The latest installment in the VW saga - 'The Dog Strikes Back'

We feel that we are posting a lot of VW items but anyway, here is the latest installment of the VW saga - keep watching at the end!

360 degree view from the top of the Shard, London

Will Pearson has taken an amazing 360 image from the top of the Shard, London Bridge, 310m above London, on the night of the student protests in November 2010.

Will says 'You can see the police helicopters hovering over London above the demonstration. Technically this was a very difficult shoot, I was on the crane at the top of the Shard, and I had to wave at Andy the crane driver so he knew when he could rotate 45 degrees between the exposures.

The temperatures were well below freezing and if you look in the distance behind Canary Wharf you will see the snow on the hills. Technically this image is not perfect but I find it fascinating nonetheless.'

Find out more and see the 360 image here.

Getting ready for a crisis

We recently ran a crisis preparedness workshop for one of our clients which sparked lots of interesting debate.

One outcome was the development of a ‘crisis manual’, one that is comprehensive but also succinct, avoiding the danger of becoming so ‘big’ that no one will read it when it should be a useful, easy reference tool.   

For multi-site locations, the development of a common core element of company best practice can easily be supplemented with pertinent local information, added into each site-specific manual. Any organisation operating internationally should also ensure that appropriate ‘early warning systems’ and international information networks are in place that operate across borders.  

Another key outcome was the importance of your organisation being the principal trusted source of information for your own affairs, i.e. ensuring ‘ownership’ of your stakeholders through provision of information. This is increasingly a challenge in today’s networked world, with social media and ‘citizen journalists’, meaning there is little time before an issue becomes live and spreads across networks, potentially out of control.  

Lots to consider, and thanks to Magnus Carter of Mentor Ltd for all his input into the day too.

Volkswagen takes to the skies for parking

This amazing feat of engineering is Volkswagen's temporary vertical parking lot at their production facility in Wolfsburg, Germany.

16 storeys high, the silos are composed of glass and galvanized steel and are illuminated by night. A conveyor belt system transports finished cars directly from the adjacent manufacturing plant to the towers' basement and then lifts them into position via mechanical arms that rotate and run along a central beam.

Each silo can hold up to 400 cars at a time and deliver, with fitted number plates, around 600 vehicles to customers each day as well as acting as part of VW's Autostadt visitor attraction.

Find out more on DesignBoom

Olly and Molly reward your social interactions

Olly is a scent-based system rewarding social media activity designed by Foundry, a small research team at Mint Digital. They call it a "web-connected smelly robot."

Linking to web-based social applications, Olly emits a fragrance when you receive emails, retweets, instant messages and various other pings across social channels.

Joining Olly is Molly, a robot that dispenses
sweets in a similar way. They are both available on Kickstarter for $50 each.

Great fun and nice to be treated occasionally!

Molly - turns your retweets into sweets from Olly Factory on Vimeo.

The Singing Ringing Tree

The Singing Ringing Tree, by Tonkin Liu, may not be a new sculpture but we have just come across it and think it's fantastic.

Constructed of stacked pipes of varying lengths, each layer differs from the next by 15 degrees to respond to the changing wind directions. As the wind passes through different pipe lengths in different layers it plays different chords. Each time you sit under the tree you apparently hear a different song.

It's situated on a hill overlooking Burnley, Lancashire - we will definitely keep a look out for it next time we are in that part of the UK.

See a video of the sculpture below and turn the volume up.

singing ringing tree | tonkin liu from tonkin liu on Vimeo.

Amazing YouTube stats in an animated video

Google data arts and digital production company Punk & Butler have taken some pretty incredible stats and turned them into an animated film demonstrating the volume of video being uploaded onto YouTube. Apparently one hour of video is uploaded every second.

A bit of fun but some interesting stats.

George Seurat's Bathers at Asnières recreated at Olympic Park

Neville Gabie, the Olympic Park's artist in residence, has created a reimagined version of George Seurat's famous 1884 painting Bathers at Asnières with builders from the Olympic site.

Set on the River Lea in East Stratford it is a far cry from the original stting on the banks of the Seine in Paris. The photographic portrait is called Freeze Frame and Mr Gabie said he was struck by the similarities in Seurat’s painting and the visualisation he was shown before work began on the Olympic Park.

‘There is an obvious and surprising physical connection between the two landscapes, but the concept for the work explores the more striking similarities between the social and political contexts of the two,’ he told Metro. ‘Now, in the east end of London, we’ve reimagined a post-industrial landscape using sports

Read more on Metro

Cadbury Dairy Milk launches latest 2012 Olympics video

Cadbury Dairy Milk has launched its latest online music video in its Keep Singing, Keep Team GB Pumped campaign, the most motivating arm of Cadbury’s London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games sponsorship - ‘Danger Zone’.

The music video sees some of the UK’s biggest fans going to extreme lengths in a bid to get up close and personal with 10 unsuspecting racquet sport athletes.

Below you can get a glimpse of it in the making as well as the video itself - what lengths some fans will go to!

Bus stops come to life in London

From now until September bus stops all over London will be brought to life with digital art and inspiring messages, but you will only be able to see them if you are on the top deck of a bus.

