Viva stencils forever!

I just love stencils, so my tip of the day is wicked orticanoodles.

UPS just made it onto my hatelist

I ordered a mac book a week before Christmas, it was ment as a Christmas gift to my husband and the people at apple was very helpful and tried to get all the paperwork done to deliver before Christmas. Unfortunately, the laptop wasn't sent until the 20:th of December and set to be delivered today.
When I called UPS, I was told that I needed to stay home all day to wait for the package. That's alright, I changed some meetings and worked from home. Half way through the working day, I called UPS to double-checked the address and name they where supposed to deliver to, not a problem, they had the correct address. I called at 16:25 cause it was supposed to be delivered before 17:00, I was told that "he has a whole 35 minutes left to deliver".
According to the trackingsystem, they had no accurate address or name, I called them to tripple-check it, and told them they had the right address. I also went outside and put up a big note for the driver on my door.

"To the UPS guy/gal, my name is GREEN, here is my doorbell"

Yet, I just received the notice that there was no accurate recipient at the address when they tried to deliver the package.
I have double and triple and quadruple checked the name and address on every invoice, in the UPS system and with the UPS custom service. It just happened to be late and it rained so the person delivering the packages decided to write it off as unknown address and go home to watch porn or something. Cause if the person was at the address given, no way you could miss the sign over the only doorbells there is.
And when I call UPS, they tell me that they have been here and that it is my fault and that I should stay home tomorrow as well to wait for them to deliver.
UPS just made it onto my hatelist.

When Egyptians go megalomaniacs

Egypt wants to pass a law that copyrights the pyramids and the sfinxs. Saying that this will protect all pharaonic sites, even the ones not looking like pyramids.

"The new law will completely prohibit the duplication of historic Egyptian monuments which the Supreme Council of Antiquities considers 100 per cent copies"

According to Zahi Hawass,the head of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities.

Sue me.

While I agree that the pharaonic history must be preserved, the money from preserving should come from tourism, museum funds around the world and the country itself.
This will only lead to less books and films about the pharaonic era. And less tourists.
But on the other hand, as an independent woman, It has always buggered my how rude the Egyptians are to unaccompanied female tourists. So, I settle for the British Museum if I'm to travel alone.

English article - Fox news
Swedish article - DN

Nerd time now; A Human Story of Computer Animation

Provided by the Computer History Museum, this is a lecture on computer animation, by some of the people who shaped the animation of today.

Brad Bird, Writer/Director, The Incredibles, Pixar Animation Studios,
Ed Catmull, Co-Founder and President, Pixar Animation Studios,
Alvy Ray Smith, Co-Founder of four centers of computer graphics excellence (Altamira, Pixar, Lucasfilm, New York Tech) and a Microsoft Fellow,
Andrew Stanton, Writer/ Director, Finding Nemo, Pixar Animation Studios,
Michael Rubin, Moderator, Author of Droidmaker: George Lucas and the Digital Revolution

This is a youTube viceo, meaning its loooong but if you like animation,
it's worth it.

Goodbye Ruby Tuesday

Goodbye Ruby Tuesday
Who could hang a brand on you?
When you change with every new day,
boy, I'm gonna miss you!

When Ruby Tuesday decided to update their restaurants, they decided to kill everything about the brand while at it. Ruby Tuesday will no longer be the American old sportsbar/restaurant with hamburgers so thick and juice you have to stick a knife through the whole burger to keep it together.

It's colorful, comfortable, warm and inviting. And we're pleased to say you'll be seeing it for yourself in the months to come, as Ruby Tuesdays across America get a fresh new look, inside and out.

The moment you pull into the parking lot, you'll know it's a whole new Ruby Tuesday. Inside, the pleasing, inviting atmosphere is inspired by the fresh, high-quality food we're bringing you every day, from handcrafted burgers made with the finest ingredients to our unrivaled Fresh Garden Bar.

Most important, every last detail of the new design - every knife and fork, painting and plate - is our way of showing and sharing the quality, passion and pride that inspires us to be your gracious hosts.
Welcome to your new Ruby Tuesday.

Ruby Tuesday - homepage

If I go to Ruby, i'll go for a burger and a beer, not a fricking salladbar.

Whopper freakout

It would be very interesting to see how the swedes relate to Burger King and McDonalds in that sense. Don't think they would be that upset, and definitely not start to quote the slogan "home of the whopper".

1000 frames of Hitchcock

Hitchcocks legacy is saved and kept for the future generations at the Hitchcock wiki. One of the projects is the "1000 frames of hitchcock", a virtual goldmine of screenshots from Hitckcocks films.

