I'm a digital advertising creative living in Sydney. This is a collection of my work and some stuff that interests me. If you don't like Courier you should subscribe to my RSS Feed.
I’ve wanted to see Art & Copy since I saw the trailer awhile ago and pestered my local cinema about a screening. Finally tonight they held one and I got to see the film everyone has been raving about. Overall I loved it!
Although I have to point out Lee Clow (TBWA/Chait/Day) was wrong saying that all computer advertisers use macs to make their ads. As someone working on Microsoft as a client I can only wish that was correct!
I used a Macintosh PC for the first time in about 1991, before I could read, and have been using them ever since. Lately I have been on Windows 7 at work & home and although it does a lot of things well, running Photoshop is not one of them.
Lee Clow also talked about the reasons people think the 1984 ad was a hit:
Was it the new style of film it caused? Was it that it only ran once? Was not showing the product what made it so powerful?
No. I’ll let you in on a secret.
The reason this ad:
was so well received
is
the
boobies
bouncing up and down as she runs towards the big brother screen.
Today we celebrate the soldiers from New Zealand and Australia who risked and lost their lives for our countries.
Over breakfast we got into a debate about whether their service is really the most important thing our country’s people have done to serve the world. Without denying that the ANZACs deserve the recognition they get, there are other New Zealanders have contributed a lot on the world scale and get little more than a face on note (which even kiwis don’t use now that everyone takes eftpos).
Lord Rutherford – Split the atom and although his science has been used for both good and evil, it really is world changing.
Apirana Ngata – A Maori leader who was probably the first “native” person to contribute to a western country’s politics.
Sir Edmund Hillary – Climbed the tallest mountain in the world.
Kate Sheppard – Lead the woman’s suffrage and got the first vote for women around the world. Without the efforts of kiwi women I am sure feminism would have eventually won the right to vote, but you’ve got to admit we did a great job of doing it first!
When you consider that these brave women were the first in the world to get females recognised as citizens in their own right, it is sad to see how little they are celebrated. Other than a face on a $10 note, a relief in Christchurch and a fountain in Auckland City there is not a lot we do to remember them.
There are so many statues in New Zealand of politicians and soldiers and none that I have ever seen have been famous women. Female statues are only found in war memorial sites. They are depicted with robes falling down revealing breast and failing to hold up the weight of an iron flag.
Are there any statues around the world in the likeness of any great women? (Real women from our age, not the Statue of Liberty or Mother Mary). Please link me to them if there are!
Politician: “How do we engage a young audience in the message of safe sex?”
N00b: “I know we’ll create a design competition around a completely useless object like a condom tin!”
BUT please vote for my cats, so I can use the $1000 of winnings to adopt an awesome new pet (probably a chinchilla) and give back to the SPCA. I promise when you register to vote they won’t send you any emails after the confirmation, it’s the Australian Govt after all. I don’t think they even know what spamming is.
By the way I went to the New Zealand consulate (in Sydney) today to get a new passport. It was nothing like the one in Flight of the Concords which was disappointing. On the lift up I was honestly imagining 70s wallpaper and a platter of Mainland cheese to greet me.
On 16 December 1960, a United Airlines Flight 826 landing from Chicago and TWA Flight 266 coming from Ohio collided in mid-air and plummeted onto Staten Island and the brownstones of Park Slope.
Debris from the United plane and sections of fuselage pummeled the buildings and sidewalks. One piece falling on the McCaddin Funeral Home, causing embalmed corpses to fly into the air and onto the street. The Pillar of Fire Church was engulfed in flames and the left wing of the plane slashed through the apartment building next door. In the middle of the intersection, the entire tail section fell upright.
128 passengers and six people on the ground were killed in the disaster. via Atlas Obscura >
Sir Edmund Hillary had booked a seat on Flight 826, but missed the flight after arriving too late at O’Hare airport.
There are very few reminders of one of the world’s worst aviation disasters. One woman who moved into Sterling Place in 2002 had frequent nightmares about a plane hitting her apartment. She assumed the dreams were related to 911 until she saw photos of the forgotten crash with her apartment in them.
We were driving home from the Easter show when out of the window I saw this gem (although less pixelated and darker in real life):
Because the others in the car missed it the driver turned around and we drove back for a closer look. At one point the car was 50/50 split on whether or not it was legit, with one person pointing out it would be a lot of money to spend on a glorified post-it-note. I gave my “professional” opinion that it must be part of a bigger ad campaign because every art director dreams of putting comic sans in a billboard just to give the shits to every graphic designer that drives past.
A generation ago the most pressing question humanity could ask was what is the meaning of life? Now that we know the answer to that our culture has a new important question, what would you do if you were a millionaire. So here is my answer, open a museum. Budgeted to leave some change for the cliché charities and investments, here are the details:
An almost complete T-Rex skeleton named Samson failed to reach it’s reserve price at Auction in 2009. For 4mil I could probably seal the deal, perfect for the foyer!
At twice the size of a T-Rex, Robosaraus would make a perfect addition to my dinosaur collection. He can eat cars and planes and breathes fire and yet only sold for half a million in 2008. Going to see him at the Sydney Easter Show this week, quite exciting.
