Imagine a museum of British Design and Art that has over 100,000 items for you to view… but rather than walk round this museum, you can get round it with a few clicks from a computer mouse! Welcome to the Visual Arts Data Service (VADS)… the online resource for visual arts and design.

VADS has provided services to the academic community for 12 years and has built up a considerable portfolio of visual art collections that are freely available and copyright cleared for use in learning, teaching and research in the UK… and now this entire collection is available to view online.

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Marchetto – Living Cartoon

If you’re an avid watcher of the Royal Variety Performance Show, circa 1998, here’s a face you might recognise, if not the name – Ennio Marchetto. Described by some as a living cartoon, and by others as human origami… on a cold and wet October Sunday I went to see if he could brighten up the dark evening (and cheer up my hangover from the night before) with his colourful performance.

For one night only, Marchetto was performing at the Lowry Theatre in Salford Quays. The show opened as the low murmur from the audience settled in, curtains already open and a bright light lit stage that looked like the cleaner had forgotten to sweep. From around the corner, a sleepy paper caricature (paper pyjamas, paper wig, paper candle) yawned and stretched its way to the front of the stage. The audience had silenced themselves for the evening’s performance and as Marchetto blew his paper candle out, the lights in the auditorium switched off. The show had begun. Read more…

One of the great things about my High School in Bradford wasn’t the fact that we were taught by Nuns and Priests… no it was the fact we had a Dark Room. Growing up I loved photography and so developing my own photographs was a natural progression for me and I would find that I could easily fly through a few hours thanks to some good music, a dark room and some recently taken black & white pictures that were snapped on my trusty Pentax ME… a camera I still own and love today.

One of the many Photographers that I studied at this time was a guy called Robert Capa, who was best known as a Photojournalist and documented wars including World war 2, The Arab-Israeli War and the First Indochina War. One of the reasons I loved his photographs was because of how he went against technical considerations when it came to photography and instead focused on capturing ‘the moment’… and boy! What moments he captured.

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David Gray Music Tee Front

The Digital Age Welcomes The Music Tee

Everyone knows that buying CDs is on the decline and when it comes to owning music… digital is the way to go. But you have to credit the people behind The Muisc Tee for getting us to part with our hard-earned green stuff for something more than just a digital download.

The Music Tee is a new product line that combines digital music and fashion in one eye-and-ear-catching package.  Music Tees are high-end t-shirts that feature album art and a tracklist. Each shirt comes with a unique code that can be used to download a digital copy of the album associated with that Music Tee. This enables people to discover and purchase music in fashion retail environments, then hear and wear an album!

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Old stylie vinyl records

As a child of the 80s, I’m old enough to remember when buying music meant a trip to the local record shop, browsing through vinyl collections and being mesmerised by the cover art. If you were lucky enough, your chosen album would come with ‘extras’ such as snap shot photography taken during a live concert, maybe a small bio of the band members and more often than not, the lyrics to all your favourite songs.

As we approached the digital age, records became CDs, which to me, never had the same impact. Sure there was the additional CD booklet, but they lacked the tactility of records, and the brilliant photography lost some of it’s shine squashed into the smaller not-quite-square format. CDs will inevitably be replaced by downloads, if they haven’t already, (I don’t really know anybody who buys CDs any more), but what about all the cool ‘extras’ we’ve come to expect?

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Abram Games was one of the most influential Graphic Designers that this country has ever seen. He created some of the most memorable designs of the 20th Century by following his own personal belief of: Maximum Meaning, Minimum Means… and back in the early 90s, maybe ’92 or ’93, I had the pleasure of attending a talk by this true great of design at Icograda (the International Council of Graphic Design Associations) Conference.

To be honest, when I attended Icograda that year, I had absolutely no idea who Abram Games was. In fact as far as I was concerned he was just a warm-up to the main attraction… Neville Brody. Yet as I entered the Odeon Cinema where Icograda was being held that year and was greeted by his work… it soon became clear that even though I did not know the name Abram Games… I certainly knew his work.

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Travelling with kids can be a fantastic experience as you get to see things from their entirely fresh perspective. I’d always wondered why there were no kid’s travel guides around and thought i’d cleverly identified a gap in the market. Until I discovered the wonderful ‘This is..’ series of books by Miroslav Sasek and realized that someone had come up with the idea in the 1960s!

With dreams of a publishing empire in tatters I gave this charming book to my 6 year old daughter just before our trip to San Francisco this year. With every page turn the full excitement of the upcoming adventure began to delight and intrigue her. The book even beat Harry Potter as the chosen bedtime reading material in the weeks prior to the holiday. No mean feat for a book that’s almost 50 years old. Read more…

When it comes to Eye Tracking, there isn’t much that we don’t know. Which is why Marketing Week approached Red C’s Client Services Director, Rosemary Walton, to help out on an article about this fascinating subject. here’s what Rosemary had to say on the subject:

For Rosemary Walton, Client Services Director at agency Red C Marketing, fast eye tracking means clients can make changes to campaigns in real-time. In a world where people Twitter their thoughts to the world, brands expect to be able to find out insights immediately and communicate them back to base. Real-time analysis is vital.

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