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!

Peace out playerz. One Love.

This quirky stop-motion animation is a segment from artist Rob Carter’s video Metropolis which chronicles the evolution of the city of Charlotte in North Carolina.  The full version is being screened at New York’s Museum of Art and Design.

(via PSFK)

If this doesn’t make you want to hug a friend/pet/inanimate object then you’re literally dead.*

(via yourstru.ly)

*That’s not a threat [we do our threats predominantly via email], we just mean dead inside, a bit like Paris Hilton.

Nick had one of those ideas that everyone wishes they had had themselves - and boy has he run with it. Some elegant sculpture here that makes me - not inherently an ‘OMG-I-JUST-GOTTA-BUY-THIS-LAMP’ kind of person - want to buy ten of them, have them all face into a white wall (that I currently don’t own) and pretend my room is like the one in Roald Dahl’s ‘The Twits’ (those pesky monkeys!).

The only thing more impressive is the list of blogs he’s been featured on, a list that doesn’t include us. So I apologise if everyone’s seen this stuff a million times on fffffffound and other ‘user-curated-image-bookmarking-sites‘ [said in a robot voice] but sod it, it’s pretty and we like.

Having listened to/watched this for the eighth time today, I felt the desire to share.

Please if at all possible watch in HD full screen with your PC speakers turned to 11 and enjoy my nomination for track of 2009.

My god that drop.

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…?

**Warning product design bias!!**

The open-ended student project brief can lead to incredible innovations.  The unconstrained mind can come up with quirky ideas like the screw-in coffin or the moneypad, but getting there can be the most stressful and time consuming process.  Also, each project you take on is an investment in your own future, your portfolio has to stand out if you want to get your paws on an ever-more-elusive job, so you can’t mess it up!  This is why many students use competitions as a source for ideas.  Clued-up lecturers often use the briefs set by our mates at D&AD as part of their teaching.  Mine did not, but a friend recommended it, and it made a really fresh, relevant, well-rounded final year project: you have to set some of your own boundaries, read up on the area, establish your target market and so on, and you can make it as technical as you like.  It beats those tired ”pill dispenser for the elderly” briefs, and if you are a finalist then that looks great on the CV.

I’m probably preaching to the choir here, but for those who are not aware of this excellent source of creative briefs and inspiration (as well as prestige and prizes for the winners), here are some interesting links:

• Contest Watchers (those tie-wearing shapes above) is a blog that aggregates professional and student design, visual arts and music competitions from around the world, keeps an eye on entry deadlines, and bigs up the winners to a growing audience (via psfk)
• The Design Council’s events and competitions directory is quite good, despite the baffling and hideous website.
• Dexigner is an awesome design industry news resource, and also has a feed of competitions with deadline info.
• Core77 is another design resource, good for news as well as job hunting and portfolio hosting.  They often run 1-hour design challenges which are a great way to show off your skills to the design community in a short time period.

There’s a huge product design bias in these links, if you have a moment, please comment with other resources from your field.

Good luck in those competitions!

A snowball fight taking place at 1am, Times Square NYC on the 19th of December. The photos (getting away with using the sepia setting for once) lend a timeless air to what is a timeless activity. It’s just a pity us Londoners got a half-hearted dusting rather than a bad-ass dump like this.

See all the photos here, and thanks to Ryan for the spot.

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.

Brian Ulrich (www.melodramaticwebaddress.com) is an eminent Chicago photographer whose photos capture aspects of very American, suburban life.  His studies of Retail and Thrift are an interesting combination of beautifully composed, colourful still life images with some very dynamic portraits of shoppers and staff.  However, for me his most striking work is his study of abandoned malls and stores from around America, the ghostly buildings are in various states of decay: from very recently closed to post-apocalyptic.  For more background info on this work, there is an interview with Ulrich here.

Via Core77

Ricky Diaghe graduated in June from University of Creative Arts, the duration of his design degree seemingly having been spent wiggling his arms around in the dark. As a result his impressively large collection of light art shows what can be achieved with just a maglight/bike light/candle/flare and a camera with a long exposure function.

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.

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.

The Girls are re-emerging British artists Andrea Blood (1975, UK) and Zoe Sinclair (1976, UK), whose collaboration began in 1996 at Central Saint Martins. The duo are now working together on a project set for the new year, which will feature much of that mystery, nostalgia, make-believe and dream like character the rest of their work accomplishes so well. We’ll post more on this soon!

Featured project: The Embodied Soul Passes Through Girlhood to Death

Chris Jordan has recently been getting some press attention for his photos of albatross chicks full of plastic crap, but throughout his portfolio there’s an extraordinary subtle use of colour, apparent in this set of photos taken of a ravaged post-Katrina Louisiana. I really dislike overuse of complementary adjectives in blogs (more on that another time) but feel like hurling a whole load at this work (I won’t).

Theres loads more on his website as well as the previously mentioned albatross chicks.