The Cut Copy Paste

There’s nothing like the thrill of playing a real musical...

Thu, 24 May 2012 10:32:00 -0700

There’s nothing like the thrill of playing a real musical instrument. Unfortunately for most, learning can be a frustrating and time-consuming experience. That’s why we built the gTar.

The gTar, a new Kickstarter project by Incident, is a fully digital guitar that makes it easy for anybody to play music, regardless of experience. All you have to do is dock your iPhone in the body, load up the gTar app, and an array of interactive LEDs along the fretboard will show you how to play.

You may be asking yourself what it means for a guitar to be “digital.” While most guitars have pickups to amplify the sound of vibrating strings, the gTar has none - instead, we’ve designed the gTar with sensors that detect exactly what you’re playing in real-time and relay each note to your iPhone, which then produces the actual sound. This makes it possible for us to do all kinds of exciting things.

You can check out the gTar on their website and on their Kickstarter page.

Dan Wieden, successful award-winning American advertising...

Thu, 10 May 2012 11:37:04 -0700

Dan Wieden, successful award-winning American advertising executive who co-founded Wieden+Kennedy, suggests that both online interaction and more traditional broadcasting are required to establish strong relationships between companies and customers.

Television used to be a campfire gathering everybody around it. Now, as the interactive relationship is critically important, the campfire is formed of diverse more or less intimate channels. Often messages and conversations attract more attention when initiated first through television. As an example, Wieden uses a campaign his company did last year for Chrysler to help reposition the brand by creating a sense of what the brand values and what Detroit, the world’s former automotive capital, stands for.

According to Wieden both broadcasting and interactive online conversation are required to create strong and provocative relationships. There is no use choosing between a left and a right hand when both can be used.

“The new generation of consumers is not going to accept the products and their message as the marketers present them,” reminds Wieden. Instead they wish to be more included – part of action. Companies need to learn to listen and present themselves more profoundly.

Digitally run interactive campaigns are applied more and more but the art of storytelling persists. One-way communication broadcasted on television that tells a touching story remains an important channel for companies to express what they stand for and what type of relationship they can provide their customers with.

(via PSFK)

Do you know why soap bubbles are covered in those beautiful...

Wed, 09 May 2012 12:12:51 -0700

Do you know why soap bubbles are covered in those beautiful iridescent patterns? Dutch artist Nicky Assmann does—in fact, she’s based an entire series, called Solace, on the phenomenon.

Neighborland takes the neighborhood revitalization theme a step...

Mon, 07 May 2012 09:40:43 -0700

Neighborland takes the neighborhood revitalization theme a step further, acting kind of like a Digg or Reddit for neighborhood ideas. Anyone who is signed in can comment or click the “Me Too” button to indicate that they would like the suggestion to be taken seriously. Users can sort through suggestions by what’s current, popular, or new.

Neighborland was incubated in New Orleans—that’s why there are so many ideas for the city on the site—but it’s now open to a handful of other locations, including Boulder, Houston, and Minneapolis. It will open up even further in the future. It’s too early to tell whether Neighborland will be successful on a country-wide scale, but ablog post from the Obvious Corporation sums up the need for the service:

“We don’t live in a 1950s TV show. It’s unlikely in most neighborhoods that residents will walk over, knock on your door, introduce themselves, and ask how they can help. However, ‘signing in’ to your neighborhood and connecting with those who live around you about shared issues—speed bumps, recycling, whatever—that is a more likely and familiar scenario nowadays. Neighborland has the potential to unite residents and profoundly upgrade our neighborhoods.”

(via Fast Co Exist)

Red Design Group is an Australian company that creates creative...

Fri, 04 May 2012 10:44:38 -0700

Red Design Group is an Australian company that creates creative and exciting environments for retail business across the board (from 7-11 stores to high-end luxury retailers) and they even have quite a space of their own. One of their recent projects was a candy store, also located in Melbourne.

Sweet Enough is an importer of sugar free candy products selling to stores across Australia including major department stores Myer and David Jones.

Following their success in the wholesale market, Sweet Enough decided to enter the retail market, approaching RED Design Group with a brief for a store that had to be edgy, humorous and uniquely charismatic. It was not to be simply a shop; it had to be a destination and an experience.

Their new venture ‘The Candy Room’, located in the heart of Melbourne’s CBD has a design that toys with the concept of illusion and draws the inner child out of the customer using a strong connection with childhood, fantasy, fiction and of course, sweets.

Being strongly influenced by the idea of designing a playful, simple and somewhat illusional space for the Candy Room, the exaggeration of a ‘room’ idea was formulated. The application was to use line artwork on white space to represent a room.

