V Water by Jennifer Chen and Sara Leal for 20:20 London

There's Something In The Water - video powered by Metacafe

When I first saw the Mentos commercials in the early 90s I thought commercials in the U.K. were all campy. They were the corniest, non-flashy marketing pieces I ever saw. Then came the various Honda commercials including the Rube Goldberg inspired one. Since then I've admired the spots airing across the Atlantic. While we get the flashy in your face heart pounding theatrics, the Brits are privy to subdued, intelligent commercials. I don't know what the hell V Water is, but I love the commercial above.

Melting Pot Post (just catching up)

Catching up on the many 'draft' mode entries I have saved. But before I begin, a notice for all those versed in Photoshop, want to win some sweet Apple products? Enter this free contest (4 different contests requiring you to collage some photographs creatively, or naughtily for the first one round). The Crestock Photoshop Contest 2007, thanks Mike.

NYC Taxi logos, aren't they awful? We didn't need a logo then, we don't need one now. Especially if it's this crap coming from Smart Design. Obviously the city meddled with it too much and the designers at Smart Design succumbed to it. Manage your clients! This is why we need Garden in Transit. All those painted flowers on the hoods you see on cabs everywhere were painted on vinyl by school kids and applied by volunteers. If anyone wants to get a group together I'm down.

Redoing a crappy logo doesn't hurt, just respray/reapply on every single cab in town. No worries. But getting a tattoo you aren't happy about? The recourse isn't very simple, even with laser removal. So to properly assess a tattoo's application to your body why not overlay it onto a 3-D model of yourself and see how it works with the light. No way to see what the aging process does to it right now, maybe Zimmerman will consider it in the future. Check out Needled for more information on Loïc Zimmerman's work. Still think it's easier to just get the design done in henna before you make it permanent.

The Piracy Paradox, an interesting observation on how the fashion industry need copycats to induce obsolescence furthering the industry's growth. Credit goes to Elmo for forwarding that New Yorker article. Additional reading can be found on Christopher Sprigman's blog, one of two law professors who coined the term, Piracy Paradox.

Reebok, are they the vehicle Adidas will be using to out-Puma, Puma? Disregarding Nike's Transformers Air Trainers III and TakaraTomy's Prime and Megatron. Tugging at my nostalgic strings a set of five sneakers customized for each Lion making up Voltron have been designed and released to the public. I think the designs are awful but it's freaking VOLTRON! And it's freaking expensive... I'll be passing on this one.

Inside Adidas Factory: Some photos of an adidas factory, bandwidth exceeded right now for the photos so check back later. Apologize for not posting this when I found it...

What is working though is this quick page of some very cool business card designs. Have a look, it'll only take you a second for you to see where I steal my ideas from.

I love the UPS white board commercials. Do you? Read more about them at Slate. The guy featured in it is actually the creative director of the campaign, Andy Azula, not some actor or famous designer... way to pump up his resume.

The end of advertising as we know it. Yes IBM (IBM Institute for Business Value study), thanks for the notice... haven't read their paper yet but I'm assuming it's worth a read for all of you who are in the field. Going to try to get through their executive summary tonight, assuming its still in one piece, been sitting in my bag for a while.

Pattern Analysis of MegaMillions Lottery Numbers, I drop a buck every so often as long as the jackpot is over $50 million. Anything less is chump change =T. It's funny, in school you never really consider playing the lottery, it's such a waste of money. But the mentality changes once you start working, sure did when I started out as an intern... anyway the study won't really help but make sure you read up on the comments, the discussion had my mind spinning. All you math geeks must be loving this huh? I didn't understand a damn thing.

Designing FiringSquad’s Reference Home Theaters, sure wish I had this when we were putting our setup together. Boatloads of information in one easy to understand article. So rather than trolling AVS Forum, do yourself and read this as a primer.

