That guy is Noel. He was at VS. We think he enjoyed it.
On Tuesday the 16th of February, a day that will live in infamy, We, ShellsuitZombie, hosted a silly evening. Braving wind rain and puddles, a krunkload of people came along to enjoy what we had promised would be a night of competition, intrigue, industry and graduates. And against all odds, we think we just about pulled it off…
With creatives from agencies like AMVBBDO, Fallon, W+K, Profero, BCL etc, designers from beautiful boutique agencies like A+B, The Plant, Morph, Magpie and DRY as well as some lush prizes on offer, a couple of cracking bands, beats by DJ and Designer David Rudnick and a lovely bunch o’ students and grads, that made for a fun-ass time. (and the longest sentence in the world. care.)
The Point
We believe that your first contact with industry shouldn’t be in the reception of a design agency, nervously clutching your portfolio. Job interviews are so forced and you have such a short time to get your personality across, yet personality is a vital part of teamwork and the creative process. Fortunately, the majority of design professionals are joke-loving booze-hounds and somehow they seem a lot less daunting with a beer in their paw. Our intention was to create a social atmosphere where grads and pros meet not as potential colleagues, but as co-humans; connecting through humorous anecdotes, not relevant work experience; flipping beermats, not pages of the (immaculately formatted) CV.
The Competition
We really wanted to avoid a school disco situation with grads on one side and pros on the other, nervously eyeing each other, dreading that first dance. So we came up with a strategy to skip the small talk and escalate to full-on flirting. The theme of the night was VS, and so a competitive spirit was encouraged throughout the night. Guests were instructed to pick mini-duels with each other in whatever form they deemed appropriate. These nano-challenges could be anything from drawing the best willy, to a dance-off, to the best magic trick. The winners of the most impressive micro-tasks won some awesome geek-out prizes kindly donated by our friends - including mugs by A+B Studio, t-shirts and posters from Magpie Studio and the limited edition Firetrap gnome from DRY (thank you all for donating these prizes). Most importantly everyone got involved, the air was thick with challenges, and these led to real dialogues between new acquaintances.
Meanwhile we had music from the awesome Keston Cobblers Club and the smooth sounds of Harrison Hope. Later on designer and DJ Dave Rudnick laid down his eclectic beats (So Solid anyone?) and the boozy chat continued.
The Future
More of the same innit? We love organising events like this and will keep on doing more. If you have suggestions for themes or locations, definitely get in touch. Check out our flickr and Facebook pages for more pics and make sure you come along to the next one!
Diesel have a way with catchy, controversial taglines. Global Warming Ready back in 2007 sticks in the mind. This latest campaign: Be Stupid by London agency Anomaly overlays the familiar bold text comments on photos of beautiful people engaged in inadvisable situations. The photos are less glossy and airbrushed than in the past, with a bit of a Vice magazine or Lastnightsparty (website seems to be down at the mo) hipster vibe. The images are like a psychological Rorschach test (those inkblots that look like angry clowns killing puppies), they provoke an emotional response to each situation: are you a free-living funmeister or a disapproving consequence-driven square…?
You’ve got to love it when an advertising scheme makes total use of its location or the surface on which it is printed. Fubiz featured a fantastic example of this in Danish agency Bates Y&R’s campaign for Copenhagen Zoo.
Tis the season for “top ten” lists, falalalalala lala la la. Brand New’s best and worst identies of 2009 is one such list which critiques some of the year’s most prominent rebrands. A very subjective topic, perhaps what is most interesting about this article are the comments and discussion of each entry, often showing disagreement on different levels from colour and typography to imagery and symbolism. It’s quite US-themed, so I’d be interested to see a review of more global or UK-based rebrands (please suggest links).
Lenancker Romain is an Art-Director based in Lyon, France. There’s some fantastic work on his behance page utilising colour, shape and a lot of paper-engineering (yep, once again, we have our finger on the motherfucking ZEITPULSE). Enjoy with coffee and a niggling pang of envy.
Now this is what we like - Laura and Mark, a graduate creative team from Brum, were asked by ad agency Wunderman to do something during their 2 week placement that would get them known in the company. Wunderman liked it so much the team are still there and we get to enjoy some pearls of wisdom to boot. Bravo.
New York graphic design office Thumb made this poster for the Rice School of Architecture in Houston. They created the image by overlaying ring roads from 27 major cities around the world, all at the same scale. They’ve got the old M25, but seem to have missed the A1134…
Remember the good old days, getting home from school and eagerly starting up the old pc, enduring the grunts and clicks of your 56k dial-up modem so you could spend 3 hours watching the progress bar on Napster slowly fill as you downloaded the latest piece of crap from the charts? It’s funny to think that, with the industry having come so far since then, the infamous original illegal p2p engine is still chugging away (though admittedly a reformed character - think ‘marky mark’).
However, as we all know it’s a different game now, a young man’s game, with such whippersnappers as iTunes, Nokia, last.fm and the aforementioned Spotify reaping the spoils. So what to do?
