Diem Chau plays with crayons. But not by coloring outside the lines, she carves them into the likenesses of people and animals. And they are certainly intriguing, if not impressive. So intriguing in fact, that finally, someone has utilized them as a metaphor in a tv commercial (more on that at the end of the post).
Take a look: She has ceated commissions in the likeness of people from photos: Some older photos of her crayon carvings:
Artist's Statement:
I consider myself an artist whose medium is stories, especially those that are primarily passed on orally. Coming from a nomadic childhood, what few possessions my family had were necessities. The things of greatest value to us were stories contributed by friends and family. Embedded in these stories are connections to the past, our culture and an occasional escape from reality.
My grandmother told some of the best and most unique tales. She had a wonderful way of spicing up the traditional fable. According to her, Cinderella was kept from the Prince’s ball by having to sort a jumble of Mung beans, Red beans and Soybeans. Snow White went on many dates with Prince Charming before they got married, their first date being a picnic in the park with sandwiches and sliced melons. These small deviations are what fascinate me with oral traditions. Ordinary events injected into fantasy worlds make them more believable but, at the same time, it makes them extraordinary. Stories enable us to live a more vivid life.
I’ve spent countless hours gathering memories and pieces of different cultures by listening to incredible stories. I waited with childlike anticipation and delight on each storyteller’s words. I believe it’s my time to be the storyteller and to evoke the same delight and anticipation from my audience. Each story is a journey that gives us greater understanding of our past and our culture. Each story is a thread that connects us to each other, the storyteller holding one end and the audience the other. - Diem Chau
all photos courtesy of Diem Chau.
Diem Chau has since created many other wonderful art pieces and projects (be sure to see her 'embroidered ceramics'). You can see the work of Diem Chau here.
UPDATE (MAY, 2009): I figured an ad agency would find a way to use Diem's crayon carvings and sure enough, Hal Riney & Publicis has come out with a new U.S. Cellular commercial that uses time lapse photography and Diem's crayon carvings. Once available to view on flickr, ad freak and youtube, the spot has since been removed.
If you've ever wanted to live in a Looney Tunes Cartoon or have your children's room resemble a scene from Beauty & The Beast or Alice in Wonderland, then Judson Beaumont's quirky and well-crafted furniture is the thing for you.
Above: Judson with his wares at a Japan trade show
With a vivid imagination and the ability to execute and bring the idea to fruition, Judson's company, Straightline Designs (even the name is a jest) has created some of the most fun and unusual dressers, tables and more.
Above: The Boom Dresser, 6 pieces mounted on the wall.
Above: The Bridge bookcase
Above: The Brian Dresser
Above: the Whitney dresser
Above: The Melting Cabinet
His children's room furniture consists of many different dressers, some clocks, and beds that resemble everything form Cinderella's carriage to a locomotive.
In addition to the fun stuff for the nursery, he creates conceptual furniture filled with wit. My favorite being the "Bad" Table (seen below):
Above top: The Bad table ; above bottom: The Burnt Legs Table
He clearly has an adult sense of humor as well, check out his Custom "munny" (now sold out) for Voltageland, of the evil Charlie Brown:
After successfully designing furniture with a straightforward approach for years, this artist set out to create something unique for friends who were expecting their first child. He wanted his creation to capture the baby's imagination for years to come. Today, like his first kid-inspired piece, Judson designs some of the most offbeat, whimsical furnishings in the world.
Cartoons like Looney Tunes’ Bugs Bunny and Roger Rabbit, along with the work of innovative architect Frank Gehry, inspire his work.
He has also designed several props for movie and commercial sets and finds his greatest joy in designing play areas for children’s hospitals. “Children always get my work. They respond very positively, unlike adults who often say ‘You can’t do that.'”
Click here to read a nice online article with Judson from Woodworking Web.
Below are some images of the Mondrian South Beach apartment project in Miami with interiors by Marcel Wanders.
Mondrian South Beach, which was announced last December, is a luxury serviced apartment project at Biscayne Bay on Miami’s South Beach. The images shown here show (top) the stairs area, (second image) the porte cochere, and (third image) the lounge area. The fourth and fifth images are computer generated floor plans.
In addition to the above project, Wanders is working with architect Chad Oppenheim on an 85-acre site at Echelon, Las Vegas, which will feature a Delano and Mondrian hotels for Morgans Hotel Group, which is also Wanders’ client for the Miami project.
