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!
We like Beardyman here at SSZ Towers, in fact I once drunkenly asked for his autograph literally right when he was having an argument with his girlfriend (He remained polite - A gentleman first, beatboxer second) but frankly the sight of six* of his disembodied heads whining and spinning due to some star-trek science shit made me want to cry. Nevertheless big props to the aforementioned science, this video is really clever.
And something a bit more ‘down with the kids’ - a great video and a great tune from Yeasayer. Check out them and all their pals on Neon Gold records, the guys that knew about such bands as Passion Pit when we were just twinkles in our respective Milkmens eyes.
The URL for this site is ‘http://jblyth.com/blog.html‘, the implication of course being that it leads to a blog. It sort of is, but pared down to one element - piccies. Piccies of boobs and bikes, design and illustration, arty/wanky photos and a few more boobs (the clue was in the title). It’s refreshing though to not have to wade through a pile of some guy yapping - no, the irony is not lost on me - to get to the eye-candy (by which of course I mean nice photos, not boobs…)
It is the work of Justin Blythe (Designer, Art Director etc of some renown as well as owner of the domain, duh.) He doesn’t link to it though, so shhh, mums the word (that means keep it a secret, yanks). Or don’t, whatever.
Martin deserved a shout for this video months ago - and really we should have been the ones to do it first as it was a joint decision between us at ShellsuitZombie and Adrian Shaugnessy to award him Best in New Blood for it in July. However, as often happens, it got lost in the mist of time so here it is now.
Yes it’s 14 minutes long, but yes, it is also interesting and rocks an epic beat. Worth a watch.
4 artists working together on a single canvas to create engaging images and scenes which evolve into each other while Beethoven tinkles the ivories in the background. Between each painted scene are often periods of limbo where the artists obviously aren’t on the same page and ghosts of ideas appear briefly before they eventually reach a shared vision. A bit of a refreshing change from the standard photorealistic sketches of Angelina Jolie that populate youtube…
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.
Us here at ShellsuitZombie have been so busy running around organising the crap out of stuff that the blog has had a quiet patch of late. As a result this luverly magazine has been sitting in the inbox for way too long. Bonafide is a magazine about music, art and design and fashion and is produced (very much like ours) outside office hours as a labour of love. Truly bruvvas from anuvva muvva.
Please please check out their stuff here (where you can buy back issues and catch up on some ace underground music and goss) and as for us, don’t worry, just get your collective asses to New Blood (see right) - it’s all kicking orff.
A small piece of self-indulgence here - ‘Crooked’ by breakbeat masters Evil Nine has been one of my dancefloor favourites for a few years now (I remember hearing it on a fabriclive compilation in 2004-ish) and on the face of it I am now purely using the medium of SSZ to profess my love for the song, the band and the genre.
However, there is a visual point. The video - produced by ‘preloaded‘, an award-winning London digital agency, was an instant hit both virally and on music telly, and deservedly so. And if I’ve managed to convert you to the music, nip to Marine Parade, Adam Freeland’s record label where you can find Evil Nine downloads galore. Freeland himself is pretty handy too.
To be honest I could post every one of Matt Grundy AKA Diecast’s illustrations, which are mainly produced for the music industry. Dark and emotive, he uses mixed media (which range all the way from paint and screenprinting to 3d programs) to create deep fantastical imagery, reminding me of graphic artists such as H R Giger and Dave Mckean. Stunning and well-rounded work.
Check out Matts site and for more hi-res his myspace blog (yeah, frickin old-school).
This is my second post in a row that involves synth. No, I haven’t ditched my incredibly trendy clothes for a black short sleeved shirt with flames licking up the cusp. This rad synth is the latest offering from Teenage Engineering, the team that bought you the Absolut Choir. I’ve posted it because it’s pretty, not because I understand what it does or how to use it. It does however remind me of my Casio Rapmaster C.1989.
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.
