Three Minds On Digital Marketing @ Organic

image credit: Mario Amaya

An article I was reading the other day pointed me to Mario Amaya's blog, a graphic designer from Brazil. Though I don't speak Spanish the content is easy to appreciate. What he's done is taken two major brands/corporations & blends their logo's together. It's a simple & fun idea that was very well done.

Part 1 http://marioav.blogspot.com/2008/04/just-for-fun.html
Part 2 http://marioav.blogspot.com/2008/05/logo-mashups-part-2.html

It's kind of like those Brain Age puzzles where the word is blue but it is written in red font. Your brain knows something isn't right, but it is hard to put your finger on exactly what. My personal favorites are Google/Coke & Unilever / Unix.

Patrick Dunphy

image credit: exactitudes

Is our quest for individuality in vain? This topic has been under exploration by Rotterdam-based photographer Ari Versluis and stylist Ellie Uyttenbroek for the past 13 years in a series called Exactitudes. Ari and Ellie drew inspiration from the dress codes found in various social groups. They decided to systematically document the multicultural street scene in various cities around the world

Exactitudes, coming from a contraction of the words exact and attitude, shows subjects with similar attire striking similar poses. The effect of which can best be described by the artist's statement on their website:

"Versluis and Uyttenbroek provide an almost scientific, anthropological record of people's attempts to distinguish themselves from others by assuming a group identity. The apparent contradiction between individuality and uniformity is, however, taken to such extremes in their arresting objective-looking photographic viewpoint and stylistic analysis."

levelHead v1.0, 3 cube speed-run (spoiler!) from Julian Oliver on Vimeo.

New Zealand artist Julian Oliver's latest work, levelHead, allows viewers of the piece to interact with a 3D world by simply moving wooden blocks around in front of a web cam. How his work differs from most motion capture controlled art installations, is that the physical item that one uses to control the experience is replaced with a tiny digital world. Through moving and rotating coded blocks, the "player" attempts to move a tiny trapped man through an elaborate, interlocking labyrinth stretching one's spatial memory and logical reasoning skills.

A nice gallery of shots of levelHead is available here:
http://selectparks.net/~julian/levelhead/images/play-shots/

James Vreeland

image credit regelzam0ra (Flickr)

Searching for "street photography" in flickr groups returns 6,497 groups. It appears people around the world are drawn to capturing the urban lifestyle.

In a similar fashion, Blurb, an online book publisher, recently hosted a photography book contest. Anyone can use Blurb's site to put together books using their own photos. Sure, anyone can take photos. But has the advancement -- and nearly norm -- of digital photography allowed anyone to become a photographer? Maybe it's that the medium simply allows for us to share our captured moments more easily. And what defines a true photographer anyway? It's all in the eye of the beholder.

Sarah Jo Sautter

Clorox has taken an innovative experiential approach to promoting Green Works, a new line on plant-based household cleaning products. They hired Reverse Graffiti Artist Paul Curtis (aka Moose) to "paint' the inside of the Broadway Tunnel, which runs through Russian Hill into San Francisco's North Beach neighborhood. 

By removing the soot and grime from public spaces to create the outlines of nature, Moose makes a poignant statement about pollution in urban spaces and our reversal of the natural world. 

The video is a tiny bit heavy-handed in the product placement, but it still seems like a major departure for Clorox, which is not featured in connection with the project at all. 

It must have been a tough internal battle about whether or not to put the Clorox logo on the packaging (it's there in small format).  Because while Clorox=clean, bleach does not connote environmentally friendly (Burt's Bees, for example, doesn't carry the Clorox name).  Maybe the Clorox brand is there to counter the common skepticism that a green product "actually cleans".  Thanks to Laughing Squid.

Misha Cornes

Tag Galaxy is an incredibly addictive Flickr Visualization tool that allows you to explore related tags as if they are planets in a solar system. You can rotate the orbit, and then select new planets to explore. As you find a particular combination that interests you, you can zoom into the world and see pictures within the set in greater detail. While not highly efficient, it certainly is engaging.

It seems like there is no limit to the imagination when it comes to Flickr Visualizaiton tools. So what are some of your favorites?

Marta Strickland