Craig Kanarick of Rockmade combined his passion for photography with a sweet tooth and created a now sought-after photographic collection of candy.
The monochromatic candy Digital c-prints below by Craig Kanarick are limited editions of 20 and cost $850. apiece. They are printed on archival paper and mounted behind gallery plexi glass. They measure 24" x 24":
Craig has a lot of other beautiful candy photography in other sizes and price ranges, see them here.
Clemens Weisshaar and Reed Kram have designed a limited-edition set of parametric hand made and hand painted dinner plates for Porzellan Manufaktur Nymphenburg titled MY PRIVATE SKY. The project represents the ultimate in personalization: each set shows the night sky at the date and place of birth of the buyer.
When a buyer orders his set of plates he gives his date and place of birth. The buyer's personal night sky map is then calculated by a custom computer program and printed onto a set of blueprints followed by Nymphenburg's master porcelain painters. Each set of dinner plates involves the hand-painting of some 500 stars, nebulae, planets and constellations in gold and platinum.
A thorough analysis of the traditional methods at Nymphenburg, the Bavarian Kings' former porcelain manufacturer, turned the designers' attention towards utilizing and manipulating centuries old processes in a contemporary context. By designing a program rather than a single drawing, the designers combine the excellence of the master porcelain painters at Nymphenburg with the potential of custom-developed computer code.
Nymphenburg will issue an edition of 100+10 unique copies of MY PRIVATE SKY.
Valentina La Donna e Mobile Vita Privata four poster bed
designer: Giuseppe Canevese
design year: 2004
manufacturer: Ennezero, Italy
materials: graphics printed on white polished MDF, sealed with lacquer top and back in black lacquered MDF lacquered aluminum feet
notes: This piece of furniture features the artwork of graphic artist Guido Crepax (1933-2003), who was hugely influential in the development of European comic art in the second half of the 20th century. His most famous storyline, featuring the character 'Valentina', was created in 1965.
This series was very much in the spirit of the 60s, incorporating eroticism, and psychedelic, and dream-like storylines.
In Crepax's work, many references are made to the works of 20th century 'Avant-Garde' artists, such as Rene Magritte, Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray, Piet Mondrand, Roy Lichtenstein, and Andy Warhol.
dimensions: 82" x 66" x 81" high (to top of posts)
The Next Generation of Online Shorthand By DAVID POGUE of the New York Times.
By now, everybody, I hope, knows what LOL stands for. Most people probably recognize IMHO, BRB, and AFK. (If you don't know these, you can always Google* them.)
Online shorthand like this arose, of course, because it's so hard to type full English words on a cellphone's number keypad. And it's tedious to type the same common phrases over and over again in chat rooms or instant messages.
The problem with these online abbreviations, however, is that they're absolutely ancient; entire generations of teenagers have learned and outgrown LOL and OMG. The world desperately needs a new set of acronyms more relevant to today's online chat participants.
So here, with my compliments, are a few proposals: an updated list of online acronyms.
(In hopes to keep the list relevant to the youthful target audience, I invited my more recent summer interns, Zach Brass and Bart Stein, to write a few. Their suggestions, along with some from my occasional research assistant Emma Story, appear here along with mine. Thanks, dudes!)
* GI -- Google it
* MOP -- Mac or PC?
* FCAO -- five conversations at once
* IIOYT -- is it on YouTube?
* DYFH -- did you Facebook him/her?
* BIOI -- buy it on iTunes
* CMOS -- call me on Skype
* GGNUDP -- gotta go, no unlimited data plan
* WLF -- with the lady friend
* JUOC -- jacked up on caffeine
* 12OF -- twelve-o'clock flasher (refers to someone less than competent with technology, to the extent that every appliance in the house flashes "12:00")
* CYE (CYF, CYM, CYB)--check your email (Facebook, Myspace, blog)
And a few just for iPhone owners:
* SPLETS -- send pics later; Edge too slow
* CSVUI -- can't send video, using iPhone
* BPWMI -- boss playing with my iPhone
* SIK -- sorry, iPhone keyboard
* OOM -- out of messages (for iPhone users who haven't upgraded their AT&T "200 messages a month" plan)
Finally, it occurred to me: Why should the convenience of online shorthand be the province of teenagers and twentysomethings? There ought to be a list that we, their parents and employers, can use, too. And now there is:
* WIWYA -- when I was your age
* YKT – you kids today
* CRRE -- conversation required; remove earbuds
* WDO? -- what are you doing online?
