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2011 Mobile Year in Review
- In the U.S., mobile subscriptions now outnumber the nation's population
- One billion apps are downloaded worldwide each month
- 103 million tweets are sent via mobile devices every day
- There have been one billion check-ins on Foursquare to date
- 26 photos are uploaded to Instagram every second
- 8 trillion texts were sent in 2011
- 1800% increase in traffic on U.S. networks in four years
- 166% increase in Facebook Mobile users in the first half of 2011 alone
- More smartphones are purchased than PCs in the United States
- 2 billion networked mobile devices by 2015
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Cultural (Action) Figures
British designer Jon Daniel's collection of African American action figures includes Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali and a coveted 1975 Super Agent Slade toy. Here, he explains what led him to look to the US for cultural inspiration and to start collecting...
Daniel recently contributed to CR's October Monograph, Stamps from the African Diaspora, which included a series of stamps featuring prominent black cultural figures and also formed the basis for an exhibition at the Stanley Gibbons shop in London.
Growing up through the late 1960s and early 1970s, writes Daniel, I think I am fairly typical of the British-born, first generation offspring of West Indian parents, in my search for identity.
It took me a long time to come to terms with Britain being a part of who I am. There was little in the British culture that either appealed to me or I felt I could be a part of. Any positive images or messages, were all coming from the West Indian culture of my family and the African American culture of the United States.
I was fortunate as a child to visit America on a few occasions to visit other members of my family living there. Everything about America seemed brighter, bolder, blacker and better.
The sheer volume of the sophisticated tv programming available such as The Jeffersons; cartoon series like The Jackson 5 and The Harlem Globetrotters; motion pictures like Shaft, Car Wash and The Wiz; and the music, funk, soul and R'n'B that we could also access in the UK through import records or pirate radio, all had a profound influence on me.
If I could have grown up in Harlem at that time, I could not have been happier.
And no doubt, this is a desire that has been instrumental in the nature of the collection of action figures I have subsequently acquired. Contrary to the nature of the subject matter, I did not start collecting them until I was in my late twenties / early thirties. Possibly, the birth of my children was a major factor. But more likely, it is due to the rise of the internet, as the availability to scour the globe and find these items more easily became a reality.
My main focus is collecting figures from the 1970s and 80s, as they are naturally the rarest and embody the period of time I most identify with. One such figure that I am most proud of (and only recently acquired after a search for several years and many unsuccessful eBay bids) is the 1975 Shindana Super Agent Slade action figure.
A truly ‘superfly' figure, modelled on Richard Roundtree's black private detective character, Shaft, it is highly sought after by collectors of this genre.
So what's next? One day I hope to finally acquire a Medicom Jean-Michel Basquiat RAH action figure. It's not extremely rare, but it is extremely cool. And at the end of the day that's what it's all about. Jon Daniel is a designer and art director and leads the creative team at branding and design studio, ebb&flow. See jon-daniel.com.
Mr. T and the Lando Calrissian character from Return of the Jedi
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TIME Magazine “Person of the Year” Cover by Shepard Fairey
In honor of the Arab Spring, Occupy Wall Street and the Russian election rallies, TIME Magazine has named “The Protester” as their Person of the Year. With the idea of a movement and abstraction at the forefront, they have commissioned venerable street-artist/political rabble-rouser Shepard Fairey to create the image. The illustration looks to depict what could be either a man or woman with a veiled face as to hide one’s identity or block out of the effects of the now infamous tear gas used around the world. The stage has definitely been set for an influx of change in the new year.
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Twelve Things You Were Not Taught in School About Creative Thinking
From Creativity Post
Synopsis
Aspects of creative thinking that are not usually taught.1. You are creative. The artist is not a special person, each one of us is a special kind of artist. Every one of us is born a creative, spontaneous thinker. The ony difference between people who are creative and people who are not is a simple belief. Creative people believe they are creative. People who believe they are not creative, are not. Once you have a particular identity and set of beliefs about yourself, you become interested in seeking out the skills needed to express your identity and beliefs. This is why people who believe they are creative become creative. If you believe you are not creative, then there is no need to learn how to become creative and you don't. The reality is that believing you are not creative excuses you from trying or attempting anything new. When someone tells you that they are not creative, you are talking to someone who has no interest and will make no effort to be a creative thinker.
2. Creative thinking is work. You must have passion and the determination to immerse yourself in the process of creating new and different ideas. Then you must have patience to persevere against all adversity. All creative geniuses work passionately hard and produce incredible numbers of ideas, most of which are bad. In fact, more bad poems were written by the major poets than by minor poets. Thomas Edison created 3000 different ideas for lighting systems before he evaluated them for practicality and profitability. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart produced more than six hundred pieces of music, including forty-one symphonies and some forty-odd operas and masses, during his short creative life. Rembrandt produced around 650 paintings and 2,000 drawings and Picasso executed more than 20,000 works. Shakespeare wrote 154 sonnets. Some were masterpieces, while others were no better than his contemporaries could have written, and some were simply bad.
3. You must go through the motions of being creative. When you are producing ideas, you are replenishing neurotransmitters linked to genes that are being turned on and off in response to what your brain is doing, which in turn is responding to challenges. When you go through the motions of trying to come up with new ideas, you are energizing your brain by increasing the number of contacts between neurons. The more times you try to get ideas, the more active your brain becomes and the more creative you become. If you want to become an artist and all you did was paint a picture every day, you will become an artist. You may not become another Vincent Van Gogh, but you will become more of an artist than someone who has never tried.
