Welcome to the Lavish Lounge

Tasty snippets from the Creative Services World, the Lavish world, the virtual world and even the real world.

Tuesday 30 September 2008

Metrotwin is live

Metrotwin, the British Airways powered online social recommendations resource I have been working on is now live. It's still in Beta, and will be for a while, but you no longer need an invite to get in. As I've mentioned before, Metrotwin brings the best of London and New York together in one place. Some of the key new features are: The Metrotwin Index - an attention-based, dynamically generated score that applies to every place in both cities on the site. When people pay a place attention it goes up, and when no-one’s interested it ticks down. Metrotwin Recommends - a new personalised recommendation panel within the user profile. It works by looking at everything you and everyone else have loved, saved, visited and reviewed - and it tells you the kind of places that people like you are interested in. The ability to add links to external services (Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, IM and Skype) to your personal profile City-wide map views - a nicer way to view. A Site Tour - to help you find your way around. Metrotwin has been delivered by a highly talented multi-agency team. Visit Metrotwin

Monday 29 September 2008

Drinking vessel

Two birds. One stone.

The Sewerside Chronicles

I've just finished reading a brilliantly funny book by Tim Lay. The Sewerside Chronicles charts the story of a small fashion label based in a seaside town in North Devon. Che Capri is approaching 30, and living the dream. He and 'business' partner Travis, run Sewerside – a cutting edge streetwear clothing label. It’s the Millennium and Sewerside’s quasi-apocalyptic sense of style has won plaudits from style magazines and the fashionista crowd. However, having hit it lucky with their first collection, the money’s now running out and their dreams of making it big are fast disappearing. But somewhere along the way Sewerside stops being about the money and becomes about an ideal. While the marketing buzz on the fashion streets is ‘keep it real’, Sewerside intend to do just that. As the business chugs towards financial disaster, The Sewerside Chronicles charts a hilariously painful campaign of manufacture, retail, black economics, trade shows, fashion circles, rural deviancy, violent demos, raves in the countryside, and anarchy at Glastonbury festival. Representing the hopes, fears and the naiveté of creative industry and protest idealism, The Sewerside Chronicles provides a humorous snapshot of a time when counter culture was all but swallowed-up by its commercial counterpart. This book is for anyone who's ever run their own business, tried to make a creative idea profitable or just generally likes to laugh out loud on the train while reading. There are some hilarious extracts on the website. Buy a copy today. Sewerside Chronicles Extracts

Thursday 25 September 2008

Metrotwin press interest

Metrotwin has picked up some nice press this week. Contagious

The art of Type

We are picking up a fantastic brief tomorrow – to create 16 bespoke typefaces. For a production studio whose roots are in the creation of type, this really is a dream brief. Typography is probably my most favourite of all of the creative services disciplines. The ability to convey words and messages through type is, to me, the most creative of arts. Not only that, but from a production point of view, the rigour and rules that surround the use of words really inspire me. For me, a perfectly kerned, beautifully crafted piece of typography is very hard to beat. There are some great groups on Flickr dedicated solely to the art of typography. Take a look at some of these: Found Type Typophile Vintage Type

Saturday 20 September 2008

At the court of King John

A beautiful portrait by my wonderfully talented photographer friend, Jorge Monedero, appeared in Luxx magazine in today's Times. The specially commissioned portrait of John Galliano captures the regal presence of this unique fashion icon. The portrait accompanies an article by James Collard. View the full article snd Jorge's fabulous image on the Times website Times Online Luxx magazine .

Friday 19 September 2008

Congratulations...its twins!

Metrotwin, the British Airways powered social bookmarking resource I have been involved with for 5 months has launched this week into an invitation only Public Beta. We’ve still got 2 weeks until the stabilisers come off and we go fully live, but you can now sign up to the site request an invite and join the community. Metrotwin is a fantastic resource which features the 'best of the best' from London and New York, recommended by the people in the know. We have been working with content partners, bloggers and of course the very talented multi-agency team to get great places recommended, reviewed and twinned. Team MT are more than a little bit proud of what has been achieved in quite a short period of time, and can’t wait to see how Metrotwin grows. Take a look at the blog or visit the site and get yourself an invite. Metrotwin .

