Decode – Digital Design Sensations at the V&A

On Friday, a few of the designers and developers headed off to see the Decode exhibition currently running at the V&A. Decode is an exhibition of the latest developments from digital and interactive design, including such artists as Joshua Davis, Daniel Rozin, Chris O’Shea and Simon Heijdens.

Although the exhibition was fairly small, it acts more like a taster, with the accompanying booklet giving loads of detail on the artists. If you’re fairly new to the medium of digital interactive art, this exhibit will hopefully inspire you to find out more about the artists featured and look into their other work.

To see some photos of the exhibit, as well as links to the artists websites, go to my design blog.

Back to Bug

So, as some of you may remember, we blogged about Bug last September. Quick flashback: Bug is an event at the BFI Southbank in Waterloo hosted by Adam Buxton, celebrating the wildest, most inventive music videos and inviting some of the directors up on stage for a chat about their latest projects.

Now jump forward to last week and Bug 17. I popped along to see what all the fuss is about and would definitely recommend going. Below are a few highlights to whet your appetite. To see a full write up, with more video highlights, go here.

The first video: ‘Roman Is As Roman Does’ by Themselves – directed by Yu Sato. In his words "It's about trying to illustrate the problem with the current downloading culture, where music is becoming a kind of daily food and is no longer seen as a valuable art form bringing meaning to life."

The second video: ‘General Motors, Detroit America’ by Acid Washed – directed by Anthony Burrill. Burrill is well known for his bold typographic style, and you can see this reflected in the video. It contains strong geometric forms with minimal animation, yet the effect is pretty powerful.

Throw away your A to Z

You’ll never be lost in London again with the introduction of this new app for the iPhone - Acrossair’s ‘Nearest Tube’. Using the camera and touch screen, the iPhone’s internal compass and GPS will direct you to the nearest tube and show you how far away it is.

‘Nearest Tube’ really comes to life when you hold the iPhone up in front of you – it uses augmented reality to layer the lines on top of the image shown through the camera. It’s a great invention and fantastic if you’re wandering around London by foot.

Animal Magic

We have had some Friday fun today with the costumes we picked up in preparation for MIPTV. We can't say too much about it at the moment. All will become clear next week!

Merry Christmas!

We don't do celebrations by halves... check out our website to see the extent of our festive cheer (and be sure to turn your speakers up).

Merry Christmas from all at Collective x

Soichiro Honda short film

We like this short animated film by Michele d'Auria, all about Soichiro Honda. From working on projects like Hondamentalism, we're well versed in Soichiro's philosophies, and this film captures his essence very effectively.

Pete up for a Bafta!

Pete Way, our Head of New Business, has been nominated for a Children's Bafta for his show: 'Basil's Swap Shop' which ran on the BBC from January to April of this year.

Pete will find out this Sunday if he has won. The best o' luck to ya!

Movember nearly over

It's been emotional, painful, hilarious, itchy and slightly scary. The Collective team has done a brilliant job of growing their mo's over November in aid of prostate cancer. Here are some pics of the mos' Guinness-tinged final lunch (is anyone actually keeping their facial furniture past December 1st?).







More on the flickr.

If you'd like to donate to the cause, please just click the banner below.

Twitter: What's the bl**dy point? Part two.

What more can twitter do for your brand?

6. Brands can engage in a real two-way conversation with their customers – brands have the potential to listen to the buzz about their brand in the Twitter-sphere, simply by searching for their keywords and thus actively and instantly respond to their consumers and react instantly.

Search for you brand using Twitter and listen to the noise.

7. Build a reputation for your brand by following potential customers and journalists that write about your space.

8. Lead generation.

One question though that still remains as to how do I know who is interesting and worth following? Time is money and all that and I don’t want to listen to people waffling all day (I have Facebook for that). I'm currently trialling MrTweet...so watch this space on my thoughts.

But so far for me it has been a bit of random luck finding people. One simple way Twitter could make spreading the word much faster is by making it easier to search for people and categories. So far, it’s been a bit of a treasure hunt. Although I hear on the twitter blog that there might be progress.
So to get you started - here’s some Twitter voices we are following who we think have something good to say about digital or do digital good:
@BBCdigital
@BarrackObama
@russelldavies
@kevinrose
@BrandRepublic

You got any better twitterers to share?

Hayley

Feeling festive?...

...We certainly are. Just check out the aerial view of our office.



(Very nice viral idea from Coke using Google Maps technology to the fullest.)

Twitter: What's the bl**dy point?

I have to admit, I did nearly give up with Twitter. I thought it was a geek world full of self-indulgent Facebook feeds. But what kept me going was not only characteristic sheer pigheadedness but also the fact that it’s full of early adopters (yes, geeks) who tend to be the type of people to talk about the industry stuff I want to know first. And the more I’ve started using it, the more benefits I can see.

