The trend for collaboration and cross pollination of brands continues with this interesting project between North Face and Comme des Garcons. It's a great opportunity for Comme de Garcons to educate those who would have had little exposure to the brand in the past and for North Face it provides a bit of couture cred. The jackets themselves are pretty cool football casual style jackets.
via Hypebeast

BMW have created an online publication around aspirations which they want their customers and brand to identify with. Produced in association with BMW, edited by Johnny Davis, Into the Stormasks "Who's your hero? And what does it mean to be noble and good in the 21st Century?"

Beautifully produced in flash, Into the storm is a really nice lifestyle magazine with some great photography and interesting stories.

Just a thought but how long will it be until brands buy existing fashion lifestyle publications and leverage them to produce the complete branded lifestyle. The Apple Face anyone?
Tags: Marketing

Blogging and PR guru, Steve Rubel, has posted a great little feature on the top 10 trends for the next ten years. Basically Steve wanted to work out what was next now that blogging and podcasting has hit the mainstream.

Steve picks up on 'the long tail' , basically big companies will increasingly make their money not from the 'bestsellers' but from the product variety. In addition Steve acknowledges trust marketing whereby people listen to specific opinion formers and block out everyone else.

As ever most of the catalysts for these trends are already amongst us in the shape of PVRs, RSS, folksomomy, ebay etc. However, it's great that Steve is flagging them up.
Tags: Trends

Today's Urban Junkies newsletter covers the latest efforts of the Sony PSP marketing team. They have asked a group of talented designers and artists to come up with their own designs for guitar shaped cut outs which are to be distributed around London and are yours to keep should you find one. The rest of the cut outs will be on display in the awesome Oki-ni store, Saville Row.
Tags: Marketing

The good old BBC has launched an excellent new online magazine called Collective which contains some great features with the likes of Chris Cunningham,
Chuck Palahniuk and Bloc Party. There are also tracks to listen to and film clips to watch. There are also forums to have your say on the latest and greatest books, films and albums.
Collective
Tags: Magazines

The second edition of LE GUN is now available in London for just £8!

"Following the huge success of LE GUN, the magazine that brought budding artists work together in an extraordinary display of illustrative and narrative talent, a second edition (LE GUN 2)is now due to be released. This edition comprises of not only new artists work, but also pieces by established artists such as Sir Peter Blake and lan Kitching. Described by the editors Robert Greene, Bill Bragg and Neal Fox as “a spattering Uzi of narrative illustration and absurd wordage, combining art from the old guard with an explosive smorgasbord of emerging international talent”, it is an eagerly awaited sequel."

LE GUN
Tags: Design

I have just witnessed one of the most amazing events of my life. To express sympathy at the atrocities of 7 July 2005 the whole of the Kings Road stopped work, travel and shopping to line the famous London thoroughfare and stand together in silence. It was a truly stunning moment and a tribute to all those who died in the attacks last week. For possibly the first time in my life I felt genuinely proud of my city.
Photo by Evil Twin

Influx Insights have published an email containing interviews with leading innovators from various industries.

John Thackara, author of Into the Bubble, argued that 'Nearly all the most important design projects nowadays are collaborative' whilst Jody Turner, CEO of Culture of Future, believes that 'We are currently in a co-creation culture, meaning the lifestyle need of the consumer strongly influences design outcomes.'

Karl Carter, Current TV's VP of Marketing, is encouraging viewer submissions: 'We're already running contests to get Viewer-Contributed Content (VC2) submissions, and with relatively little promotion, we've already received a few thousand submissions. Our latest contest will give the winner a development deal, where we'll work with them to produce a piece that will air on the network.'

Influx Insights
Tags: Trends

Hailing from Brasil, Sávio creates gorgeous lomographic shots and the results are stunning. I came across his work whilst doing a 'lomography' tag search on flickr. For more of these gorgeous compositions check out Sávio's page.

Entrepreneur Jeremy Paxton has commissioned an ambitious architectural project built in the Cotswolds at the Lower Mill Estate near Cirencester.

'The 'Landmark Houses' programme is envisioned specifically for the site at Lower Mill Estate, in the Cotswold Water Park, where we have invited a number of architects, such as Will Alsop, Eva Jiricna, Sutherland Hussey, Richard Meier and Partners, Roger Sherman, Sarah Featherstone, Alison Brooks, Piers Gough, Greg Lynn, etc. - an older generation at the peak of their inventiveness, but still in wonder at the world out there, and a younger generation in the process of re-invention as they gather a second breath - and asked each one to speculate on the architectural poetics and ecological considerations for the design of a 'landmark house' within such a context.'

The project will display how creative modern architecture is and provide incredible homes for 21st century Britain.
Landmark Houses
Tags: Ideas Tags: Design

The World Automotive Design Competition took place in March of this year and threw up some great ideas. The premise of the competition is that young designers from all over the world create a concept for a mass production car that is in line with today's budgets for their own country but could be sold throughout the world.

'The vehicle had to be easily recognized as coming from a particular culture. The design, therefore, needed to reflect the culture of the country where the student currently studies. The car had to be conceived and presented as a vehicle intended for full-scale production (at least 100,000 units per year), ten years from now, in 2015. Additionally, the car could not cost more than the average price of cars offered for sale in the student's country of study.'

My favourite was the third placed effort from Yoshiyuki Kashiwagi from Japan's Tokyo Zokei University for his entry 'C-H Compact'.

Car Design News
Tags: Design

Send Sam at Exploding Dog your phrase and s/he draws something inspired by it. A really nice and interactive idea. Not only can you have a t-shirt printed and sent to you, Sam has also produced a couple of books of he/r work.
Thanks Alexa
www.explodingdog.com
Tags: Design