Everything including the fixtures is painted in white, while graphically applied line artwork produce the suggestive elements of a room – A kitchen splashback is drawn complete with a boiling pot on the stove or a framed portrait of one of the kids. RED was also responsible for the branding and all the packaging throughout the store. Allowing the space to be predominately white allowed the colours of the confectionery to dress the space. In a sense, the interior design for the Candy Room creates a fantasy and experience of a room without creating one.

(via Design Milk)

The photography series ‘Epic’ by Christian Stoll includes a...

Tue, 01 May 2012 13:41:57 -0700

The photography series ‘Epic’ by Christian Stoll includes a sequence of spaces that have one thing in common: they are immense. These spaces may not have been designed using perpective renderings, but they are are engineered or urban planned to stunning effect, even if it’s accidental. These are vantage points that we aren’t used to seeing, even though the spaces facilitate or support processes ubiquitous to our daily lives. These are pictures of the staggering engineering that allows things happen quietly: an order ships, a file downloads, and the only time they occur to us is when something goes wrong. Even though thinking about a processing facility or bank of escalators may not sound too exciting, even quotidian spaces, from a particular vantage point, can be epic.

(via Fast Co Design)

Sony Xperia smartphones are made of imagination. So to create...

Mon, 16 Apr 2012 13:48:50 -0700

Sony Xperia smartphones are made of imagination. So to create our new TV ad they turned to the most imaginative people they know — kids. They asked them what’s inside Xperia smartphones that make them special. Using stop motion animation, acclaimed director Wes Anderson and Laika/house brought one boy’s vision to life in this video.

Today, you can order what may be the first platform for robotic...

Thu, 05 Apr 2012 10:37:09 -0700

Today, you can order what may be the first platform for robotic expression—what could become the literal face of robotics for makers everywhere. Yesterday, the project was almost scrapped.

Jeffrey Kessler moved to Los Angeles chasing a dream job. He was hoping to get engineering work in the entertainment realm, developing theme park rides or working in special effects. Like most people, Jeffrey Kessler got a bit distracted. That distraction became his destination.

He was haunted by an idea. After watching I’m Here by Spike Jonze—a short love story about two 20-something robots—he began pondering the basic facial gestures behind emotion. “Since as humans we naturally read emotion into things, I realized [an emotive robot] could be created pretty simply,” Kessler tells Co.Design, “but I wasn’t sure what I’d do with it.”

(via Kickstarter)

I’ve had the privilege to work with the wonderful Paypal...

Thu, 22 Mar 2012 10:38:20 -0700

I’ve had the privilege to work with the wonderful Paypal team on its rebranding, including PayPal Here, a triangle-shaped mobile creditcard-swiping gadget aimed directly at Jack Dorsey’s reader, Square.

The gadget works similarly to Square, offering a simple attachment and merchant app that allows iPhones and Android smartphones to do the work of a cash register, swiping credit and debit cards, and tracking receipts. In addition, the app allows merchants to take pictures of checks and credit cards, to process payments even without the attachment. The app can also issue invoices.

PayPal is hoping to become a full-on electronic wallet. PayPal Here is for merchants, but their consumer app is expanding as well. The app now includes a “local” button, which lets you pay at merchants who accept PayPal. The launch partner is Home Depot, which announced that you’ll be able to use PayPal in its 2,000 stores.

Kony 2012 is a film created by Invisible Children, Inc to...

Mon, 12 Mar 2012 09:55:21 -0700

Kony 2012 is a film created by Invisible Children, Inc to promote the ‘Stop Kony’ movement to make indicted Ugandan war criminal Joseph Kony internationally known in order to arrest him in 2012. As of 9 March 2012, the film currently has over 16.1 million views on Vimeo and over 70 million views on YouTube with other viewing emanating from a central “Kony2012” website operated by Invisible Children. The intense exposure of the video caused the “Kony 2012” website to crash shortly after it began gaining widespread popularity. The video has also seen a number of celebrities endorsing the campaign including Rihanna, Bill Gates and Tatlor Swift. On April 20, 2012, as part of the campaign, supporters will put up posters promoting Kony 2012 in their home towns. Invisible Children offers posters from an online shop in an attempt to gain wider recognition on the issue. They have also created action kits that include campaign buttons, posters, bracelets, and stickers to help spread awareness. This is a brilliantly executed campaign.

What if Apple never changed? What if Jobs and company decided...

Tue, 06 Mar 2012 14:10:23 -0800

What if Apple never changed? What if Jobs and company decided that they’d gotten it right with the classic Mac OS?

iOS 86, by designer Anton Repponen, is a conceptual mashup of iOS and the Mac OS. And against the odds of time and technology, the old interface still looks stunning on one of the world’s most advanced smartphones, don’t you think?

(via Fast Company)

Check out these beautifully designed Nabisco animal cracker...

