Magnetic flooring offers flexibility

Karndean Designflooring have teamed up with IOBAC ltd, 3M and InterfaceFLOR to offer one of the most innovative flooring system to hit the market in recent times.

Time spent installing or changing flooring can mean losing valuable sales, so a system that allows you to do it quickly and cleanly has to be worth considering. 

The patented metallic resin is applied to the subfloor, left to dry for 60 minutes and covered with magnetised Karndean Designflooring products. You can lift and replace tiles at will to give the ultimate in flexible interior design. 

 See how it works here:

Gumdrop Bin wins Homes and Gardens Award

The Gumdrop Bin is the brainchild of Anna Bullus who noticed that not only was chewing gum a material that was being wasted but it was also polluting our environment.  

She set about solving the problem by creating a bin using recycled chewing gum and called it Gumdrop. It's manufactured from a new plastic polymer using chewing gum and then moulded into shape.  

Anna has just won The Homes & Gardens Eco Design Award 2012 so well done for this fantastic idea. Give gum a second life!  

Click here to find out more.

How 30 great ads were made

How 30 Great Ads Were Made: From Idea To Campaign, is a new book by Creative Review's Eliza Williams.

It takes readers behind the scenes of 30 of the last decade's most successful ad campaigns and features interviews with the key creatives, directors and clients for each campaign. The book offers an insight into how great ad campaigns get made, along with some surprising facts about some of the most popular ads of recent times: for example, did you know that the children's brows in the Cadbury's Eyebrows spot were manipulated by puppeteers rather than CGI?

Each campaign featured is illustrated with imagery showing the stages it went through in development – including sketches and early ideas that may have been abandoned, storyboards, animatics and photos from shoots, and shots of the final ads.

This is a great present for ad addicts. Find out more on Creative Review.

Get ready to cringe. Here comes 'Dads in Briefs'!

This is a very funny ad but also quite disturbing at the same time. Be prepared to cringe!

Here comes 'Dads in Briefs'.



For BHG Air Conditioners it gets its point across very well.

The Ordos Museum lands in the Gobi desert

The Ordos Art and City Museum in Mongolia is an amorphous building that seems to have just landed on this incredible landscape.

It was designed by MAD Archtiects and is surrounded be the dunes of the Gobi desert with stairways and belvederes that grow out of the earth.

Located in the new city center of Ordos, the space itself is deeply rooted in the local culture. To view on ArchDaily  click here or watch this atmospheric video.

The Gopher Hole celebrates its first year in Primary style

The Gopher Hole, an independent space for emerging architecture and design in London, has been in operation for just over a year.

To celebrate this and thank some of their participants, exhibitors and visitors they invited illustrator Shin-Hye Lee to commemorate 2011 with a new work.   

The illustration is the first of The Gopher Hole's annual commissions to an emerging designer. Shin-Hye has made 'Year One 2011' in the style of a primary school tea-towel, using different drawing techniques - sometimes using her left hand - to illustrate some of the figures who have contributed to The Gopher Hole during the year.

A fun way to celebrate a successful first year. See more here.

Cartier ad takes you out of this world

This amazing ad for Cartier aired on Friday night (9th March) and lasts for three and a half minutes. It follows a snow leopard as it travels across the world from Moscow to China and on to Paris.

The cinematography is beautiful with added CGI of giant elephants, golden dragons, pioneering airplanes and a frozen Moscow.

Just fantastic and a must see.

Simple illustrations that speak volumes

We really like the work of the Los Angeles based illustrator Nick Lu. Very clever interpretations in a simple illustration style.

These illustrations are called, 'Play at Work', Hearse and Ice Fishing.

Nick cites his influences as "Hockney, Picasso, Milton Glaser, Tibor and Maira Kalman, Christoph Niemann, Chip Kidd, Chris Ware and many more; I love movies, anything by Wong Kar-Wai, Pedro Almodovar, Wes Anderson; music, sports, books and pretty much everything else I come across that’s interesting."

