aleXsandro Palombo illustrated a story with Karl Lagerfeld as its protagonist.  He set it in Paris and had the city invaded by aliens.  It’s okay because they befriend our hero.  I don’t know that much about comics, so this lack of captions makes me a little uncomfortable.  I guess it’s hard to script Karl.

Read more »

Seems that newspaper ads in Australia are taking their cues from Mad Magazine.  Here’s another ad that entices the reader to play with the paper by turning the issue into a mini wardrobe closet.  I guess you’d associate the cleverness of the ad with the cleverness of the product, and that’s harmless enough in this case.  The closet is pretty efficiently organized.

People will probably show the ad to their friends, in hopes that some of that cleverness would then be associated with them.  Now that Ikea has turned a newspaper into a fake closet, there’s a chance consumers will expect more advertising stunts from the company.  Then again, maybe we all expect marketing stunts to invade our daily routines already, and we’ve turned candid camera set ups into today’s billboards.  I find those campaigns to be too much entertainment for me.

Ikea took a risk by building fake closets out of flimsy paper.  It’s not like the company’s known for sturdy construction, someone who doesn’t get it might say.  But that’s okay – this is a progressive ad for progressive people, it’s not Ikea in family mode.  No baby clothes in that closet.  It’s as much an endorsement of enlightened bachelor living as it is of modern Scandinavian design.

credits
Advertising Agency: 303, Perth, Australia
Creative Director: Lindsay Medalia
Copywriter: Richard Berney
Art Director: Richard Berney
Account Manager: Jane Natalizio

Wish I had a music video to blog about, but there’s some sort of new music recession in Sweden apparently.  So here’s a commercial in Swedish instead.  It’s for Spotify, which is an amazing music streaming service.  It runs like iTunes, except it streams music rather than play it from a computer’s library.  It’s super fast, and the Spotify library grows all the time.  The song selection is already pretty expansive, though it’s specific to the country where you subscribe.  Of course there are also phone apps.

Spotify is now available in a bunch of European countries, and there are plans to launch it in the US in 2010.  The service is either free (with commercials) or paid (without).  Paid subscribers can also download 3,000 songs at a time, so Spotify would be available to use even if your device can’t connect to the internet.

Till now, Spotify has been hugely successful without traditional advertising.  They supposedly spent just £5,000 on marketing in the UK.  This first commercial is in Swedish for Spotify’s native country.

Mulberry collaborated with Apple on some luxury goods geared for Macs, or maybe girls who want to carry Apple products.  Starting November 1st, Apple’s European website and Mulberry stores will sell the bags, designed to fit the MacBook, MacBook Pro, iPhone, iPod and iPod Nano. www.Mulberry.com will sell the line from December 1st.

The nine pieces are padded for protection and feature eyelet holes for headphone access.  The laptop bags are pretty cool and are the first high end Apple collab, surprisingly.  I just put my computer in an incase sleeve and use any bag big enough for it.  I guess if you have a laptop and are buying a Mulberry bag anyway, you might as well get one padded for a computer.

Here are the other Mulberry pieces:

Mulberry would compete with these iPhone cases – 1st, my fav, from Hermes:

Dior Homme:

Smythson:

Vuitton:

I’ve got the cheap version by Sena.  At $30, it’s about a tenth of the price of these fancy cases.  I’m about to order my fourth case because they keep falling apart, though.

Hmm, didn’t mean for this post to be about the look for less or whatever.  I suppose there are times I don’t fully support luxury goods.

Via Grazia

I loved this chair when I first saw it – I love the asymmetry, the finish, the balance.  Then I read the title.  Turns out it was made by Vladimir Kagan and Ralph Pucci.  Insane.  Kagan is one of the most influential modernist designers, and Pucci created the modern mannequin (he came up with using non-creepy poses, among lots of innovative benchmarks).

Read more »

Tequila/Whybin/TBWA created a few surreal ads for the Sydney Morning Herald.  They play on the way newspapers are typically held by ppl reading them on cartoons.

