version3.0

Back from my hiatus and there is no shortage of awesome stuff to share.

• This beautiful short documentary was shot during the making of the Ritual Project, an incredible large-scale, hand-painted, stop frame animation that was commissioned by Stella Artois. Up There tells the story of the fading art of hand painting billboards, and the people that are keeping it from disappearing entirely.
  

  UP THERE from Jon on Vimeo.

  via FormFiftyFive

• Guido Tamino wants you to print stuff in his room, via the Internet.
• Finally, someone is curating a collection of white people rapping poorly, like our man B-SHOC here.
  
• Ishac Bertran has created a whole series of beautiful images like this one using Processing, in what he calls ‘generative photography‘. The technique he is using is fascinating, and produces some pretty unique results that look more like drawings or paintings than photographs.
  
  via Creative Applications
• Arrested Development creator Mitch Hurwitz offers sage advice about getting your sitcom cancelled.
• Portuguese artist Pantonio is not only incredibly talented, he also has a fantastic sense of humour. He transformed this wall, the victim of a car accident, in downtown Lisbon into a scene from a comic book.
  
  via Designboom
• Watch as Bienve Aguado attempts and lands the first ever double front flip on a mountain bike. This dude is determined.
  
• Thom Thom is a French artist doing some amazing work deconstructing this one billboard spot in Paris. Click through to see the different variations.
  
  via TodayTomorrow

• Another great little documentary, this one covering an old art form enjoying a sort of resurgence right now. Sean Walling, the owner of Soulcraft Bikes takes us through the process of crafting one of his beautiful hand made steel bikes.
  

  FROM STEEL: The Making of a Soulcraft from michael evans on Vimeo.

• I am loving the trend toward more and more high profile generative identities, and the new one for the MIT Media Lab by The Green Eyl (in collaboration with E Roon Kang) is fantastic.
  

  MIT Media Lab Identity from thegreeneyl on Vimeo.

  via Creative Applications

• The crew at Dentsu London have done this incredible work for Canon photographing paint sitting on a membrane that has been ‘activated’ by music. The results (both still & video) are stunning. Also check the making of clip to see how it was done.
  
  (via designboom)
• Rip Curl has put together this awesome ‘bullet time’ footage of four of the worlds best surfers in the Sunway Lagoon Wavepool in Malaysia. No less than 52 cameras were used to capture this killer action.
  
• More surfing action, but this one isn’t so much revolutionary as just plain stunning. If you like hearing from people who are totally devoted to something then ‘Dark Side of the Lens’ is for you.
  

  DARK SIDE OF THE LENS from Astray Films on Vimeo.

  (via iso50)

• More amazing action sports errr… action. This helmet cam footage from Darren Berrecloth in the recent Red Bull Rampage is bananas.
  
  (via Spoke magazine)
• Don’t worry if you missed every single animated GIF ever created… you can catch up by watching this awesome video from Evan Roth (featuring music from mashup virtuoso GirlTalk).
  

  Cache Rules Everything Around Me from Evan Roth on Vimeo.

• Beautiful motion graphics work from Colin Hesterly. Seems like a super talented dude.
  

  World Of Motion from Colin Hesterly on Vimeo.

• This generative logo for Norwegian city Nordkyn is some of the most interesting identity work I have seen in a long time. The shape and colour of the logo is determined by the current weather conditions. Apparently it is inspired by the snowflake, which is obviously a fairly prominent feature of Nordkyn life. Full details of how it works are over on Brand New.
• If you are a music & web geek like me you should definitely check out Seaquence, an ‘experimental musical petri-dish’. Hours of fun. (via Charles Coxhead)
• Melbourne dude Buff Diss does some unbelievably rad street art using tape.
  
  
  
  (via bumbumbum)

As usual, I post most of this stuff up on twitter as I find it, so follow me there if you want the scoop.

If your son or daughter (or anyone for that matter) asked you this question I hope you would have a better answer than “we advertise, they see our advertising, then they come and buy from us”.

If you can’t think of a simple reason why your existing customers would tell other people about your products or service then you probably need to rethink your strategy. People don’t talk about good products at a reasonable price, they talk about outstanding products, unbelievably cheap products, unbelievably expensive products, products that do something unique or unusual, service that is orders of magnitude apart from anything else they have experienced, or products that have amazing stories behind them.

Your products and services should be an integral part of your marketing strategy, not an input into it.

Think about the stories you want your customers to be telling other people about your products and services, and then design them to make that happen.

Great photo of a stork in flight from Bruce Tuten on Flickr.