Today there was a seminar at Mediamatic about data-visualization, the use of Processing in digital arts and the beauty and versatility of this programming language. The seminar was hold by Daniel Shiffman and Jer Thorp who both like to teach people what they know. The presentations where good and gave me a better idea of what you can do with processing. My favorite presentation was Jer Thorp’s because of his use of humor in his presentation. Jer even made graphs look cool and be funny during the seminar.
You can read more about the seminar at mediamatic.
For fourteen days there is a graphical design festival in the city of Breda about 1,5 hours drive from Amsterdam. I have visited the city and I got very inspires. And best of all, it was free! I can recommend anyone to go there. My favorite part was the paper toys.
Day 2 at Eurobest started with a workshop from Hyper Island, Meet The Talents, that I helped out hosting. About 30 people turned up and they all seemed to enjoy the workshop and presentation that some fellow class mates of me hold. After that I listened to The making of Carousel, Zero Budget Campaigns, King Kong vs Godzilla: Expanded Storytelling and Entertainment Hybrids and Is it time for a radical re-think of the role of the copy writer.
TribalDDB and Stink Digital, The Making Of Carousel
If you haven’t seen the Carousel campaign for Philips it’s time you do. One of the first things they started out with telling us was: don’t just say you are cinematic, BE cinematic. They went thru the movie and told us about how they made it. The people in the movie are real people and the camera is filming as they are staying still, frozen. all the actors are gymnastics and alike. They got incredible body control and where hocked up with wires. They filmed the shoot three times before taking all the people and wires away and filming one last time so that it would be easier to replace the wires and other accessories holding the actors.
Here is the youtube making of:
thenetworkone, Zero Budget Campaigns
This guy was talking about how zero budget campaigns can effect even more than high budget campaigns, just look at google. While normal ad-agencies are having about the same profit as last year, google doubled their. A nice example they used for how zero budget campaigns can ruin a brand was a video of a guy that didn’t get anything when the American airline, United, broke his guitar. He went to them and told them his story, but they ignored him. Since he was a musician he made a song about it:
After he made the movie United flight sales dropped with 10% and they had a 180 million dollar fall. So they wanted to make friends with the guy and flew him over for discussion.. But ironically they lost his luggage on that trip so no deal was made. Simple sum up from the presentation: Zero budget campaigns can be dangerous.
Bongo Advertising, King Kong vs Godzilla: Ezpanded Storytelling and Entertainment Hybrids
Unfortunately the zero budget campaign presentation lasted for so long that I only got to listen to the last part of this presentation. But here is a sum-up of the things I got to hear: You should always know who is the boss and who is the creative boss withing a team so that you know who’s fault everything is. You can’t just play, you need to take responsibility. The rest of the presentation was mostly a very nice showcase and a tiny workshop in form of a two minute speed dating session where we talked to two different people we never had met before for one minute each. It was a nice thought, but to fast to get anything special out of it.
AKQA, Write off: Is It TIme For A Radical Rethink Of The Role Of The Copywriter?
Yeah, Is it? and by the way, “what do I mean with copywriter, and what do YOU mean with copywriter” was the opening words of this presentation right before the presenter took up a great example of amazing copy by Hemingway. One time Hemingway was asked if he could make a six word novel and he sure could. If you haven’t heard of his six word novel it goes like this: For sale: Baby shoes, never worn.
Its an amazing novel, considering that it is only six words and contains so much information. I had never heard it before, but I really like the way I just imagine more and more every time I read the words. That is good copy. Another thing with copy is that everyone is doing it today, by email, SMS and letters. Everyone is writing and a lot of people are writing blogs. Everyone are language experts and can be a great advertiser. I am sure that If you told someone about your favorite place you would have no problem in convincing them to take a trip there, but as the lectures said, I don’t think you would win me over with a picture. I agree with the lectures that wining someone over with only visuals is harder than with words since we are so much more used to expressing our self with words. But I want to test it!
So, draw a picture of your favorite place to make me want to go there, upload it and paste the link in the comment field of this blog post.
If you want to share the name of your favorite place or you want people to guess is up to you. Have fun, be creative and don’t be afraid that you are not a good painter. Since paintings are all about taste, we are all great painters no matter if we draw stick people or portrait’ish faces.
Today I went to Eurobest in Amsterdam, at the door I got a I amsterdam bag full of goodies, wierd mag, proud mag, a 1cm2 part of Amsterdam, a book By Stefan Engeset called The fall of PR & the rise of advertising, a little mag about social music revolution. A very nice bag in dead.
I arrived at Eurobest at aprox 15.00 and sat down in the seminar hall exactly in time to hear Amsterdam Worldwide talk about Brand Nationality. Take this flag and shove it: the uses and abuses of national origin in Advertising was the title of the seminar where they showed several video’s of brands using their own nationality and others nationality to say who they are. After that I listened to Glue London talking about their showcase and then Acne’s showcase. At 17/18 there was time for a opening drink, free wine and beer . After a few drinks it was time for a stand-up show from BUG. It was hosted by Adam Buxton and was about the evolution of music video’s. It was very funny. He showed us a lot of cool music video’s that I haven’s seen before. Great stuff! I am really looking forward to tomorrow.