So I’m sold….can I take you to the Twitter-side?

1. It’s not Facebook status feeds - Twitter is not full of self-indulgent Facebook-esque feeds. It’s all about knowledge sharing – so for you that means industry and brand knowledge building.

2. Keeps you ahead of the competition - by following the leading commentators and ordinary folk alike people are actively sharing industry information and news before it hits the regular media in nice dinky bite size pieces and links. Which makes you look clever in front of your clients and colleagues when you share a nice ‘new’ idea.

3. Networking – you don’t have to be mates with someone to stalk them now! Twitter allows you to follow who you like and it’s up to them if they want to follow you back or just ignore your noise – but quite often people will return the favour and engage in dialogue.

4. Profile raising – if enough people start following you and your ramblings, you can go from zero to hero and you’ll be a keynote speaker at FOWA in no time.

5. Easier than you thought - If you down load a Twitter firefox add on – it makes it really simple and quick to up-date and follow feeds. No more logging into a distracting webpage all the time. Try this: >https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/5081

Hayley

Movember week one

Movember has kicked off in earnest at Collective Towers. Here's who's Top of the Taches so far...


Omar's looking dapper with his tidily-trimmed nose-tickler (so carefully trimmed he was late this morning, in fact).



Jon's gone Wild West style with matching mutton chops. Looking foward to seeing how they develop.



Whereas Kenta resembles some kind of Bond super-villain.



Methinks we have a Mo-cheat in our midst.. Nice fuax-tache, Seren.

More pics on our Flickr.

Wear it Pink

Kenta and Sean cleverly combine wearing pink for breast cancer awareness AND sporting a terrifying costume for Hallow'een. Nice one boys, you look...

Friday night emails will never be the same!

Today Google announcesa potential saviour from those drunken moments of madness after a night of beers, spirits and other stimulants. Active during prime hours of risk (Friday and Saturday evenings), Google mail will present you with a series of simple mathematical tests that you need to (correctly) answer before the email is sent. Added to this challenge, these simple sums have to be completed within a time limit!

Jon Perlow, a Gmail engineer who created the software, announced the new product on Google's Gmail blog, explaining that he himself had sent some unfortunate late-night emails.

He said: "Sometimes I send messages I shouldn't send. Like the time I told that girl I had a crush on her over text message. Or the time I sent that late-night email to my ex-girlfriend that we should get back together."

"Gmail can't always prevent you from sending messages you might later regret, but today we're launching a new Labs feature I wrote called Mail Goggles which may help.

"Hopefully Mail Goggles will prevent many of you out there from sending messages you wish you hadn't. Like that late-night memo -- I mean mission statement -- to the entire firm."

Gmail users can set Mail Goggles to activate at any time they feel they might need protection.

So sit back, relax, have an extra pint, with the knowledge that now, your letter telling the boss where to stick his job or that email to the ex telling them they should really stop being the idiot and get a life are risks you dont have to worry about any more.....

How's your Colour IQ?

Check your Hue IQ with this fun little toy.



Collective League Table
0 - Steve Little
0 - Petter
0 - Bora
0 - Charlotte
4 - Daniel
4 - Silke
4 - Stephane
4 - Steve B
7 - Jeff
8 - Adam C
8 - Joe
12 - Jon H
16 - Katie
42 - Nicola

It's just like a Planner's DREAM!

In search for the anti-matter and the elusive Higgs Boson...



The scientist in me is secretly (or not so) excited about today. Already as I write this, 100m underground on the Franco-Swiss border, some of the best Physicists in the World are pacing the corridors, waiting for one of the most long awaited experiments to begin....controlled particle collisions to emulate the immediate moments after the 'Big Bang'.

The aim is to discover whether concepts such as dark (or anti)-matter, extra dimensions and even the elusive Higgs boson (God's particle) actually exist.

The Planner in me also loves today as it demonstrates (in a much larger scale) the approach and role planning takes within the agency; taking ideas, historical theory, known fact and putting them into new situations to postulate, plan, test and observe the outcome. The digital landscape is of course, a series of 1s or 0s and therefore a great space to observe behaviours (be it consumers or Brands) and for planning, this gives us this amazing goldfish bowl to sit and watch what really happens.

I love the fact that even the biggest brains in the Science World are showing signs of not knowing the outcome. Professor Stephen Hawking is known to have placed a bet of only £50 that God's Particle would elude even today's massive experiment. Asked why he placed this, he responded by saying "It will be more exciting if we don't find the Higgs (Boson). That will show we need to think again!"

Another classic quote comes from Professor Brian Cox (another CERN boffin)...."Anyone who thinks that the LHC will destroy the World is a t**t." Now that's saying it like it is eh?!

Draw a little man and make him dance

This is fun

Click to Play!