Of course I will need somewhere to store my budding Jurasic Park and I have always dreamed of owning an island. Lucky for me Plum Island off Long Island, New York is up for sale. It’s going cheap too because of the whole animal disease research they do there which means the whole place may be contaminated. On the up side it’s got a pretty lighthouse and weird creatures often wash up on the shores.
With the rest of the money I would buy all the paintings I love and maybe hire some cassowaries and to roam the grounds. Any other suggestions for what to put in my museum?
Yay for the resurrected (or zombie depending on your beliefs) Jesus!
And thank you God for inventing chocolate, of which I have been given so much this year, mostly in animal form.
The best thing about this Easter is I got to meet the real life versions of all the chocolate animals I got! We saw a duck at #gardenpicnic on Friday and a wombat, bunny and bilby at Featherdale Wildlife Park on Saturday.
The excitement continues with Wicked tonight and the Easter show on Thursday. I am really looking forward to seeing Robosaurus!
Hope you’ve had a happy Easter and feel free to come round if you are missing out on chocolate, there is plenty to share!
I was in Paris the first time beams were collided in the LHC and it was very exciting.
Today’s experiments are apparently very important for the advancement of physics. It’s a shame Sheldon Cooper is not commentating the webcast. Lots of other hot nerds there though.
Hoping to do a tour of the LHC when we are in Europe in May!
A couple of years ago I made a pact with two different friends that we would do a roadtrip of America (continent) when we finished uni. Life happened and I ended up in Sydney while both of them are now in America, one in Mexico and Rose (above, with friend Livvy who is visiting her) in Vancouver.
There are so many places I want to go in America, but the ones at the top, top the list:
There is nothing in the world I have ever wanted to see more than this phenomenon. I will spend as long as it takes in Alaska or Scandinavia to see the Borealis.
Ok so this is on everyone’s list, that doesn’t make it any less exciting. I often have dreams about being in NYC.
I could happily live in Portland, or Seattle. I think I really like the city because so many bands I love are from there and they all give it great reviews.
My Grandma had a poster of Canada when I was young and I was always fascinated by Nova Scotia, maybe because Anne of Green Gables lives there. Either way it is “hauntingly beautiful”.
There is something fascinating about ghost towns, especially when they are very new and people still live in them. I would like to see Detroit before it is reposed.
Of course there are many more places I would like to see Washington DC, Boston, Lincoln, Wilmington, Vancouver, Toronto etc… What are your top picks for Northern America?
Around the time my bf and I started dating he went to Melbourne for a poker tournament. I gave him a map of the city which I coloured in with places for him to see. He loved it so much he’s kept it in his wallet ever since.
Last time we were in Melbourne he showed this map to my friend Bex Rad who was also visiting the city. She completely outdid us with her own hand drawn map, far more detailed and awesome than I could ever imagine putting time into:
I love this, I used to do similar things with all the colour print outs we got in Art History. Have been thinking a lot lately about doing some collages.
At 7.30am we started our Obscura Day adventure. We took a train three hours out of Sydney, past Paramatta, past Penrith up into the Blue Mountains.
The drive from Lithgow with the other explorers was slow and dusty with very high chances of death. After an hour of windy cliff roads and termite hills we made it to a point where we could only proceed on foot. The lush ferns in the forest reminded me of home until we came across a large red bellied black snake who slithered away we neared him.
After following the old railway line for 15 minutes we entered the tunnel, every so often turning off our torches to reveal the glow worms. They were pretty, but not as impressive as some of the caves I have seen in NZ. When we reached the end the others stopped to take photographs outside, James and I went back into the tunnel. This time waiting still and quiet for several minutes as the glow worms lit up. We even found one who was broken and stayed glowing when the torch was on.
On the return trip we found some more treasures which Lithgow had to offer including a Mining Museum which we jumped the fence and had a look at and the Blast Furnace (below). With trains scarce from the remote location we got a lift home with two lovely friends we made (above, crossing the bridge).
The drive home was probably the highlight of the trip with sing alongs and driving past Hooters, who knew there was one in Sydney! We got home 14 hours after our trip had begun incredibly tired, but surprisingly alive.
Chatroulette has thousands of individuals wanting to look sexy which is perfect for fashion and even better for lingerie. This is how I would use it to advertise Calvin Klein’s latest range:
Have a program scrawling Chatroulette for naked people (not hard to find) and play their webcam back to them with their boobs, vag or penis covered in CK lingerie and underwear. Perhaps even tempting clothed rouletters to strip off and try on some of CK’s new range.
Users get to “try on” CK underwear without leaving home and discover that sexy often leaves something up to the imagination.
A compilation of reactions would be posted as a viral video; including at least one fat naked man who’s manboobs have mistakenly been covered in a sexy bra by the programs breast recognition. The vid would provide many LOLs for everyone.
As part of a long term strategy I would also create an online program which allows viewers to try on different lingerie in front of their webcam (with the safety knowing it’s not being watched or recorded). You could show off lingerie before you buy it to your partner without the awkwardness of sneaking them into a changing room.
