Friday Favourites

You might have heard about a big exciting sporting event that starts in London today. That big one that brands and commercial businesses are not supposed to talk about unless they’re an official sponsor (which is why we’re not saying much about it either – as a branding agency we get the brand guidelines thing). However, Nike, who aren’t sponsoring the Event We Can’t Talk About Too Much have done a great job of capturing the essence of the excitement around sport, and achievement in sport, in a very clever and inspiring way, pointing out that anyone can achieve that feeling of greatness. Find Your Greatness is probably the best campaign we’ve seen around this year’s big event without actually talking about it. Thanks to Gokce for sharing this one around.

What does it mean to be poor? Photographer Stefen Chow and Lin Hui-Yi, an economist by training, are a duo that set out to help people understand what being poor means. Poverty around the world is given embodiment in The Poverty Line project through images that show what a person living on the poverty line can afford for food each day. Set against the cultural context of each nation (provided by the backdrop of local newspapers), this project reminds us of the socioeconomic issues present in societies today. Thanks to Audrey T for sharing this.

(Top to bottom: China, Nepal, France)

I loved these cardboard sculptures by Bartek Elsner, which I stumbled across on Colossal. The collection of work, called The Paper Stuff, includes fireplaces, guns, video recorders, ‘internet machines’, and ravens. I love the humour in the work, and also the way a simple (and quite dull) material such as cardboard can be transformed and brought to life. The raven is fabulous, I want him. An exhibition of The Paper Stuff starts today (July 27th) at the ESDIP space in Berlin.

Thanks to Gav for sharing this movie about the launch of David Lynch’s limited edition design for Dom Perignon in LA. Luke Gilford’s dream-like film is very much in the style of David Lynch’s work, and uses audio from the opening night which featured performances from The Kills and a DJ set by Diplo. Found via Nowness. You can see the bottle designs and watch a video of David Lynch talking about how he worked on the brand here.


David Lynch’s Champagne Dreams on Nowness.com.

Another cool piece of work that we found on Nowness was this stop motion animation by still life photographer Thomas Brown. The short animation features the meticulously handcrafted dishes and desserts of German chef Rainer Becker’s Japanese restaurant Zuma, bringing the art of contemporary Japanese cuisine and izakaya dining to life.

As in izakaya style, the dishes are presented in a continuous, steady flow. Head Chef Li Ong demonstrates his dedication to craft with each delicately prepared dish – sliced, seared and garnished to perfection. If this doesn’t make you hungry, I don’t know what will.

Zuma: Wabi-Sabi on Nowness.com.

Thanks to Emma T for finding this work from Dorota Pankowska, an artist/photographer living in Canada, who created these rather lovely  images captured using Scanography. The ones of her pets are amazing – check out her Flickr feed here, and more of her work on her blog.

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