Russell Davies

fourth assignment

Don't forget - deadline is supposed to be tomorrow. How are you getting on with it? Need a couple more days?

Let me know.

video - riswold amalgamated

Jim Riswold has written some of the best ads ever made. And he's one of the smartest and nicest people around (though he goes out of his way to hide both). He recently quit full time advertising to concentrate on his art.

You can see lots of his art here. But this is my favourite - Le retraite de Napoléon

He let me bumble through my normal inept questions and gormless giggling and we talked about loads of things. But I think the most interesting stuff is here, Jim talking about the satisfactions he gets from his art, the similarities between his art and his advertising. And the disappointing lack of stupidity in both art and advertising.

Here's the Quicktime (14MB.) I didn't do a videopod version this time because it's a huge file. But here's an mp3 (22MB) for anyone subscribing via itunes or something.

You can read his Esquire article, Hitler Saved My Life, here (but you have to register).

And click here for his jingle. Other artists don't have jingles. Only Jim.

streaming anchovy

Remember the ducks? Here are the anchovy.Quicktime (2.2MB) Videopod (2.8MB)

And here are some big jellyfish. Quicktime (1.5MB) Videopod (4MB)

And a little one. Quicktime (0.5MB) Videopod (2.5MB)

Monterey Bay aquarium - splendid place.

sprint experiment

So, following this post, the Sprint people sent me an email:

Hi Russell,

The Sprint Ambassador Team recently visited Russelldavies.typepad.com and wants to invite you to participate in our Ambassador Program.

The Sprint Ambassador Program is all about exploring our latest products and services and allows you to give direct feedback to Sprint. We recently launched the Sprint Power Vision (SM) Network and want to provide you with the full experience, at no charge. Sprint Power Vision Network enables customers to download data at faster speeds and experience new data products.

So what’s the deal?
As a qualified participant, we will send you one Sprint Power Vision phone and provide you with six months of all-access service (at no charge). You’ll have access to the Sprint Music Store(SM) live TV broadcasts, gaming and more. Yes, you will also have unlimited free calling and data service. It’s a pretty good deal and all we ask for in return is your candid feedback (you decide how much and how often).

Register at: http://ambassador.sprint.com/
You will need your unique registration code: XXXXX

If you have questions regarding the registration process or the program, please email us at [email protected]

We look forward to receiving your registration!

The Sprint Ambassador Team

Not the most personal email I've ever received but hey, never mind. And I suspect they've also not paid enough attention to the site to realise that I live in the UK. Anyway, I went to the registration site and put in the address of our offices in the US - it seems that they'll send the phone there.

We'll work out what to do next once it gets there.

ken robinson

At TED. One of the best speeches I've ever seen from Ken Robinson. Charming, funny, modest. But also hugely powerful and thought-provoking - about the need to stop educating the creativity out of kids. I can't explain it all here. But you should probably buy his books. I've not read any of them but I intend to. I hope they're as good as he is in person.

One useful thought for planners/ad folk. He defined creativity as "the process of having original ideas that have value". I like that. You know how agencies are always going on about how creative they are, and then other people talk about them overplaying their creativity, and that creativity isn't important, it's efficacy, or whatever, and we have this bizarre tradition of some people being called 'creatives' and some not etc.

I think a lot of that could be short-circuited by asking - 'are you having original ideas that have value?'

Technorati tag: TED conference

urban spam

At Ted. Rob Forbes, founder of Design Within Reach is showing lots of great photography of street furniture and random urban stuff. He coined the phrase 'urban spam' to describe the oppresive commercial clutter that sometimes confronts you in a city.

I love that phrase.

'Urban spam' is a perfect way to characterise that horrible communications arms-race that marketing sometimes gets into, the last horrible gasps of interruptive marketing.

I'm going to be collecting pictures of urban spam.

Technorati tag: TED conference

videosift

You're probably as addicted as I am to strange stuff on YouTube. Especially selections like this from MusicThing. There's a desperate need to explore quickly before it all gets whipped away.

But if you don't want to spend your whole life typing odd search terms into YouTube then videosift is a great alternative.

howtoons

Saul Griffith is talking at TED. Which reminded me how good howtoons are. (And Instructables.) If you've not seen them you should, both as an example of great information design and as fun stuff to do. This is my favourite.

Technorati tag: TED conference

maybe a comma

Surely this needs some punctuation somewhere. It's not exactly clear what it's prohibiting.

monterey stuff