Napster (with the aid of Modernista) have avoided the bubbly ‘web 2.0′ style of their young rivals, instead choosing not to forget their roots with a campaign of what looks like grainy 70’s psychadelica mixed with some funny nostalgic copy. aimed straight at the now 16-30 generation who grew up on their slow download speeds, intermittent cutouts, high probability of the end file being porn and sweet victory when it was wasn’t.
As Mother did for Pot Noodle, (IMO) this demonstrates a degree of brand-awareness that is often lacking in the advertising world. For this, both Napster and Modernista should be applauded.*
Here is the link to all the idents that accompany this print campaign. They remind me slightly of the ‘Dharma Initiative’ from Lost.
Our roundup of the ShellsuitZombie experience at New Blood is finally here. Offering a mixture of chat, live briefs, loud music, ‘itsa-bitsa’ style artwork creation and general stick-it-anywhere-we-aren’t-precious tomfoolery (oh-err) we managed to attract graduates and industry in their hundreds to our messy corner of the Kensington Olympia (helped by D&AD generously allowing us free air-time on the tannoy - apologies to anyone we disturbed). We collected cards, friends and email addresses in scenes akin to Bruce Bogtrotter and Augustus Gloop at a chocolate convention, met loads of you, got your opinions on us and the industry and had a hell of a lot of fun at the same time. There are some photos here, to see them all visit our Flickr and Facebook pages.
ShellsuitZombie Face-Offs
We held two official SSZ Faceoffs, the first was a two-way between Falmouth University and Staffs University advertising courses. In an atmosphere more ‘intense’ than a music festival (in tents…doesn’t matter) during which we had to hold back both teams from physical blows, the brief was set - come up with a 30 second advert for Lucozade. While the relative merits of the adverts are still being discussed by creative directors worldwide, on the day Staffs were declared victorious by public vote for their ‘joe bloggs beats Usain Bolt’ concept.
The second face-off was a four-way between Duncan of Jordanstone, Lincoln, DMU and the eventual Victors Nottingham Trent, all of whom were given half an hour to rebrand D&AD. For the judging not only did we have Matt Dent, recent (and youngest ever) black pencil winner for his coinage redesign, but a curiously phallic clap-ometer which induced giggles (from us at least).
The ShellsuitZombie Picnic
Our biggest event consisted of a free-for-all overnight brief to devise a campaign for a household cleaner - utilising any form of media necessary. As you can see we had nearly a hundred people taking part in 25 submissions - of which two teams were chosen for placements at BCL - a fantastic integrated agency responsible for Dove Natural Beauty and the current Lucozade Energy campaign. Reports on how they got on will follow. Thank you to everyone that did some work for this, the standard was very high.
Pecha Kucha
To top it all off, on wednesday they let us do a Pecha-Kucha, God knows why. Here is one of our slides, all of which were created in Microsoft Paint. Again, to see the rest have a look on our Flickr page. If anyone has pics of us doing it please let us know, we have none.
So Basically
We had an awesome time, we hope you enjoyed it too. Anyone who posted us your card, email address etc and hasn’t heard anything back, bear with us, you’ll be the first to know when we announce future events, and we will feature as many of you as we can over the next couple of months.
Thanks to:
Morph are a great digital agency from Shoreditch, London, who kindly sponsored the stand and print - Coming soon, a filmed interview and article with Anthony. Eyes Peeled.
Brave - Representing BCL who offered support and time, delivering a brilliant brief and giving opportunities to nearly a hundred grads through our stand at the event.
Fwd_ctrl. a team of 5 Loughborough design graduates, has produced this super showreel - some very slick production backing up a host of clever ideas, which fingers crossed will set them in good stead for the big push over the summer.
In a cunning move, you can also sign up to their podcast channel here - just for a change from ricky, adam and joe.
On July 3rd Weiden+Kennedy unveiled their design for the Concept Store windows to celebrate Selfridges’ 100th anniversary: Future A-Z 2109.
The display consists of a series of products that might be for sale at Selfridges ten years from now:
H is for HAPPY FRUIT
100% natural antidepressant. Packed full of serotonin, the natural antidote to S.A.D., global sadness and other depressive disorders.
M is for MOON FLOWERS
Harvested from the Selfridges lunar fields. Flowers arrive fresh every day. Gravity-proofed and naturally luminescent. Do not water.
P is for PORTA-WOMB
Retain your figure throughout pregnancy. Unisex design. Convenient cord tidy. Ask for details at the Pop-Up Surgery.
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However, there is no design for X.
Submit your design here by Sunday 26th July and your Idea X will be displayed at Selfridges for thousands to see for most of August. On top of that, you’ll recieve a £500 Selfridges gift card - not bad. Judges include Dr Frances Corner – Professor of Art and Design Education at the London College of Fashion, Patrick Burgoyne – Editor of Creative Review and Linda Hewson – Selfridges head of creative.
OK so recently we held a couple of events. If you were at one of them, go tag yourself on our facebook page. Or just go and stalk if you weren’t. (If this is you, hi Noel)
I’m confident that being young, fresh, beautiful people, you will have all heard of Spotify. We’ve started a collaborative playlist for you all to add to with tunes you love. Click here to add the playlist to your Spotify then add one song that you love. Try and make it something we might not have heard before. Tune.
