Here’s a bizarre campaign allegedly promoting safe driving. Starting next Tuesday, drivers on 22nd Street in West Vancouver, Canada, will be startled by a 3-D image of a girl chasing a ball in the street. The girl is an optical illusion, but the drivers won’t know that. They will react as though she were real. Officials say if you are driving at the posted speed limit of 30 kmph, you will be able to stop in time. And if you are not? They don’t really get into it, though you’d have to think it might involve braking, shouting, swerving, swearing, sidewalk hopping and possibly actual-people hitting. Let’s hope the children at the École Pauline Johnson Elementary School, which is said to be very close by, have been advised to avoid this particular road for the time being. Via Time’s NewsFeed.

El miedo está también en el fondo del mar. Fox Crime lo ha llevado allí este verano. Concretamente, al litoral de Jávea. El susto tenía forma de cadáver envuelto en una lona negra, atado con cadenas y los pies en un bloque de cemento… que esperaba a los buzos tras unas rocas.
El falso cadáver forma parte de una campaña del canal que llevó a la costa levantina mensajes irónicos en los que se patrocinaban los baños después de comer, las tapas de huevo con mayonesa de los chiringuitos o se denunciaban los grandes crímenes del verano, tales como llevar calcetines con chanclas. La estrategia, de Bungalow 25, pretendía sacar la publicidad de los circuitos convencionales y emplazarla en espacios donde nadie podía esperarla.

Fuente: yorokobu

Time to drop in at the Levi’s Soundwash Laundry in Hong Kong. What is it? Well, it’s an online interactive brand and music experience – from TBWA\Tequila – for Square Cut line jeans which lets visitors select a nice pair of legwear… and then ‘Soundwash’ them with some decent music.

Auger Loizeau, in collaboration with Reyer Zwiggelaar and Bashar Al-Rjoub, describe their smart-home project Happylife. It monitors facial expressions and movements to estimate a family’s mood, displayed via four glowing orbs on the wall, one for each member.
We built a visual display linked to the thermal image camera. This employs facial recognition to differentiate between members of the family. Each member has one rotary dial and one RGB LED display effectively acting like emotional barometers. These show current state and predicted state, the predicted state being based on years of accumulated statistical data.
They also include a few quite beautiful vignettes from a family that has Happylife in their home. While there are no concrete metrics or instructions on how to read the displays, the family does draw some kind of emotional insights and sometimes finds comfort in the glow:
It was that time of the year. All of the Happylife prediction dials had spun anti-clockwise, like barometers reacting to an incoming storm. we lost David 4 years ago and the system was anticipating our coming sadness. We found this strangely comforting.

The irony here is that despite being called Happylife, the vignettes are actually kind of depressing, as are the cold, blue glowing orbs. And in The Veldt by Ray Bradbury, a story from the anthology that this project draws inspiration from, a new technology called the “Happylife home” is introduced. The parents are killed by virtual deadly lions. Coincidentally, that’s last on my list of ways I want to die.

source: http://www.auger-loizeau.com/index.php?id=23

Dan Roam was one of the key note speakers at the annual IFVP-conference (International Forum for Visual Practitioners) in August. The conference was held in San Francisco, the place-to-be for a visual practitioner. (Back in the seventies Bay Area was the breeding ground for the emerging Graphic Facilitation field and has been the home for a number of Graphic Facilitators ever since. Check for example The Grove out which is one the the pioneers).
Dan Roam is not a graphic facilitator as such. But he is a visual thinker and with his book “The Back of the Napkin” he showed the world how simple stick figures could convey very complex problems. His key note speak at the conference told the story of his visual explanation about the american health care system that in a short time made it all the way to the White House. (Check it out, its great!)
The visual practice is growing and has an important place in the world, Dan Roam argued. If we are able to create overview in complex systems and issues, we will be able to make much better decisions in the future. If you take a closer look at the graphic recording above, you will see that the most important role for the visual practitioners is to address and reduce complexity and uncertainty and add value to the conflicts of the world.

IButterfly is a japanese app that invites people to chase augmented reality butterflies. Some of the butterflies had discount coupons on them, while others carried information. Each region had it’s own breed, allowing people to collect and exchange the virtual insect.

today is the last day of regular work for us. So we will be back the 24th of August.

Enjoy your holidays!

So Calvin Klein went and put a QR code over the billboard on Houston Street where past racy ads have caused predictable scandals. Scanning the code lets you get uncensored content on your phone, and it was a fabulous idea. The problem was that the content that was revealed, shown below (at least until YouTube pulls it), was barely racy. I think I saw .5 seconds of titties, and the abs were backlit and grainy. Let me explain something to you CK: two people making out is no longer enough, even when it gets three-way for a fleeting moment. I mean, the threesome is already so mainstream in advertising (Hornitos, Jimmy John’s, half of everything ever done by Axe) that a place like Joe’s Crab Shack doesn’t balk at implying an FFFM. Meanwhile, the German tech sector is already ratcheting up to FFFFFFM. You really have to go four or more if you still want a chance at shocking, particularly when your last billboard in that very spot had a four-way. You know, you brought this on yourself, conditioning us to expect more and more perverted content from CK every time. But face it, Perrier is beating you for sex appeal right now. Perrier. They make water. Step it up, CK.

Guerrilla Stunt by Torke for Tequila Olmeca – a brand from Pernod Richard – in Istanbul, Turkey. The client wanted to remind people that Tequila with Salt and Lemon means fun, so we created a rain of fake lemon slices over the nightlife areas of the city. The slices had a code for an online riffle in which people could win a pass for the backstage of the band Faithless. The stunt also included Salt and Lemon glow in the dark stickers, that were put near bars that sell Olmeca.

Street stunt by Torke Boutique Guerrilla Agency for Tequila Olmeca in Istanbul from Torke on Vimeo.

Nissan UK is lashing out at the cool kids – meaning luxury automakers Audi, Porsche, and BMW — with a new ad campaign claiming superiority over the Germans. Nissan reps have even been driving around London in their competitors’ cars, defaced with messages like, “More expensive, slower and less powerful than a Nissan 370Z.” (See below.) But that’s downright polite compared to poster headlines such as “Deutschland Deutschland Über-Rated.” Ouch. Nissan UK marketing director Steve McLennan says the campaign “simply challenges the convention of German sportscars being the only benchmark for performance and quality,” and that no personal offense is intended. To prove its claims, Nissan is offering a spec sheetcomparing their cars to the German equivalents. If Nissan seriously intended to puncture BMW’s classy image by snarling at them like a lunch table full of bitter high school yearbook editors, then the joke’s on them. That said, it’s hard not to giggle at a headline like “The Germans Came Off Wurst.”