We managed to get to a showing of Mnemonic on friday. The piece is by Jorge and is a step back in time for the participants. Recalling your last memory. Very enjoyable.

The submissions for the Cardiff Design festival are in and this year their is a public vote. We have a few projects on the site that we have been involved in over the last year so if you think any are worthy give us some love...

you can find all of the projects here, and ours are listed below:

Truly Scrummy
Menter a Busnes
National Theatre Wales

E:DN website

As you can see Carwyn has already voted, hope everyone else gets some good votes and good luck to them all. There is also ARK LAB's empty shop project so don't forget that as well.

It's refreshing to have something about real people, and it not being about space age technology. There is something about the advert that gives you energy. Similar to the old movies that you watched and then wanted to be one of the characters. Very well pitched piece by Droga5. Courtesy of Creative Review.

Floating Forecaster from Richard Harvey on Vimeo.

I came across this while searching for some recent interactive projects we have been playing with. While ours are mostly web based I thought this was a very interesting mix of physical and digital. Hope you enjoy

I recently wrote about how choice, power, involvement and basically being ASKED are key to being cool and a genuinely nice brand. While this is a slight departure from this I came across the following ebay listing via the infinite knowledge that it twitter.



The item in question is for a walk on part in the very famous Mad Men tv show. Once again it is opening doors and breaking down barriers like the membership to the National Museum, or the Tesco Clubcard. Yet there is an interesting thought that came into my head about the idea in general. I think the money goes to charity which is great, but then it does rely on rich and by the bids so far very rich people to bid. which kind of seems to defeat the idea of the project? I mean for me the idea was for a genuine fan to get on and meet the people they had walked hours on end, yet this is unlikely to happen now?

I wonder what people think?

ADDITION TO ORIGINAL POST:
As i sit in one of the most vibrant arts centres in Europe (CHAPTER) I also thought about other issues that have come to mind. Walk on parts are normally the preserve of the struggling actor waiting for his big break. The walk on parts are normally paid and so form a fairly good part of young actors finding their way. If the actor was never to be seen again then perhaps no big loss but what if that person was a Marlon Brando or De Niro for the next generation? and it was the walk on that was the catalyst?

During a recent visit to Sophia Gardens in Cardiff on the weekend, I came across the above sign, being a Welsh speaker I was shocked to see such bad Welsh translation, so I decided to twitter it. Lots of people picked up on this and the result is the council have decided to take the sign down!

Below is the article from the WalesOnline:

Council takes down poorly translated sign
Aug 12 2010 by Lisa Jones, Western Mail

RED-FACED officers at a local authority have been forced to take down an official sign because of a case of severe mangling of the Welsh language.

The sign at the car park at Sophia Gardens Caravan Park in Cardiff is the worst case of bad translation ever seen, according to the managing director of Cardiff design company Hoffi, Carwyn Lloyd Jones.

He was so dumbstruck he posted a photo of the offending article on social networking website Twitter and photo-sharing site Flickr.

Mr Jones, 28, of Cardiff Bay, said: “The sign caught my eye. I thought it was written in crazy language as it was quite hard to understand. I was confused as to what it was saying.

“We do quite a lot of bilingual work in my company, so we work with translators and the Welsh language a lot, trying to promote it in a positive light. We come across a lot of stuff that has been badly translated.

“It’s the worst case of bad translation I’ve ever seen. If you just read the Welsh, I don’t think you could translate it into English.”

Aran Jones, chief executive of Welsh language communities group Cymuned, said the council owed an apology to the Welsh-speakers of Cardiff.

He said: “There’s an individual who’s made an extremely poor decision. It’s a matter for the council to apologise.

“There has been a complete breakdown in internal communication. They have plenty of Welsh speakers and professional translators. It’s absolutely staggering. It looks as though someone has used a particularly bad online translator. They ought to be very embarrassed.”

Meirion Prys Jones, chief executive of the Welsh Language Board, said: “The board advises all public bodies not to use automatic translation unless they have access to a qualified translator to edit the text afterwards.

“With some types of automatic translation programs, there will be need for a lot of editing – as in this case, where the Welsh version makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.”

A Cardiff Council spokesman said: “Cardiff Council apologises for the wording on this sign, which was removed as soon as we were made aware of the mistakes.

“Unfortunately, on this occasion the normal checking procedure was not followed,” he admitted.

“We are currently investigating why this happened and will work to ensure any similar mistakes are not repeated in the future.”

Article Link

Yesterday I went down to Wyeverne Electrical to see their car that we have just designed and had wrapped for them. It was originally a white Toyota IQ, but after a full wrap in yellow, it's now probably the brightest IQ on the road.

We have been working with Wyeverne Electrical for a while now, re-branding them, producing new signage for their shop and producing off site window displays in high traffic locations to attract people to the shop. The car is already working great for Wyeverne as people can't help but notice the little yellow car!

I have been meaning to write about this for a while. For those who have not seen it, BT are running an advertising campaign where you can vote for what happens next. It's a bit like those adventure books where you used to turn to a certain page if you decided to turn right or left. It's an interesting premise and I am sure people will tell me its been done before. I wonder if this thinking could go further in the future with people actually broadcasting live? it is also a similar train of thought to the recent Old Spice campaign where the Old SPice man replied to people on twitter. You can see one of his videos below:



It is quite interesting how the two campaigns approached it. One has used social media to broadcast it's message and created their own community, while the other has used social media to talk with the people they are involving with no apparent private community. I can see advantages for both methods but I wonder the idea of creating yet another platform for people to login to might be a page too far?

Would be interested to hear what other people think?