Wednesday 17 September 2008

Dear Adobe

For anyone who has ever had anything to gripe about with their Adobe products, this site is for you. Dear Adobe has the best gripes on all of the Adobe products. My particular favourites from the top 100 being: At no 15: Could you make Adobe Reader start up slower? I'd like to have enough time to go get a sandwich before I read a one page document. At No 22: Adobe Updater is the single worst piece of software I have ever seen. Please fuck off with that. and finally: At no 55: Enable auto-recover for Photoshop, so when it inevitably crashes for the 9th time today I can get back to the corporate schlock I was working on. Read the full list and submit gripes of your own...go on, you know you want to. Dear Adobe .

Tuesday 16 September 2008

Mr Chips is dead

One man's dropped chip is another man's forensic investigation.

Saturday 13 September 2008

Cold War Posters and Exhibition

The V&A have produced a book called Posters of the Cold War, in conjunction with their forthcoming exhibition Cold War Modern Design 1945-70. The exhibition explores modern art, architecture, design and film in the period 1945-70, highlighting the ways in which artists and designers responded to the conditions of the Cold War. The poster was a key medium in the Cold War, used to produce both fear and loyalty at home and abroad. Posters of the Cold War surveys poster design from the late 1940s when the ‘Iron Curtain’ was drawn across Europe to the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. Featuring over seventy designs by some of the leading artists and graphic designers of the period including Pablo Picasso, Grapus Design Collective and Peter Kennard, posters have been selected from twenty countries to demonstrate the wide international reach of the conflict. Really looking forward to this exhibition, which runs from 25 September 2008 to 11 January 2009. V&A

What the F**K is Social Media?

Short, sweet and succinct explanation of Social Media.



Wednesday 10 September 2008

Electronic Ink

Men's magazine Esquire is celebrating its 75th anniversary in the US with a limited-edition run of 100,000 copies featuring covers using Electronic Ink technology. The technology works by printing ink containing charged microcapsules, onto a sheet of plastic film that is laminated to a layer of circuitry. The circuitry forms a pattern of pixels that can then be controlled by a display driver - powered by a tiny battery. Esquire's 75th Anniversary E-Ink cover took more than a year to develop. 100,000 lucky customers will find an animated panel on their copies of Esquire, displaying flashing text and images, along with an enhanced Ford Flex advert on the inside cover. Watch the video: Esquire . http://www.esquire.com/the-side/video/e-ink-cover-video?click=pp

Tuesday 9 September 2008

Crystal Ball

Well it seems like Autumn is prematurely here, and mentally it feels like the last quarter of 2008 has definitely started. While we have been continuously busy over July and August, there is a distinct change of pace in the last week – with clients getting focussed on the run up to Christmas and the laid-back August feeling starting to seem like a distant memory. As we go into the last stretch of the year, I’ve been thinking about 2008 so far. Without doubt it has been a bit of a bumpy ride – definitely a game of two halves to use a well-worn football pun. The start to the year was very quiet, and with reports of the credit crunch and impending economic doom doing little to make us feel better, we went into the Summer with a certain amount of uncertainty. But the second half of the year has picked up brilliantly for us. We’ve been doing some amazing things, particularly some great, very visible large format work and are still working with CDP in the run up to the Global launch of their report on 22 September in New York. So thinking about the next 4 months of 2008 – what twists and turns and surprises lay in store for Lavish? It’s hard to know in the current market, but I am convinced the biting credit crunch will continue to put marketing and brand budgets under stress. Clients will be looking to smaller agencies, with lean, agile teams and cross discipline expertise to help them maximise their budgets. I think the model of smaller and mid sized agencies sharing resources and skills will grow, as they look to be ever more effective for clients. And new business and marketing effort is more important than ever to keep in front of people when they are making tough decisions about what marketing activity to do. Only time will tell if my ‘predictions’ will come true. But I do know that Lavish are positioned better than ever before to benefit from this changing market.

How to do just about anything

It's been a bit quiet on the blog front while we've had a busy few weeks. More of that later. In the meantime, I found this great site, which has 'How to' videos on just about everything. Video Jug