Seems that car makers are having a lot of fun right now. For all the doom-mongering from disruptionistas around an imminent collapse of the mainstream manufacturers, there sure is a press-storm of news about their plans for our future. From stalking the edges of SXSW for the last few years to this year’s floor shows […]

A conversation yesterday around the Picking up the pace post flicked a lightbulb (LED?) on about the current debate around what ‘drives’ cars; and if, perhaps, our cars are potentially this Century’s ‘difference engine’? A word of warning, though. I’m not at all certain where this is going, or even if there’s a point to […]

With the news that the original set of emoji’s are now honoured at the MoMA, the explosion of a new language of characters (beyond our humble 26 plus numbers and diacritics in English) to express what were thinking can seem a little, well, flat, sometimes. But no longer, thanks to Rejoinders, by Molly Young which […]

…is that a new Mac? Those canny people at TwelveSouth have Christmas on lock – a scented candle that smells of new Mac’s. For real – here’s the tech-spec: Hand Poured, 100% Soy Wax Scent Notes: Mint, Peach, Basil, Lavender, Mandarin and Sage 9 oz. pour offering a burn time of 45-55 hours and it […]

On first glance, I thought this was a comp from a pitch-deck by an ad agency or media co. …but no, it would appear that we have a new new-media opportunity, courtesy of the Ubernauts, using drones to fly messages to drivers; in this case, asking them why they’re stuck in a jam and not […]

Spotted on FastCo’s design magazine, here’s the thing: how do you design packaging to protect its contents without spending more money on expensive protective materials? The answer is… you don’t. You make use of an ingenious camouflage: No matter who was doing the shipping, too many of our bikes arrived looking like they’d been through […]

A broadside from Phil Adams, regarding one agency’s contention that (c)ontent marketing is a young person’s game, according to JWT Singapore and so they’ve decided that the average age of the team will be 25. The notion that this type of activity needs people of a certain age was what enraged Phil, and rightly so, […]

Your wait is important to you. No, really, it is. I didn’t know this, but some online services actually make us wait for their response. I learned this via Mark Wilson, who revealed as much in his latest post. The fact is that returning a search result usually takes micro-seconds, but we’re suspicious creatures. Anything […]

Spotted this collection of matchbook covers, and apart from the gift of match-based metaphors, what struck me (sorry) was how valuable this very particular media opportunity used to be. Seeing as how so few people use or need matches now, the art of the matchbook cover has surprising parallels with many of our more usual […]

Was browsing and this caught my eye – mission accomplished for a piece of online advertising – and how could I resist? It wasn’t the meh headline, but the subhead, an invitation to explore a Mercedes via Amazon? Clicking through landed me on what appears to be Amazon’s site heading up a one-pager for the […]