Jeff de Boer

If you've never heard of him, you'll get a kick out of this. I was introduced to his work waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay back when in ancient times when I was going to school. He had a show of some of his work and I was instantly enthralled by his armour for mice. It was fantastic. One of my kids, Tristan, recently posted a link to Beautiful Life showcasing his work but I thought I would post a link directly to his site. Love his stuff.

I really enjoy the Swedes. They have some really interesting and well designed stuff and it was one of the reasons I tried to move there earlier this year.

Here's something else that's recently popped up on my radar. Neat concept that takes treehouses to the next level.

Raunchy Ad stirs controversy

Now, Mike at Manta is a buddy of mine so I'd be curious to hear his thoughts on this. I guess for me I was more surprised by the ad since the Montana has ties to the Famous Five. Ultimately, my question is, in this case, does sex sell anything at all related to the condo (lifestyle, social perception, etc.) or is it merely a tool to generate exposure under the platform of any publicity is good publicity. I'd like to see what the numbers are for the Montana in terms of visits to the website and showroom pre and post advertisement.

Here is the article by Valerie Fortney from the Calgary Herald.

Credit to Ted Rhodes of the Calgary Herald for the photo

Water Power

For puttering around the city this is a fantastic solution. I'm surprised no one has come up with this sooner. Brilliant. Thanks to Adam for the original link.

Lost in Translation

Language can be a very funny thing. Having parents who are immigrants I've heard many-a-story about moments when they were utterly confused by some slang term or vernacular language that was misconstrued or completely lost on them. Advertising is no different and hilarity can result from someone not doing their research. Here's a baker's dozen worth of examples:

1. Colgate introduced a toothpaste in France called Cue, the name of a notorious porno magazine.
2. When Gerber started selling baby food in Africa, they used the same packaging as in the US, with the smiling baby on the label. Later they learned that in Africa, companies routinely put pictures on the labels of what's inside, since many people can't read.
3. Pepsi's "Come Alive With the Pepsi Generation" translated into "Pepsi Brings Your Ancestors Back From the Grave" in Chinese.
4. Coors put its slogan, "Turn It Loose," into Spanish, where it was read as "Suffer From Diarrhea."
5. Clairol introduced the "Mist Stick," a curling iron, into Germany only to find out that "mist" is slang for manure. Not too many people had use for the "Manure Stick."
6. Scandinavian vacuum manufacturer Electrolux used the following in an American campaign: "Nothing Sucks like an Electrolux."
7. When Parker Pen marketed a ball-point pen in Mexico, its ads were supposed to have read, "It won't leak in your pocket and embarrass you." The company thought that the word "embarazar" (to impregnate) meant to embarrass, so the ad read: "It won't leak in your pocket and make you pregnant."
8. Frank Perdue's chicken slogan, "It takes a strong man to make a tender chicken," was translated into Spanish as "it takes an aroused man to make a chicken affectionate."
9. The Dairy Association's huge success with the campaign "Got Milk?" prompted them to expand advertising to Mexico. It was soon brought to their attention the Spanish translation read "Are You Lactating?"
10. The Coca-Cola name in China was first read as "Kekoukela", meaning "Bite the Wax Tadpole" or "Female Horse Stuffed with Wax", depending on the dialect. Coke then researched 40,000 characters to find a phonetic equivalent "kokoukole", translating into "Happiness in the Mouth."
11. General Motors had a very famous fiasco in trying to market the Nova car in Central and South America. "No va" in Spanish means, "It Doesn't Go".
12. When American Airlines wanted to advertise its new leather first class seats in the Mexican market, it translated its "Fly In Leather" campaign literally, which meant "Fly Naked" (vuela en cuero) in Spanish.
13. An American T-shirt maker in Miami printed shirts for the Spanish market which promoted the Pope's visit. Instead of "I saw the Pope" (el Papa), the shirts read "I Saw the Potato" (la papa).

Fun with Toilet Paper Rolls

Air ball...

I love sports. I really do. I love to watch the competition and the drama of two forces going head to head to try and outdo the other. Sports logos on the other hand...

It absolutely drives me crazy how bad most of the identities in professional sports is. For some reason, the vast majority of bosses in the sporting world either have no sense of taste or have no clue what makes a good team logo. Does it not occur to them that if they have GOOD design that you could market it to people beyond your own rabid fan base? A few have done admirable jobs. The Milwaukee Admirals examined their fan base and where their gaps were and unveiled, in my opinion, a fantastic identity that a number of die-hards panned. It appealed to a wider market segment and in turn their merchandise sales went through the roof and into the stratosphere. Then you get logos like the Portland Trailblazers, New Orleans Hornets, Baltimore Ravens, Kansas City Royals and Buffalo Sabres. These are teams with multi-milliondollar payrolls and they can't shell out some half decent coin to get a good logo? Mind, you in the case of the Sabres, they reportedly forked out $200,000 to get their "Buffa-slug."

The minor leagues are even worse. Now, I understand that they don't have boatloads of money but it seems to me that if they spent just a little extra money on the brand they could do wonders in terms of team, community, and fan pride, support as well as the money in merchandising a causal fan might be willing to spend.

Which brings me to this. The Golden State Warriors announced their new look. Don't get me wrong, their old look was bad, but this... is not necessarily an improvement.

Brand New writes a column about why this is not so golden...

*sigh* Someone pay me obscene amounts of money to do this and I promise it'll be better than this

The Fast Lane

I really enjoy seeing spots like this because it inspires me to do something that will make people want to interact differently with their every day mundane lives. Something as simple as taking the stairs down to the subway can suddenly become a memorable experience.

Love it.

Web Freebies

Many of you will probably already know these tricks and some of you may think the following links will only fill the internets with more fromage but I see an opportunity to take the ideas here and create some really interesting possibilities. Take them for what you will.
• JavaScript stuff
• CSS stuff

Flexible

Every now and then I'll see an ad which catches me off guard and makes me laugh really hard. Quite often, these executions are quite simple and that is the beauty of them. I read a quote today that said something to the effect of how the best designs are the ones that cause other designers to hate you because they wish they'd thought of it first.

Rethinking your space

I posted these up on my Facebook profile last week but I thought it would be worth posting them here as well. Lionel sent me a link to this YouTube video about Resource Furniture, a company out of New York who specializes in functional furniture that will allow one to make more efficient use of compact spaces. As I am currently looking for a new place to live I found it fascinating that you could take a very small space and turn it into a much more functional and efficient living space without having to give up style. This first video in turn reminded me of a video I saw long ago about an expanding circular table as well as another friend, Chirlene, sending me a link to a video about an architect in Hong Kong who has transformed his small apartment into an amazing transforming suite of rooms.

Wishbone

This is a really wonderful example of a great product matched with an equally great website. Check out wishbone design and their very cool pre-bike.

The changing face of technology

Back when I was a kid, I remember this:

was the most amazing, high tech thing that any of us kids had ever seen. One of our neighbours had it installed and with a push of a button, the garage door opened like magic. There was a group of about a half dozen of us standing on this kid's driveway taking turns opening and closing the door. We were in complete and utter awe. The future had arrived. How did the garage know it was supposed to open? There were no wires attached to it at all. It was the height of technology.

Fast forward a mere 30 years and now this is the current reality:

Amazing how far technology has come in such a short period of time. Scary to imagine where it will be in another 30...

It's so true...

Design Humour

Alex posted this up on Facebook today. I had a good belly laugh.