4. Your brain is not a computer. Your brain is a dynamic system that evolves its patterns of activity rather than computes them like a computer. It thrives on the creative energy of feedback from experiences real or fictional. You can synthesize experience; literally create it in your own imagination. The human brain cannot tell the difference between an "actual" experience and an experience imagined vividly and in detail. This discovery is what enabled Albert Einstein to create his thought experiments with imaginary scenarios that led to his revolutionary ideas about space and time. One day, for example, he imagined falling in love. Then he imagined meeting the woman he fell in love with two weeks after he fell in love. This led to his theory of acausality. The same process of synthesizing experience allowed Walt Disney to bring his fantasies to life.
5. There is no one right answer. Reality is ambiguous. Aristotle said it is either A or not-A. It cannot be both. The sky is either blue or not blue. This is black and white thinking as the sky is a billion different shades of blue. A beam of light is either a wave or not a wave (A or not-A). Physicists discovered that light can be either a wave or particle depending on the viewpoint of the observer. The only certainty in life is uncertainty. When trying to get ideas, do not censor or evaluate them as they occur. Nothing kills creativity faster than self-censorship of ideas while generating them. Think of all your ideas as possibilities and generate as many as you can before you decide which ones to select. The world is not black or white. It is grey.
Movie Poster Round-up
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A few of the intriguing posters from up and coming flicks. Most are from 2012 movies and a few have slipped by virtually unnoticed.
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Ice Cube Celebrates The Eames
Ice Cube drives Inglewood blvd. describing the Los Angeles that he knows. He talks of landmarks like The Forum, Five Torches, Cockatoo Inn, Brolly Hut, and Watts Towers. He refers to the 110 as "Gangsta Highway". Cube says coming from South Central LA teaches you how to be resourceful. The video cuts to Cube walking the Eames House perimeter, through the Eames living room, and sitting in the Eames lounge chair. He brings us back to his NWA years when he studied architectural drafting before launching his rap career. One thing he learned that translates is to always have a plan. Cube describes the modern, green and resourceful building design of Charles and Ray Eames. Visionaries of connecting nature and structure. Cube ends by saying "Who are these people who got a problem with LA? Maybe they mad cuz they don't live here."
Ice Cube Celebrates The Eames for Pacific Standard Time the birth of the LA art scene. For more info on Ice Cube & The Eames visit http://pacificstandardtime.org.
Ice Cube Celebrates The Eames for Pacific Standard Time the birth of the LA art scene. For more info on Ice Cube & The Eames visit http://pacificstandardtime.org.
cred:
Agency: TBWA/Chiat/Day Los Angeles
Client: Pacific Standard Time
Executive Creative Director: Patrick O'Neill
Creative Director: Jayanta Jenkins
Sr Copywriter: Evan Brown
Copywriter: Liz Cartwright
Art Director: Stephen Lum
Executive Director of Integrated Production: Richard O'Neill
Executive Director Of Integration: Matt Bonin
Director of Innovation: Niki Weber
Director of Digital Production: Chincha Evans
Executive Producer: Guia Iacomin
Broadcast Coordinator : Micah Kawaguchi-Ailetcher
Broadcast Producer: Lacy Plunk
Broadcast Producer: Chris Spencer
Production Company: @ radical.media
Director: Dave Meyers
Senior Digital Producer: Eli Shillock
UX Lead/Developer: Kathrin Hoffman
Technical Lead: John Bauer
Executive Art Producer: Karen Youngs
Print Producer: Michael Pourmohsen
Project Manager: Heather Kuhne
Audio: POP Sound
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South African poster designs for Tslops
Tsonga Tslops – “Have fun on foot” is a South African company 100% owned by members of South Africa’s local community. Durban based illustrator and Graphic Designer Hylton Warburton created these awesome African inspired illustrations, designed the identity, posters, and container graphics. via africandigitalart
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Umbro: Blackout
cred:
Made by Buck
Lead design by Christopher Silas Neal.
Client: Umbro
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Burrell.com Launches
Burrell communications launches their latest iteration of Burrell.com and this time they keep it simple and clean. No zeitgeist dictated encumbrances like; blogs; Tumblrs; Facebook feed or front page tweets to chase the social whims. Just a plain 'Fresh News' window to keep you up on that latest moves of the marketing behemoth. Aside from that, they list four very strong and clear messages that reflect the shop's core values: The unthought known (wish I wrote that); Black is the new black (not groundbreaking but truer than ever in 'post-racial' America); Spheres of influence (pretty self explanatory); Positive realism (The way a lot of the best marketing portrays African American's today). That's it — I get it. I'd wish for a little more edge, maybe even go simpler... no pics at all. But I'm not the audience. The audience is big and bold marketers who need to get THE MESSAGE quick fast and in a hurry. One thing that's always interesting about Burrell is: they are always 100% upfront with the fact that they are an African American Agency. They don't even toy with the notion of 'multicultural' or cross cultural, they are AA and I'm AA-OK with that.
Agency know thyself. For real son.
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| For the record I am mad at this guy and his hat... who's idea was this? |
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The Information Diet - A Case for Conscious Consumption
MASTER SERIES: In Conversation with Matthew Jordan Smith
Photographer: Matthew Jordan Smith
Watch & Learn.
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