Influx

Listening to Terry Gross interview Trent Reznor, I was struck by the musician’s drive for constant experimentation. He explained in the interview that in the process of recording the soundtrack for the new movie, The Girl with Dragon Tattoo, Reznor and his creative partner Atticus Ross, purchased...

There’s the whole idea of getting consumers to create content for your brand, which is pretty pervasive right now and it’s usually forced onto people by an agency or a crowd sourcing house. Most of the time it doesn’t really feel right- OK ideas emerge and you never really know...

The renowned Dutch furniture designer, Maarten Baas, has been putting his communication skills to work for Amnesty International, creating a 5 meter tall chair for the organization’s 50th birthday celebration. The chair is dedicated to Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo who is currently...

Some shots from last weekend's Armory Show, which was wide-ranging and offered an interesting peak into some of today's key cultural themes- humanity and nature, craft, the power of screens, branding, privacy, etcPosted by Ed Cotton

There are a couple of interesting examples of the emergence of Twitter as a tool for creative collaboration.Mike Skinner- a UK musician and the man behind The Streets, is actively using Twitter as a tool for song ideas and inspiration as The Guardian reports."The new Streets website – which...

Back in October 2008 we wrote about JR. Now he's all over the media because he just picked up the TED prize- awesome news.Here's what we wrote back then. JR is creating an impact in the street space with such scale and imagination that it puts advertising to shame. His massive portraits are of...

Everyday it seems like a new canvas emerges that could provide a potential opportunity for engagement. Faced with the rapid pace of change, we sometimes forget about how we can use the technology that already exists, but in a better way.A great example is how Arcade Fire, them again!, thought about...

I was fortunate enough to hear Stefan Sagmeister speak at Lucid NYC's event last week and it was impressive. Stefan told us a story about his attempt to make a film about happiness and the journey he's been on to discover it and its secrets. This journey has taken him to remote parts of Indonesia...

Belgian artist Luc Tuymans has been the talk of Europe for at least the last 5 years and has been described as Europe's greatest living artist after Gerhard Richter. Now, thanks to the efforts of SFMOMA and others a retrospective of his work can be seen in the US. It's work that on the surface...

It seems that art has found it self in the same problem as advertising, it has to provoke in order to get people to pay attention. Artists seem so desperate for attention, that they've got to come with ever more interesting ways of getting people to take notice. They've got a hard balance to...

While everyone yesterday was in awe of the long overdue announcement of cut and paste for the iPhone, I found myself fixated by the art of Jorge Colombo. Jorge is no ordinary artist, he's an iPhone artist; someone who uses his fingers and a downloaded application to make art. It's debatable whether...

Some of biggest problems are tough to comprehend, if we can't understand them then how can we be expect to play a role and do our part?The EnvironmentLots of jargon and difficult theories to understand, but hardest of all is to comprehend the issue on a human scale. In Bristol this week, artist...

Artist Donny Miller is using advertising to attack oil companies, who seem  to be everyone's enemy these days, despite the recent decline in gas prices.Mr. Miller has created his own ads and posts them up around the gas stations belonging to oil companies. Obviously, these posters aren't going...

Our minds process visual information at a rapid rate, which makes it tough for designers who need to create both instant impact and depth. However, if people get the chance to click their mouse and move away because their perception tells them there's no point to going deeper, it means impact is...

RED, the brand designed and built to raise money for Africa, has been keeping a low profile in the last few months that was until yesterday.As we all know, money talks.In a single day, RED raised an incredible $42.6 million to add to the $50 million raised to date through its efforts with...