* NIWYM -- no idea what you mean
* NCK -- not a chance, kid
* B2W -- back to work
* AYD? -- are you drunk?
* LODH -- log off, do homework
* DYMK? -- does your mother know?
* IGAT -- I've got abbreviations, too
* IMHO = In My Humble Opinion; BRB = Be Right Back; AFK = Away From Keyboard
The ad below has caused a lot of controversy in the 'ad world'. Why? A number of reasons, the most obvious being it lacks the 'oh so common' approach of the product in use.
Where's the bite and smile? Is it necessary?
Or is 'borrowed interest' enough to sell this product?
Below is one man's opinion.
Advertising: Spot the link between a gorilla and chocolate
The answer is that there isn't one - at least on the surface. Cadbury's latest advert for Dairy Milk will take quite a big risk by ignoring the product. Alex Benady goes behind the scenes
Published: 14 May 2007
Advertising has a surprising number of unwritten rules and conventions for an industry that prides itself on its left-field, out-of-the-box, blue-sky thinking. Cars must be shown speeding round hairpin bends. Haircare commercials are apparently obliged to feature a dodgy science sequence and there seems to be some law which says that banks have to be youthful, honest and in touch.
Soon on ITV1, Cadbury, the world's largest confectioner, will unveil a new advertising campaign for its milk chocolate that the company says is critical to both the Cadbury Dairy Milk brand and even the future of the company itself. "Everything we do with CDM is vital to the business because it's such an important part of our brand portfolio," says head of communications Tony Bilsborough. A mark of just how important is that the campaign is worth £9m, making it the biggest spend on chocolate for many years.
Yet the new commercial does not show chocolate; it doesn't show people eating chocolate; throughout its full 90 seconds, it doesn't mention the C word once. The film opens with a title, "A Glass And A Half Full Productions presents". Then we hear the opening bars of the Phil Collins hit "In the Air Tonight". The camera pulls back slowly to reveal that the new face of Cadbury Dairy Milk is in fact a gorilla. The effect is spooky and primal. As the big drum break starts, the camera pulls further back to reveal that the gorilla is hammering an enormous drum kit in a karaoke-style bangalong.
The film comes with impeccable creative credentials. Fallon is currently Campaign magazine's agency of the year. The client is Cadbury marketing supremo Phil Rumbol who was previously responsible for the hugely successful Stella Artois campaign at his last job as marketing director of InBev. And it was written and directed by Juan Cabral, whose Sony Balls and Paint ads made him the most awarded creative in the world last year.
It's such a pompous piece of music and the thrashing of the gorilla is so self-absorbed that the effect is hilarious. It's short-form comedy just like one of those funny clips you see on YouTube. But it seems to have precious little to do with chocolate.
And that is the whole point says Laurence Green, planning director of Fallon, the advertising agency behind the ad. People don't want advertisers droning on and on about their products any more; they want to be entertained. "Cadbury traditionally did well-built ads for the interruption age when consumers had an implicit media deal with advertisers. In exchange for free TV they would allow us to interrupt their programmes with commercials," says Green. "The nation has a massive soft spot for CDM and it is deeply embedded in the national psyche. For a brand that is so well known, it's arguable whether the old style interruption advertising model is the best model for the future. So we are trying to engage more genuinely with our audience."
But there is a product message in there too. In fact, the entire commercial is a product metaphor. "Chocolate is about joy and pleasure. For years Cadbury has told us that it was generous, through the glass and a half strap line. We thought, don't tell us how generous you are; show us. Don't tell us about joy; show us joy."
That's just what the campaign tries to do. "We've created a branded space in which Cadbury's can be generous in bringing joy," says Green. That may sound like adman's blather, but it a sign of an important philosophical shift in the way that advertising agencies are beginning to approach their work.
The traditional commercial was a scientifically modulated piece of communication in which consumer behaviour was scrutinised, product use closely studied and desired responses deliberated upon at length. In the new approach, almost anything can be inserted into the branded space as long as it is entertaining and brings joy. It's as if the agency has said "Sod it, forget the science. Let's just have a laugh."
It's a bit more thought out than that, says Green. "Advertising can be effective without a traditional 'message', 'proposition' or 'benefits'. Indeed, some of the latest advertising thinking suggests that attempts to impose them can actually reduce effectiveness. We are trading our traditional focus on proposition and persuasion in favour of deepening a relationship."
