Noisy Decent Graphics

Seeing as lots of you have been asking

You can see all the Nike Grid data viz films here. We're making one film every day for two weeks from the game data. And we're taking today's data and putting it into a film which will run on Channel 4 as 12:05 tomorrow.

That's pretty cool I reckon.

 

XX??

Last year I kept seeing X's all over town. With your help we worked out it was promotion for the (now Mercury Prize winning) band The XX.

But what about these? Looks like exactly the same font. Lots of people tell me it's not The XX, but I reckon it is.

What do you think? Send me your reckons.

Maps, martinis etc

A bit more about the maps and stuff from Stamen, well worth a read.

Let us not forget two important things.

1. The recent presentation by Google of the bestest things on the internet had a slide that simply said "anything by Stamen".

2. The Rite Spot in San Francisco make an awesome martini.

 

Beware the awards hunter

Talking of w+k, I remember seeing this box of old awards there about a year ago. Look what they turned it into.

 

It's called Beware The Awards Hunter.

Awesome

By antimega

Nike Grid 2

The second Nike Grid started last night and runs for two weeks.

You may remember I was Creative Director on the first one with w+k, I thought I'd written about it on here, but I can't find the post. To save time there's a quick overview written by Doug E Fresh. The second one is bigger and bolder and has been aided by Dan Hon joining the team at w+k. So we've plundered his gamification skillz to make the gameplay better and to allow new ways of playing such as team play.

We haven't started from scratch with the look and feel. We built a really strong identity last time and we were keen to evolve that and to make something that still feels like it could go further for Grid 3 and grid 4 (should they happen etc). Last time we kept it to one colour plus black and white, this time we've added more colours, partly to make it feel bigger, partly to help with visualising team play.

 

Also new this time is the involvement of Stamen. They have worked with us to created a map, using Open Street Map and some awesome data viz stuff which will go live throughout the game. Here's the first of several videos we'll be using to tell different stories throughout the game.

We're using Facebook as a way of logging in, I don't have much to add to this expect that it reinforces my increasing affection for Facebook. I'm starting from a low base, but Facebook increasingly is The Internet for people and the fact that it lets 'them' do all the stuff 'we' do on Twitter, Flickr and Foursquare in one place is a Good Thing. OK, maybe not a Good Thing, but a Thing.

This project seems to be a lovely mix of several things that feel very current. It's a game, but it's not just a game bolted on to a brand. The game is integral to the brands heritage - running. It's got lots of Post Digital thinking, we're not using tech for the sake of it, we're using it to amplify the experience. It utilises Magnificent Bits Of Infrastructure that are lying around (I've worked on another project that does that too, heh) this time in the form of phoneboxes.

It would be wrong of me to talk about stats this early into the game, but as with last time the depth of engagement people have with this is insane.

And there's lots of interesting stuff happening on Twitter and Facebook.

As ever, I'm a very small part of a big team of talented, dedicated people working night and day to pull this off. And not just at w+k, at Nike, AKQA and MindShare.

As I said, Nike Grid is on for two weeks and started yesterday. So there's still time to sign up and get running.

 

Double barrelled trends

 

This is a screen grab of what's trending on Twitter in the UK right now. Does anyone know how Twitter work our what's a two word trend and what's a one word trend?

For example, Ian Holloway is trending because of his superb rant about Wayne Rooney (watch it, it's hilarious). But why isn't that listed as Ian AND Holloway? Presumably because that's pretty simple to work out that the words are trending togetehr.

So how do we explain Bilbo AND Baggins trending separately?

Someone? I've always wondered.

BIMA nomination

Newspaper Club has been nominated for a British Interactive Marketing Award which is fantastic news. We're in the Media & Entertainment category. Presuably more for the entertainment than the media.

Photo from   jørngeorg 

In other Newspaper Club news we've announced smaller colour runs and you can now print as many pages as you like from 4 to 64 as long as it's a multiple of 4. That's a pretty big deal. You can now print 300 copies of a 4 page full colour newspaper for just £1.46 a copy. There's a full list of prices here.

Photo from By m8roberto

And a chap called Roberto has made a lovely newspaper full of patterns made using processing.

Here ends this short annoucement.

I ran here today

Gorgeous stuff from over here.

 

T-mobile / Orange ads

I like this. The ads aren't amazing, but the way they run them together is nice.

Letterpress: Forward thinking

That looks good. Tickets etc here.

The Metro sent me a blog post

The Metro sent me this the other day. It's a marketing mailshot pretending to be from the future.

It's spectacularly bad.

Not only is it a terrible idea with no purpose and little thought, it's really badly executed. The craft is shocking. The attention to detail non existent. Everything jars.

In the future we will all listen to music on mini CD roms (You can't tell from the picture but that's one of those annoying mini roms that doesn't fit in a laptop.). Who the fuck thought that up?

Contact lenses. Er, yep. I have no idea why they sent this, there's no obvious call to action. I can only assume it was meant for media buyers, maybe? Someone needs to give the mailshot list buying people a bollocking. After the creatives. And the production people.

They did include this toy solar powered car, which is pretty cool. Marketing people - send more toys!

Papercamp 2 - review

Today was one of those days that's hard to explain to the in-laws.

You know, what are you doing today? Is it work? Is it with people from work? Is it with friends? Is it a conference? Is it for fun? No, yes, all of those and more. But also less. Something, everything and nothing.

Stuff is happening at the moment that I feel we'll look back upon and enjoy saying, I was there. Papercamp was one of those.

(more pictures here)

It's Nice That 4

I was at the launch of It's Nice That 4 last night.

Alex and Will did a sort of 'live magazine' where contributors explained their stuff fomr the magazine in short presentations. It worked very well, interesting evening. You should buy a copy.

But I want to talk about colours.

The colours they photograph these magazines on are fantastic. Sure, it's a pretty simple concept, yellow on green. But THAT yellow with THAT green. Awesome.

THAT pink, THAT green, THAT yellow, THAT blue. Really sharp colours that ping out. Every single time. Picking the exact colour, that's a reall skill. A simple thing that makes the world of difference.

 

 

PaperCamp 2 this Saturday

PaperCamp 2 is happening this Saturday. Come along, it will be nice to see you there.

Crafts people, developers, designers, writers, anyone! SIGN UP IT IS FREE.

Follows, blurb:

Papercamp 1 was like this: http://adactio.com/journal/1546

Papercamp 2 will be the same but different:

It's been thrown together rather opportunistically because the venue suddenly became available, so there won't be as many visitors from foreign lands.

There'll be lots more making stuff, courtesy of Stu Bannocks and his gang: http://www.flickr.com/photos/42665617@N07/sets/72157624859532351/

There'll be quick talks from the stage. Let us know if you fancy doing one - email Matt: [email protected].

There'll be tea and biscuits.

We'll be starting at 12, going to 5 and then heading for the pub.

It'll be at the Conway Hall, Red Lion Square. this Saturday - October 9th.

 

 

Pictures taken by Matt Jones who is in my list of the top 10 best people ever.