My christmas wish list

My Christmas wish list happens to correspond with this list. "30 delightful graphic design books"
Source for text and picture; You the designer

Beckham "porn"

The first new photo from Armani underwear, featuring Beckham is out. These are the comments from the people (mainly girls) at the sugar network.
I also just found this campaign for JBS underwear with female modells cause "men dont want to look at naked men".
Well, obviously women want to look at Beckham, but it ain't the women buying the male underwear. I for one, see only one solution, to equip Mr. Beckham with some underwear that females would buy...

I'll just mac something up

I heard that expression the first time I worked in London. It sounded weird to me to say "mac something up". You see, my laptop was a PC, cause it was cheaper to get the kind of hardware needed to work with maya.
I do however find it peculiar that the one group of people who have bought the advertisement and the "mac identity" whole heartedly is the advertisers themselves.
For fuck sake people!
Its just hardware! Hardware you need to do your job, nothing else!

If I hear one more colleague say "oh dear, why didn't you spend twice the amount of money for the same hardware so you could have a mac" then I will strangle that person with his/her little round one button mac-vintage mouse.

God save the environment!

I saw this wonderful penn and teller clip today:

Though it makes you laugh, it also make you think; Are we turning the fight for environment into a witch hunt. Are we blindly running after everything, barking like blind rabid dogs? I'm not saying that we don't have the cause to worry, or that we shouldn't act.
But this demonstration in my town today demonstrates how the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Gothenburg has an ongoing project, "Christmas town Gothenburg" and basically, that is, lighting up the central parts of Gothenburg like a Christmas tree. So this group of people decides that the best way to work for environment is to go down to the main road and stop traffic for five minutes.
Not to make cutbacks on the Christmas lights, but to make hundred of angry drivers get stuck in traffic while blocking the main road for the towns emergency vehicles.
Does anyone seriously think an action like that would have any good, long or short term affects on the environment?
We are running the risk of turning from behaving like aware consumers into acting like a mob for the environmental cause.

A little rhymes with...

And my tip of the day are these two rhyme generators:
Rhymezone & Poetry.com

Double standards and crappy websites.

While reading through Futurelab, I saw this article on the topic of unilever and the contradiction between the dove commercials and the axe commercials. I thought that I'd have a look into other major companies with double standards and wanted to compare "Goody 2 shoes" Bennetton with "if you can't see a nipple, it ain't advertisement" Sisley.
I tried to go to Sisleys homepage, but my brand new spiffy 19" laptop widescreen was too small for the pictures. And my 100 Mbit/s connection was apparently to slow cause I couldn't load that many pictures to begin with. Then I went to Benetton only to see this picture:

I bet she needs warm clothes if she is going to have to stay
in the concentration camp all winter.

I guess the conclusion is; if you don't have standards, you cant have double standards. Good for you, Benettongroup!
I wonder if it is Oliviero Toscani who shot this one, and if he did, why he starved it before he killed it and photographed it.

Warm fuzzy feelings vs. annoying sales.

So, trying to read something more than newspapers in the mornings, I've started to read a blog or two, its good since its online and that's where all the newspapers are. Don't think I've read a paper-paper in 6 months now. feels kinda good, and environmental.
This morning, it was time for the weekly reading of adfreak.com. The writer, David Gianatasio, proclaims one of the Activias spots to be the most off-kilter spot in recent memory amongst the spots, David mentions this one:



This is the LOLcat take on it:


David also mentions this ad:


While linking to futurelab saying: as many experts believe the HeadOn stuff is effective, at least from a sales standpoint.

I just want to say it once and for all:
Its commercials like "Head on" that gives a market for products like Tivo. While producing spots like head on, we are ruining our own channel of communication with customers.
And its prolly just me, but I kinda felt like getting in touch with my inner self after watching that Activias spot.

If I ever get a stuffed Bambi...

Then I'm going to order it from Lisa Black.

And thats the way the cookie crumbles.

Picture from IRM.

I'm just about to finish a 2 year education within advertisement and marketing. I graduate in December and I started the course in early 2006. The picture above is the Swedish "media cookie". We had a "one shot" lecture with a man who told us that internet wouldn't grow much more. I'm glad to see him proven wrong even before I graduate. The prediction for next year according to IRM, the institution for advertisement and media statistics; Whopping 15.1% during 2008.

And that's the way the cookie crumbles.

Have I got your attention now?

Mona Shaw, a 75-year-old granny in Virginia, got so fed up waiting for Comcast to change her phone service that she smashed up a few items in her local Comcast office with a hammer, all the while shouting, "Have I got your attention now?!"



Over a million people have seen the movie of the Comcast Technician, sleeping on her coach, that Mona posted on Youtube. Its good to know that the whole bad service issue is not just a Swedish thing.

Source - Church of the customer

Gone dry?

Looking for inspiration?
Visit design you trust.

Or the Behance Network Gallery.

Use electricity wisely.

