArchDaily for more information and see more images here.