Terry thinks Goldman Sachs will eventually take over the world. Not as crazy as it sounds... hell I bet they would do far better in the White House than Bush and Cronies. Look what Bloomberg did for NYC! So now Goldman alumn, John Thain, has taken over at Merrill is it time to buy into Merrill? Here's an old feature written when Thain took the top job at NYSE. What did he say then and what was actually done? Call him Mr. Implementer...

Nissan Rogue Marble Maze Commercial

Okay forgive me Heroes fans. I obviously didn't watch the season premiere or I would have gone ape-shit about this Nissan commercial two weeks ago. The Nissan Rogue commercial above may not resonate with some of you but I had a wooden marble maze as a kid and this commercial got me grinning from ear to ear. Something good comes out of L.A. (=T), produced by TBWA\CHIAT\DAY Los Angeles

colour like.no.other: Sony scores a point thanks to Fallon

I don't know if it's the fond memories I have for Gumby or some other unnatural attraction that compels me to write warmly about anything related to clay (or LEGO for that matter). The regulars also know I'm not very kind to Sony after their blunders with the PSP and the PS3. Their Bravia LCD TV line on the other hand seems to benefit from a marketing director and agency, Fallon, that gets it.

So how does clay and Sony relate to each other? Back in August while I was away, Fallon filmed a third commercial for the Bravia line in NYC (right by Chinatown in City Hall). Like the previous two commercials, it focused on colors (or colours if you are a Brit). This time the color vehicle were play-doh bunnies rather than bouncy balls or paint-based fireworks. The animators did an incredible job breathing life into the play-doh bunnies. The part where the whale comes into play and morphs into the huge rabbit is pretty slick. Love the expression from the kid in the stroller. Check out the making of video / teaser here. The footage showing the truck transporting that huge rabbit through Manhattan got me all giddy.

You can view the full commercial at Sony's EU site. Be prepared to jump through hoops since it's an all Flash site. Not very helpful for those who just want to get straight to the content. Anyway while you wait for the Flash GUI to load up, color / colour facts flash across the screen, did you know there are pink dolphins in the world? They live in the Amazon River. While searching for a Bravia play-doh image to put up, I came across this Twitter page by a Sony employee who worked on the project. Not much, but it's sort of new to me. I'm not a big Twitter user because I don't find it useful but maybe there is something there. Update: You can see the commercial without jumping through any hoops at Creativity Online.

Most of you have seen the bouncing ball commercial filmed in San Francisco, if not you can watch it here (an extended version) and the making of video here. The second commercial may be a bit foreign to you, I don't remember seeing it on the television. It was filmed in Glasgow, Scotland last July (the clown was a nice touch). You can view it here and watch the making of video here.

Update 2 (Doesn't look good...): Looks like Fallon / Passion Pictures ripped off the bunny idea from an LA-based artist duo, kozyndan. You've probably seen the Great Wava off Kana gawa spoof with bunnies as the white froth on the top of the wave, but they also produced an NYC print with multicolored bunnies sprinkled throughout. More information on Gizmodo!

Innovative Advertising: Inventor Spot has a nice collection of 9 innovative outdoor ads. Give it a go, I know there has been numerous collections online of great outdoor advertising, but I've never seen the ones collected at Inventor Spot. Here's one of them for your enjoyment, and for the photographers there's a nice Canon ad for you to check out.

Ripped the two paragraphs below from the previous post. The previous post was too long anyway and I thought the information below connected more with the content above.

Performance Art: Lightning doodle, painting with light, you've seen it. The Sprint commercials ring a bell? Here's a behind the scenes look at the 'Dreams' commercial. Not sure how old this art form (in its current incarnation) is but this Japanese piece titled PikaPika is a bit too fast for me, got cross-eyed at times watching it. There was a very cool part where a fish jumps into water and the animators got the splashes down so nicely. As stated by John Maguire (who?), they eat light and shit magic! Makes me proud to be a Sprint user!

Elmo forwarded this video to me. It showcases a bunch of Koreans pulling off the amazing Human LCD. The way they executed the animations is pretty mind blowing. Wish they would bring it state side. Put all the crowd 'waves' and marching bands to shame! Drumline what?