Bus-Tops is an interactive art project, one of 12 around the UK commissioned for Artists Taking the Lead - an initiative set up by the Cultural Olympiad 2012 and Arts Council England to showcase the nation's creativity to the world.

The concept is to make London bus journeys more engaging and inspiring by installing LED screens on top of 30 bus shelters. The screens are being fitted with red and black LED lights and show designs from professional artists and members of the public.

Find out more about this project and where you can find the installations by clicking here.

Get your own 'They Might be Giants' pink hearse

Last week we published a post about the shortlist for the Design of the Year Awards 2012 which featured a giant pink hearse from a 'They Might be Giants' video.

Well now you can get one of your own. Download and make your own by clicking here or watch the video of how they made the original one below:

'The Bark Side' by VW

And the dogs have it. This new ad for VW, called The Bark Side, is a trailer for their forthcoming Super Bowl spot. It follows the brand's success with the Force ad last year that featured a child as Darth Vader.

It has received more than eight million views on YouTube in just a few days so seems to be having the right impact.

Great viewing.

Clap for your photos

Here is a great new mini digial camera called Clap. Small in size and it has a retro feel (without an LCD screen). It's ideal for popping in your pocket or handbag for all those special occasions.

It apparently records up to 30 seconds of video, has storage of between 2GB and 16GB and also acts as a USB drive.

It has been available through Amazon, however they are a bit short on supply at the moment so if you want one you will have to keep hunting.

BMW uses interactive experience to promote 1 Series

BMW has been running an experiential promotion across South Africa marketing its 1 Series.

The events ran in the evening across major cities with consumers invited to join in an interactive race game that was projected onto buildings and scaffolding in high traffic areas.

Using smart phones, iPhones and iPads gamers logged on to Facebook and competed against each other using their devices. The winners were immediately posted to the Facebook page and a league of the fastest gamers publicised.

There were 810 campaign Facebook posts, so with a Facebook user having an average of 130 friends, it is estimated that more than 105,000 users were exposed to the campaign through Facebook alone.

It looks like great fun was had by all, with consumers engaging with the brand and new technology. See a video of the event below:

Augmented reality brings ceramics to life

This is just beautiful. Andrew Tanner Design is about to show the first augmented reality ceramics at the London Home Fair.

Combining beautifully painted ceramic plates, called English Hedgerow, with augmented reality the creatures featured are brought to life on your iPhone or smartphone.

See the video of the animation below:
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How the Chinese build a 30-story hotel in 15 days

This is how pre-fabrication is done in China or 'How the Chinese build a 30-story, five-star hotel in only 15 days.'

Built by the Broad Group, it used prefab construction techniques for ninety-three percent of the high-rise. The 17,000 square meter hotel is known as T30, is located in the Lin Gang Industrial Zone in Xiangyin County and comprises of over 350 rooms, a restaurant, bar, gym, swimming pool on the top floor, underground parking and a helicopter pad.

Interesting viewing.

See your world turn upside down with Google Maps

This is a great video produced by Venables Bell & Partners to promote Google and its host of mapping services by creating an oversized labyrinth game as a handcrafted, real life version of Google Maps.

This was built by VB&P and 1st Ave Machine and  the video shows players navigating around a complex city scape - dropping into burger joints, barbers and other palces along the route.

This is very clever and a must see.



Plus, if you like this then also take a look at the previewed Google maps game which lets you play the labyrinth game online.

Have fun!

Design of the Year 2012 nominations announced

The Design Museum has announced its nominations for the Designs of the Year 2012 exhibition with a range of exciting designs that appeared in 2011. The work featured includes digital, fashion, furniture, architecture, product, graphic and transport design and is drawn from a wide variety of projects.

All the nominations will be on show at the Designs of the Year exhibtion at the Design Museum, opening to the public on 8 February 2012 and category winners and the overall winner will be announced at the Awards Night at the Design Museum on 24 April.

The Design Museum will be issuing details of each nomination daily on their blog,

Work shown here: Comedy Carpet, Blackpool by Why Not Associates and Gordon Young


Life-Size Paper Monster Hearse by Paul Sahre

Newsweek publishes 1960's Mad Men issue

Newsweek is planning to publish their March issue adopting its 1960's design throughout to mark the return of Mad Men to TV screens in the US.

Tina Brown, editor of Newsweek and The Daily Beast, commented,  "Newsweek was very much on the cultural forefront at the time of the show, it covered the events that are so much of the background for the show's drama - the burgeoning civil rights movement, the women's rights movement, the Vietnam War. That was Newsweek's cutting-edge beat and its flourishing journalistic subject. So it seemed like a wonderful marriage in a sense to take that and apply it to the magazine, to make the magazine an homage to the period."

This is either a great marketing coup for the producers of Mad Men or a very clever promotional tool for Newsweek. Either way it will be an issue to keep.

Read more about this on AdAge.

Salesforce launches Social Media best practice website

Salesforce has recently launched a Best Practice website called 'Social Success', covering Cloud Computing and Social Media.

There are some great case studies here as well as a free 25-page book looking at how Social Media is affecting Sales, Marketing and Customer Service.

Click here to see more