See more of his work here.

A scary prediction for the paperless office!

In a world that is going paperless, or so we have been told for the last 20 years, Canadian paper manufacturer Domtar Paper is challenging the concept through a campaign called 'Paper Because' by ad agency Eric Mower Associates.

In an ad called 'Office' they show what the digital world would be like without paper.

Let's hope it doesn't come to this for the sake of all our sanity!



Find out more about the campaign here.

Charlie Sheen premieres in two new ads

Advertisers in the US appear to be taking Charlie Sheen under their wing with two new ads featuring the infamous star premiering last week.

The first for Fiat sees him racing around his house in a new Fiat, making a point about being under house arrest, and the second sees him acting out the film Platoon with someone he meets in a Turkish baths for DirectTV.






Not sure whether the association of Charlie Sheen with mainstream brands is a good one and definitely question Fiat's choice of brand ambassador! What do you think?

Casting a new light on wallpaper

These LED wallpapers from Architects Paper are a great innovation and will make quite an impression in the right environment.

The paper has LED lights embedded within a circuit board design.

The designer comments, "The LED wallpaper offers very thrilling possibilities to illuminate rooms: Dimmed, enigmatic light hardly revealing where the shine is coming from or an urban vibrating atmosphere – to mention only a few options."

"It’s magic! A big advantage also is that the LED wallpaper can be hung in more or fewer strips and lengths according to the architecture and furnishing of a room. Interior designers have the choice."

See more on Trendir.

Invisible ink makes a come back

The solar energy association in Austria has recently issued its annual report. This may not be a mention-worthy event usually except that this year they have printed it on light sensitive paper.

When indoors the paper appears to be blank but as soon as it is exposed to sunlight the details start to appear.  This is a great way to reinforce the message from the association but must be a bit frustrating if its raining outside!

Remote control cafe demonstrates bad design

This year Helsinki has the accolade of being World Design Capital and as a part of the legacy of the event the organisers wanted to engage with a wider audience of local residents to explain why design is so important in all our lives.

They decided to get the conversation going about the impact of good and bad design by creating a remote controlled café. This cafe included a range of badly design items, to demonstrate what good design means to us all, whilst anyone could remotely control the environment through a web interface.

When local residents popped in for a coffee they would find their chairs raising and lowering, whilst tables adjusted and items like sugar and napkin dispensers just did not work.



The interactive space was a great success and gained a lot of publicity, including a feature spot on the national news with the newsreaders getting into the action.

Moleskine launches architects series

The Moleskine book has been a favourite of designers, creatives, writers and many others including Vincent van Gogh, Pablo Picasso and Ernest Hemingway for more than two centuries.

Now, to celebrate the notepad's association with architects and their sketchpads, Moleskine has launched a new range of raw grey cardboard books with excerpts from the original notebooks of four inspirational architects, Zaha Hadid, Giancarlo De Carlo, Peter Wilson of BOLLES+WILSON and Alberto Kalach.


Providing unprecedented access to their archives and personal files these small Moleskine books show reproductions of their works alongside blank pages for the owner’s own use. Passages of handwritten text from the architects explaining their inspiration for the original sketches are also shown within the notebooks as well as replicas of line drawings on table napkins and scraps of paper and early plans for now completed buildings.

These are really interesting insights into the thought processes of some of the world's leading architects and a must have for architecture fans.

They are a bit difficult to find on the Moleskine website but if this link does not take you straight to them search for Architecture. You can also see more on Design Boom.

Sensory marketing that grows on you

Last week TTT met CURB, the natural media company that helps brands create innovative and award winning media.   

CURB uses attention-grabbing media such as chalk advertising or bespoke interactive productions where the individual acts as an instrument for creating the experience or message - pedal to charge your phone or dance to make the music louder!   CURB also uses natural media which they tailor to their clients’ briefs – to promote the movie Contagion they worked with a world renowned microbiologist to create an enormous Petri dish inoculated with mould, penicillin and Pantone-matched live bacteria. Over the span of a few days these grew into the movie title ‘Contagion’ (and yes, it went viral).