Mon, 05 Mar 2012 12:53:14 -0800

Check out these beautifully designed Nabisco animal cracker boxes by designer Douglas Flournoy. The large bold type and simple imagery give the package a look of simplicity and modesty, ultimately giving it a bit of a higher-end makeover. The substrate is recycled paperboard, with plastic bagging on the inside encompassing the contents.

(via The Dieline)

Do.com, part of the salesforce.com family is the Social...

Wed, 29 Feb 2012 15:00:44 -0800

Do.com, part of the salesforce.com family is the Social Productivity App for your team. This amazing spot was created by creative advertising agency Muhtayzik|Hoffer in San Francisco. See how these adorable kids easily create and share tasks, projects and notes before their big election. Very cool!

Next time you cut your finger and need an adhesive bandage, you...

Tue, 28 Feb 2012 10:28:28 -0800

Next time you cut your finger and need an adhesive bandage, you could save someone’s life in the process. Not your own life, of course—unless that paper cut is particularly deep. You could save someone else’s life—someone who needs a bone-marrow transplant—thanks to Graham Douglas, a creative at Droga5. Douglas has come up with an ingenious way of spurring marrow-donor registrations—he’s getting Help Remedies to package donor kits with its adhesive bandage products. All you need is a drop of blood to complete the registration—a drop that may well be available if you’re reaching for a bandage. It’s called “Help I’ve cut myself & I want to save a life.” For Douglas, it was very personal project. In 2002, his identical twin brother was diagnosed with leukemia. He received a life-saving bone-marrow transplant and made a full recovery—something Douglas hopes to see for more of the 10,000 people in the U.S. who need marrow transplants each year.

(via AdFreak)

Nike has today announced the new Nike+ basketball and...

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 13:30:46 -0800

Nike has today announced the new Nike+ basketball and training shoes. In the shoes, the four embedded sensors—toe, heel, ball and outer foot—work with an internal accelerometer to accurately measure movement and relay stats to your iPhone wirelessly. Also, the three-axis accelerometer and Bluetooth sensor are contained in a removable disc that lasts for about 40 hours between charges, which are achieved using the included USB adapter. While the sensor arrays are the same in all shoes, the Nike+ apps the data is sent to provide the different approaches to tracking, motivation and sharing data. All the data gathered is meant not only to impress but to inspire, making a workout into something close to a game.

(via Cool Hunting)

Pretty collection showing the variation in take out cup lids...

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 15:39:09 -0800

Pretty collection showing the variation in take out cup lids from the 1990’s and early 00’s.

(via Flickr)

Google’s Valentine’s Day doodle, a sweet video packs a small but...

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 09:19:48 -0800

Google’s Valentine’s Day doodle, a sweet video packs a small but powerful social message about marriage equality and how materialism — even with the help of Google searches — can’t solve problems of the heart.

The doodle tells the story of a boy who has a crush on a jump-roping girl, and in an effort to woo her, uses Google to search for gift ideas. Then he reappears one day with a common interest — a jump rope — and wins her affections.

It’s humbling for Google to confess that even with its super powerful search engine capable of finding any and all gifts, such things can’t solve all our problems, especially when it comes to human emotions.

Another great moment comes at the tail end of the video. There’s a montage of a bunch of happy couples together. Perfect timing, too. Yesterday, Washington state legalized gay marriage — and the New Jersey Senate also voted in favor of allowing same-sex marriages, though the bill has some challenges ahead.

(via PCWorld)

The same day Kanye West and Jay-Z’s “Nigga In...

Sat, 11 Feb 2012 17:24:50 -0800

The same day Kanye West and Jay-Z’s “Nigga In Paris” video was released, it got videojacked, by these guys and they did a pretty dope job. The video is pretty intense, but really fascinating. Not sure if this was funded by the musicians themselves or a completely separate side project - regardless it’s worth checking out. Thank you to my friend @himnotthem for sharing this.

It’s hard not to love tilt-shift, and this video of Beijing...

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 09:41:09 -0800

It’s hard not to love tilt-shift, and this video of Beijing by Pixcube Animation Studio is a perfect example. The imagery tends to be pretty picturesque (like moving postcards) and the fact that you can’t really make anyone out adds to the iconic feeling of the images.

(via TheFoxisBlack)

When it comes to their gear, most athletes don’t have to resort...

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 13:17:15 -0800

When it comes to their gear, most athletes don’t have to resort to DIY. But self-customization was the reality for amputee athletes who needed soles for their prosthetic running blades, like competitive runner and marathoner Sarah Reinertsen. But now, Nike has created a sole that interlocks with the company’s Flex-Run Foot., called the Nike Sole. The only customizing amputee athletes will have to do now is when they decide whether they want a sole with traction for on- or off-road jaunts.