Up, up and away!

In 2009 Disney Pixar released "Up" where an old man flies his house suspended by hundreds of coloured helium balloons. Now in 2012, Jonathan Trappe has brought that child fantasy to life by flying a small model house 20,000 feet in the air over Leon, Mexico. Trappe is now planing on making a Trans-Atlantic journey in the helium balloon suspended and if he gets the funding, make a documentary on his incredible journey.

Crazy and clever packaging!

When selling a product the packaging is just as important as the advertising itself and here is some great examples of incredible packaging! We have some high protein buns in a box imitating a six pack quite literally, water proof watches sold in a bag of water and a bag designed to emphasize what you are putting into your body. These few examples of very abstract packaging are great as it makes the product into something much more than just a drink or just some bread. It makes the product into something exciting and fun and in the case of the oragami bottles, a piece of art.

Super Heroes are all for minimalism these days

Here we have a few pictures from a larger collection by Mozcreative. The fact that I could name each and every super hero from the collection either means that I need to get out more or that because of pop culture these images have become so well known we no longer need to see a full picture to identify who it is!

I believe that these are some very clever and very cool looking designs.

Ghosts of War

Dutch historian Jo Hedwig Teeuwisse tries to demonstrate that history and the present day are very much entwined. She does this with her Ghosts of War photo series, where she blends the present day and the original World War II pictures of the same place into one. She spent hours looking for the locations and taking pictures that match the originals, and then photoshops them to combine the war ghosts into the current settings to give a haunting view of what some of these places were like during the war and how life for the allied forces was.

More Than Human

A renowned London-based photographer Tim Flach presents his work of seven years in his new book called “More than Human“. By taking striking close up shots of various animals, he attempts to demonstrate how close animals can get to humans through different poses and the way they act. What looks like images of unselfconscious and spontaneous reactions of the animals, is actually a result of long research and observation done by the artist. The carefully lit and cropped images evoke unexpected sense of intimacy and empathy even with the less cuddly animal models. Tim did everything to create individual settings for all of them, and his magnificent pictures prove that all the efforts paid off.

Only in Japan

During the gloomy winters we all need something to color and light up our lives. The Japanese devoted a whole botanical garden for that purpose, and transformed it into a 7 million LED light winter illumination. Located on the island of Nagashima in Kuwana, the installations in the Nabana no Sato garden were opened just this week. Visitors enter the garden through a majestic tunnel of lights and go on to enjoy the installations, set up according to theGreat Nature theme of this year. The little LEDs compose such great sights as a sunrise at Mt. Fuji or the gorgeous auroras borealis, but once you look closer, you see that every light is placed into tiny botanically inspired bulbs. The illumination is already named “the best light show in the country”, and will be welcoming visitors till the end of March.

Miami Bass Project

London Based ad agency 'Mother' have produced their latest ad in the "Recommended by..." campaign for HTC. This new ad is the Miami Bass Project where one man is challenged to make something memorable for the people of Miami with his HTC One. And so with the help of his friends he sets up a whole lot of speakers and puts on a street party. I think the ad is pretty good in terms of visual communication but the concept of the ad isn't too great. What the guy sets out to do isn't that much of a challenge as a lot of people help him out and all the ad shows from the phone is that you can plug it into a speaker and play your music, a feature that's not all that impressive!

http://www.campaignlive.co.uk/thework/1158215/ 

There's A Soldier In All Of Us

So last year we saw the Call Of Duty MW3's live action ad starring Sam Worthington and Jonah Hill as "The Vet" and "The Noob" which are pretty much the two types of people who play the game.

This year with the release of Black Ops 2 we have the new "Surprise" live action ad with a cameo from Robert Downey Jr, directed by Guy Ritchie. The ad starts of with a rather nerdy looking guy say playing with  a small computer and the audience gets the idea that this guy is the "n00b" from the last ad and so a sequence starts with someone trying to kill him but being stopped by someone else. This sequence carries on with the weapons getting increasingly more powerful until an airstrike lands killing everyone and it is revealed it is the guy from the beginning who has planned the who thing. And so the audience are shown that even the most unlikely person can be a soldier with COD. 

Star Wars has officially landed!

A couple of weeks ago I posted about Disney buying out LucasFilm and everything that it owns. Well now Disney have released a short video to acknowledge this.

The video shows Darth Vader and two Stormtroopers enjoying a day out in DisneyLand and shows that the franchise has now landed within the media giant of Disney. While this video is pretty funny it makes me sad as already I can see how Disney are going to be treating Star Wars as just a money maker, I can't see it being long until they announce their new Death Star themed roller coaster.

Air New Zealand

I can across this viral video from Air New Zealand recently. The video is the safety briefing that they show on board their planes just before flight. The video is quite obviously based on The Lord Of The Rings with all the passengers dressed in armor and the stewards dressed as famous characters from the films such as Aragorn, Gandalf and Legolas. And the video also has a cameo appearance from Peter Jackson himself who directed the film series and the soon to be released Hobbit series. The video has been made to acknowledge the country as the place the films are made and to link into the new Hobbit series.

Jam with Chrome

Ever wanted to play an instrument but don't have the time, money or talent? Well now you can on 'Jam With Chrome'! Google chrome have released this brilliantly detailed app that turns your browser into an array of different instruments that let you play, learn and procrastinate all at once as well as giving you the chance to invite your friends and even make music together!

Gallery of Mo

Carrying on from the Movember theme Twentysix, a digital consultancy have have created a gallery where donors can pick from one of 180 illustrators to draw their portrait and then the donor donates enough money based on how long the portrait takes to complete. I think that this is an excellent idea as it is a great way for the people to get more involved with the cause than just growing a mustache as well as raising a lot of money as none of the profits go to the artists themselves as they all volunteer.

November: The month of Men!

http://uk.movember.com/It is now November and as many people now know it is also Movember. The charity event set up in which men grow mustaches to raise money and awareness for male cancers. The Movember website has been relaunched and redesigned by Melbourne based Urchin Associates and has been renamed "Movember and Sons". The site has been styled to the theme of old fashioned father and son ran businesses so that it can urge men to grow a manly mustache and keep the idea of family in mind.

Halo 4

Last Monday saw the release of the latest Halo game which has gone on to sell millions. So to celebrate the release of what is quite possibly one of the most successful and eagerly anticipated game franchises, the creators put on a little release party on at midnight containing a fully supplied Masterchief, over 500 dedicated fans and a huge 50 foot wide, 3.2 tonne UFO flying over the city! The UFO was actually a metal frame covered in red lights that was carried over the city by a helicopter and was the biggest man made structure given permission to be flown over the city. This shows that the game industry is becoming much more influential and strong with release dates that can rival that of major film premiers and that soon video games will be classed as a major media along side film, television and music.

Obama: More Than A President

I've come across the latest photo shoot by photographer Terry Richardson. The subject of this shoot is the recently re-elected and world favourite U.S President Barack Obama. I think that this is an absolutely fantastic shoot as it contains different shots of Obama that work to make him look less of a politician and more of a man of the people with his suit informally unbuttoned and sleeves rolled up and showing him in a series of casual and laid back positions. You can find the rest of the shoot here: http://www.itsnicethat.com/articles/terry-richardson-photographs-obama

EE making something iconic into something legendary

Here we have some fantastic 4D projection. I remember seeing this kinda thing about 2 years ago on the gadget show where they turned the Marble Arch into a giant space invader and then again on the Queen's diamond jubilee with Buckingham Palace but now internet provider EE have taken it to a whole new level by turning Battersea power station into a 4 dimensional light show. All to celebrate the release of 4G mobile internet in the UK.