Unless I’m spying on someone through a peephole, I fold my paper before reading.  Regardless, cute ads!

Read more »

Ingenting played “Medan Vi Sov” (“While We Sleep”) at a tram session in Gothenburg.  It’s an endearingly dorky performance of another great, anthemic track from the album Tomhet, Idel Tomhet.

Ingenting – “Medan Vi Sov”

Get Tomhet, Idel Tomhet at iTunes or through Ingenting’s label, Labrador

Visit [ingenting] on their site or MySpace

This video gives you just two simple things: dancing puppets and hip hop with a house beat.  I forget why you’d look for anything else anywhere ever.

Of course it’s Swedish.  There are lots of puppets and dolls in commercials in Sweden, and Swedish hip hop is very party oriented, e.g., Maskinen, Ison & Fille, Adam Tensta.

It’s perfect, right?  Have a good weekend!

Madskillz feat. POK – “Dance”

Visit Madskillz

VW’s Swedish agency, DDB, turned a flight of stairs and a trash can into interactive installations in Sweden and filmed people’s reactions.  The videos quickly became viral hits (stats).  They show that subway passengers will choose the stairs over an escalator if the stairs are converted into a huge piano.  People are more likely to throw garbage into a trash can that makes an exaggerated dropping sound than a regular, silent bin.  They’ll also try to investigate if the trash can is, indeed, the deepest one on earth as its signage claims.  You see, you can change people’s habits if you just add some fun to the desired behavior!

Haha, let’s hang out on YouTube and watch people get some exercise, finally.  I relate to the stairs video because working out is something I say I’ll do, but then, you know!  I’d work out if it were more fun, but who am I to try to find a fun athletic activity for myself?  Sigh.  Walking up a flight of stairs a day can totally improve your well being.  I keep thinking about this ad when I head out of the subway station (even when I’m not going to Tranan at Odenplan LOL).  It’s really great to watch other people going through the same things that I do in my daily life.

Those people are idiots for buying into corporate marketing, but they’re also healthier for it.  It kind of balances out sometimes.  It’s hard to work out and be healthy because large corporations keep us inside big offices all day and feed us fast foods.  So, yeah, I’m glad one of them stepped up and took over bullshit my ex-roomie would call personal obligations for my health.  It takes a big initiative like that to get people to change for the better.

Read more »

We just did our first shoot as a group!  It was super fun.  We’re figuring out which shots to post – I love a lot of them.  I made a mix for the shoot, which is something I rarely do.  I’m too lazy for playlists, and my iTunes library is usually too weird for other people to enjoy.  I mostly stream Swedish radio while I work/all the time, so I joke that mine is the taste of a 12 year old Swede.

For this occasion, I managed to put together a few blog bands and some canon tracks.  It worked out pretty well.  Maybe it did b/c it neutralized the biggest potential source of conflict: me.  I might as well admit that I’m probably the only one in this band who’d walk out of a room if an unsuitable song were to play.  I leave movies, too.  But hey!  We’re here for music, photos, fun times.

The whole playlist is like 4.5 hrs.  Here’s a zip with select tracks:

• The Jesus & Mary Chain – “Far Gone and Out”/Far Gone and Out
• The Flaming Lips – “Borderline”/7″ w/ The Black Keys
• Small Black – “Bad Lover”/Small Black
• R.E.M. – “Pop Song 89″/Green
• Air – “Sexy Boy”/Moon Safari
• The Big Pink – “Velvet”/Velvet
• The Beatles – “I Am the Walrus”/Love
• The xx – “Infinity”/XX
• Islands – “Heartbeat”/Vapours
• Sally Shapiro – “Love in July”/My Guilty Pleasure
• The Stone Roses – “Waterfall”/The Stone Roses
• Memory Tapes – “Stop Talking”/Seek Magic
• Delorean – “Deli (Acid Girls Remix)”

Click here to download it!

I didn’t write this post to say I’m anything but a pretty shitty DJ with one recorded moment of passable music choices.