But it's still a gamble of heroic proportions, and given the importance of CDM and Cadbury's gaffe-strewn recent history, the stakes couldn't be higher.
We spend £1m a day on CDM in the UK, where it alone accounts for a seventh of the entire UK chocolate market. The new campaign aims to build long-term brand values, but it is also key to short-term sales. Due to the peculiarities of the chocolate market you get only one go at that a year, says Green. "You can't advertise chocolate in the summer. Easter and Christmas are separate markets, so the only chance to build the brand comes in late spring. This campaign will drive sales for the year."
Cadbury is ending its sponsorship of Coronation Street later this year, which will place an even greater burden on the campaign. So it simply must work. But CDM is Cadbury's flagship product. The company is part of the £7bn a year Cadbury Schweppes conglomerate which is being split into drinks and confectionery components.
What it cannot afford is any more of the blunders that have dogged it of late. Birmingham city council announced that it intends to prosecute Cadbury over last year's salmonella outbreak. Last month humiliatingly it had to withdraw a £5m launch campaign for Trident chewing gum because so many people found it offensive. In February the company had to recall thousands of Easter eggs which were distributed without nut allergy warnings. And in the same month Cadbury Schweppes' US operation was pilloried for a promotional treasure hunt which led consumers to a graveyard in Boston containing the remains of historic American figures.
An obvious question in regard to this latest campaign is whether any real gorillas were used. "No, it was a man in a gorilla suit," explains Green patiently. Despite its recent troubles the company says it has not been on banana skin alert. "We simply followed our normal due diligence," said Tony Bilsborough.
He doesn't explain how he will apologise to the nation if the new commercial sparks a Phil Collins revival. But the bigger risk is that the campaign is too far removed from conventional chocolate advertising to be effective. As one veteran Cadbury hand put it, "They get it right when the ads make you drool. Without chocolate, Cadbury ads lose their sensual appeal and along with that go sales."
It would be a shame if he is right, because our future ad breaks will be all the duller as a result.
Schonbek has revolutionized high-tech lighting with Geometrix®.
With this collection Schonbek put forth the unorthodox idea that spare and simple could also be bold and brilliant. They brought together the purity of halogen or xenon light, and the fire of crystal, to change the way light interacts with designed space.
I think this new Jaguar is absolutely stunning despite what long-term Jag lovers are saying about it's losing the classic Jag lines and becoming a more conventional (i.e. bland) car. Yes, it has hints of the Lexus GS and a rear end that reminds one of the Aston (and that's a good thing).
It is true, it doesn't scream 'jag' and maybe that's why I think it's so beautiful.
Take a look and decide for yourself:
Reprinted from Autoblog: Last December, the Jaguar C-XF Concept received an early debut ahead of the Detroit Auto Show thanks to some memorable embargo breaks by established media outlets. The 2009 Jaguar XF, the production car inspired by the concept, was supposed to be unveiled tonight at midnight, but again things did not go as planned. We colluded with our friends over at Jalopnik to wait and see how things played out, as well as remained in communication with Jaguar to help identify embargo breakers, but the cat (hahaha) is out of the bag. You can read more about the meta circumstances surrounding the leakage over at Jalopnik.
Meet the 2009 Jaguar XF, the car that could save the automaker from Coventry. The new saloon's styling is polarizing, as evident by the split Autoblog crew that's either deriding or drooling over it. The CX-F Concept's influence is clear, but it's wrapped around a more conventional shape that meets pesky things like safety standards. Those cat eyes remain, as well as more aggressive details in the front bumper, and Jaguar's now signature air vents are present, as well. The rear end from Aston has remained virtually untouched, which is a bit of a distraction, but overall the 2009 Jaguar XF is a looker to the Nth degree.
See the full press release and technical specs from Jaguar, as well as our complete gallery of high-res pics by clicking here.
The debut of the Jaguar C-XF concept at the Detroit Auto Show, inspired/paved way for the production of another Jaguar, the XF. This car might be jaguar’s last chance to prove it’s existence as a luxury brand. The XF has the same detailed bumper and cat eyes present in Jaguar’s line up, the back some will argue it looks like a BMW. New features include signature air vents, and the Drive selector (it raises when you want to select the drive, and disappears when not in use). The XF will be released in four models: a 2.7 liter V6 240hp at the entry level, (Europe only) all the way to a 4.2 liter V8 420hp, which jumps from 0-60 in 5.5 seconds.
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