Some simply beautiful ads, gathered by fubiz.net

Clean the streets.
Safety glass.
The yellow line.
Mini-toys.

The last lecture you'll ever make. Brought to you by Disney.

The Disney-owned publisher Hyperion has paid $6.7 million for the rights to publish a book about Randy Pausch called "The Last Lecture", co-authored by Randy Pausch and Wall Street Journal reporter Jeff Zaslow.

If you have missed "The last lecture", a lecture held by terminal ill professor Randy Pausch, a short version can be found here.


Related links:
Randy's homepage - At the university Carnegie Mellon.
Info on Randy and the last lecture. - According to Wikipedia.

Do like Hitler, take the kids.

We had lectures held by Fredrik from Miami.se in my advertisement and marketing class. One of his lectures was on the topic, "Do like Hitler, take the kids" pointing on the effects of exposure to brands at a young age.
Although Sweden have no way near the problem with commercials aimed directly towards kids, what Susan Gregory Thomas brings up in her book "buy, buy baby" is an issue. When do we stop being advertisers and cross over to "doing a Hitler?"

Stolen images.

Though I spite the thought of someone taking pictures and republish them on their page, without credits. Foundphotos is my link of the day.

The way we communicate

imagesourse "found in moms basement"

We all communicate very differently and we all have different opinions on what makes a good communicator. American psychologist Bruce Christopher gives us an entry point to the subject:

Great communicators are people who change their approach based upon the person they are talking too.

Does this sounds like a reasonable thing to you? Is it something we can agree on? If so, keep on reading.

We have applied this within advertisement. We spend a lot of time and money on sorting people into target groups and even more money on understanding those target groups. We differentiate people based on gender, age, race, location, weight... The list grows long pretty quickly.

We choose to communicate with these target groups saying different things, and approach them in different media. We pretty much have it down.
Does this makes us good communicators?
No.
Why?

Men and women communicate differently. The list of research on the fact grows longer by the hour and we still don't differentiate the way we communicate. We say different things, in different media, but we don't actively differentiate how we say it.
This is an exiting time we have ahead of us. The last ten years have given us so much new research on how men and women communicate. Now its up to us to use that information to make us better communicators.


Related links:
The power of the purse A book by Fara Warner.
Rethink pink - Marketing to women portal
Marketing to women online - A blog by Holly Buchanan.
Wonderbranding - A blog by Michele Miller

Why Sweden needs a black friday.

Why should Sweden embrace the black Friday?
1. The christmas holiday season needs a kickstart, it has an end, it needs a beginning.
2. Traditionally, we start decorating on the first sunday in december, retailers put up their decorations up to a month before that. By the time its Christmas, the Christmas spirit already has come and gone.
3. This time of season in Sweden sucks. Its rainy, cold, dark and miserably. I don't know about you, but if I could make some nice shopping trips for bargain prices, then at least I would start buying Christmas gifts again.

Related links:
Here's a link to some info on what the black Friday is.

You meet the nicest people on a Honda.

It said so in a paper, so it must be true!
Found in mom's basement is my link tip of the day.

Wee!

NORWEGIAN companies have frequently been criticised over the years for their uninformed use of the English language among top executives and employees, which is widely viewed as being bad for attracting international business to the country.
-Upstream

The latest proof of that is the new name given to the Statoil employee magazine. The name?
Its sounds like "Wee" but spells like "We" and smells like poop.

Pink gets me high as a kite

Pink gets me high as a kite
And I think everything is going to be all right
-Aerosmith

Well, lets see when I find the right shade of pink or for how long I can stand having pink in the blog. Pink is a hot topic though. Or rather, magenta is. T-mobile is defending their use of magenta (CMYK 0,100,0,0) And I'm all for defending your brand, your copyrights and everything that goes with it but I hope desperately that this one doesn't stick. Its ok to defend a pattern, but just one colour? That is just too general for my taste. besides, it's a good way of upsetting people who work with graphics :p

Getting started every morning

I love coffee. Good strong coffee with milk. It's kinda sad that we don't even have a Starbucks in Gothenburg, I miss it desperately. Its probably the strongest argument for working in London.
Though, all the people I spoke to in London recommended that I'd go to "Nero" instead of Starbucks. Cause "Nero is not a big bad corporation" "Its a struggling family business!"
Yeah right! There's Neros all over that town, I guess the struggling family business is a nicely laid out storytelling stunt.
Anyhow. Starting the day of with something creative is always nice. Cunning has the perfect task for a morning creative spurt. Make them a logo.
So when I have the time to, I make one.

Admumble!

I read adrants every now and then. Its a great site with a name that kinda...sticks. I wish I had the time and stamina to keep up a site like that. But I don't have the energy to rant all the time. I more kinda...mumble.
It's a very Swedish thing to do!
So, if you made it here, welcome to my ad mumbles. :)