During the Multisensory Media demonstration TTT’s meeting room was filled with the scent of freshly-cut grass from the pitch of a well-known Italian Serie A football club. Unfortunately for CURB there were no football fans in the meeting to appreciate this particular experience; nevertheless we were amazed at how particular they can be with creating scents and sounds. We found out that specific scents can be used to change an emotion as well as perception of time and environments.

CURB has also developed a technique to package the scents in a way that is sustainable and fun. We enjoyed the experience of small customizable pouches that released a lovely scent with just one squeeze – some of the scents included the smell of chocolate truffles or red roses (a note to all men – do not use as a substitute for a gift).  

CURB uses entirely natural or sustainable materials that are recycled after they’ve been used. If that is not possible, the materials are upcycled; for example a huge poster of Michael Jackson’s album next to Heathrow airport was made out of plastic that was later upcycled to mobile phone cases and various other goods.  

To find out more about their fun and innovative approach to Out-Of-Home media, PR and experiential marketing, visit www.curbmedia.com

Turn your iPhone into a car, boat or ice cream van

If you have ever fancied turning your iPhone into a car then this is the app for you.

With the Makego app you can turn your iPhone into a racing car, ice cream van, or river boat, simply download the Makego app and select your vehicle. Then add Lego for cars or maybe a pencil case for a boat.

The app allows you to interact with the drivers via some very cute animations and sound. If you are looking for a second childhood or are just bored then get downloading.

Just the right amount of wrong!

The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas Hotel is running a great series of ads verging on 'just the right amount of wrong'.

These charismatic ads feature some classic tracks with the most recent being a very unusual cover of Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody.

These are both worth a watch and are great fun.

'Sorry for Party Rocking' tops video viral chart

Want to keep up to date with the latest viral videos then take a look at the Viral Video Chart.

This week's top viral is a video called 'Sorry for Party Rocking' with 377,000 shares in the last seven days.
 

Research says that 80% of US brands respond to online customer feedback

In a recent article in Corporate Comms a survey by software company 'Get Satisfaction' measured how US brands monitor online converstaions and feedback.

Nearly 90 per cent of US brands say that they monitor online conversations and feedback while 80 per cent also respond to feedback. More than three quarters of those polled also distribute customer feedback internally and nearly two thirds thought that listening and engaging on social media has raised brand awareness.

The article also highlights that more than two fifths cited availability of budget as the greatest internal challenge to listening and engagement, while more than a third said the same about their difficulty in managing programmes across multiple platforms.

'Almost a fifth cited privacy issues as the greatest challenge, while 30 per cent said the same about availability of talent. The top five departments that create strategies to listen to consumers are, in order, the social media team, marketing or public relations, web-interactive marketing, product marketing and marketing operations.

Half of businesses say that listening to their customers on social media is not a core function of their business. Just six per cent of companies said that listening and digital engagement initiatives are integral to their organisation,' the article says.

It seems that brands in the US are taking social media engagement seriously. It would be interesting to carry out similar research in the UK.

Article by Emily Nicholls for Corp Comms Magazine.

'Anyone and No One' exhibition - Will Ryman

Two new sculptures by American artist Will Ryman are now on exhibition in 'Anyone and No One' at the Paul Kasmin Gallery, New York.

They are both massive installations created from everyday objects. 'Bird' is constructed from nails of various lengths and towers 12 feet tall whilst 'Everyman' uses a diverse variety of household items, such as paint brushes, bottle caps and work boots, to create a 90-foot figure within the gallery space.

Due to the sheer size and impact of both sculptures, Ryman's installation has been separated in two parts - 'Everyman' has taken up residence in the 293 Tenth Avenue location while the 27th Street space hosts the Bird, inspired by Edgar Allan Poe's poem, 'The Raven'.

Beautiful structures that really catch the eye.

See more sculptures and how they were constructed on Design Boom.