Production Designer

Obama for America is seeking a talented Production Designer to fill a contract position. The position requires strong design and typographical skills, with a deep passion and commitment for changing the world. We would require the individual to report to the campaign headquarters in Chicago on a daily basis, to work on production of our brand extensions such as, campaign flyers, posters, etc. Skills in Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, and we would prefer individuals with some Flash / XHTML / CSS abilities. Working for this campaign will likely be one of the most rewarding and taxing jobs you’ve had. Only extremely interested parties need apply.

To Apply: newmediajobs@barackobama.com

I want one.

So, Friday March 21, 2008 QBN presents The Art is War, a QBN Official
Photoshop Battle. The source image will be selected from this thread.
Then on Friday at 5:00AM PST the 19 hour battle begins, commencing at
12:00AM PST of the same day. On Monday, March 24th we will post The
Finalist Thread. You vote, winners will be announced….

Oh, and the Grand prize winner gets a Macbook Air.

http://www.dothetest.co.uk/

note: click on the image on the site to go to the next slide.

Met Russel in Portland at W+K Seeking.
He has some funny stuff.

Check out Walter’s stuff too.

So, i’ve been wanting to blog about this, and finally, after the last few days of overwhelming activities, i have time now to sit down and give an account of what happened in Portland, Oregon.

So what is this all about? For those whom i haven’t spoke to, Wieden+Kennedy launched a campaign in November seeking interesting people from all walks of life. I applied in December (we had to send in a pdf of 20 slides) just for the heck of it and surprisingly, got selected in March out of 1500 people from more than 24 different countries. Only 40 people were selected and invited to Portland with airfare and accomodation fully paid. From the beginning to the end, no one exactly knows what’s going on; they’ve been pretty vague about their intentions, although they mention that it’s somewhat about recruitment. Part of this trip was also to meet other creative people out in the world, which was really cool too. We all made new friends whom we probably never would have met if not for this event. 

———————————————————————————————

Portland, Oregon  March 6-9 2008

Day One (thursday):

Flew to Portland. Took the Max train to the Ace Hotel and checked in. It’s quite an awesome hotel as every room was unique and they even had bicycles for rent. We had a reception at 7pm in the hotel with some drinks and finger food. It was pretty awkward at first as no one knew anyone, well except for some who came with their friends, and it was kind of like ‘forced-socialization’. The people from W+K weren’t around, so we were left to ourselves wondering what’s going on. Some of us thought maybe they weren’t coming and that this was all a scam, or maybe this was some sort of reality tv show where they installed cameras in our hotel rooms, which we later realised that none of that was true. Some of us were not used to socializing with so many strangers at once, me being one of them, but later on felt more comfortable as we started to know more people. The people from W+K finally came, and they came around to shake hands with us, and i remmeber going around with Chemin to mingle with the others coz she was too shy. I also met Jim of the famed Body Report.

———————————————————————————————

Day Two (friday):

We began the morning with breakfast at The Living Room Theatres. Then we made our way into one of the rooms and presented our pdfs that we submitted to each other on a huge screen. This was one of the best highlights of the weekend because we learned so much from each other; just seeing all the different personalities presenting their ideas and work in the same room was such an inspirational experience. There were some famous people in that room: the creator of xanga.com was there, the guy who branded the whole TV Asahi was there, who was also the mind behind this famous Japanese variety show Matthew’s Best Hit TV (which was featured in Lost in Translation), the girl who came up with the idea of the manila envelope laptop sleeve for the MacBook Air was there and so on.  After that, we went down to W+K for a tour of the office. It was surprisingly huge, and it looked alot bigger than the photos that you see in their blog. We had lunch on the 6th floor, and after that, John Jay gave us a presentation on what W+K is up to around the world. It was really enlightening and alot of the good work that we saw weren’t exactly featured on their main website. It helped me understand that W+K is not merely just an adveritisng firm, where they take clients’ briefs and solve problems, but that they also generate their own content. In short, they aren’t really looking for designers, but for people who can come up with original ideas.

After the presentation, we met up with the creative directors at W+K individually, in a sort of speed-dating fashion. It didnt seem like an interview though, they were basically asking us if we liked Portland and if we would wanna move out here. Most of them had already seen our work, but we showed them anyway just to remind them of who did what. The creative directors were really nice and humble, oh and i got to sit in that nest in the sixth floor! Dinner came after at the hotel, and we all had dinner together,the participants and the W+K people. They mixed us up so that we would mingle again, and i got to sit with Tyler, who was the CD on the Nike account, and Christian from Belgium. Dinner was filled with lots of food and chatting, but it was also our last interaction with W+K for the weekend. The next day in Portland was meant to be a free and easy day.

———————————————————————————————

Day Three (Saturday):

 So a few of us gathered to have dim sum in chinatown. It was pretty awesome and cheap and we walked around after to look at books and clothes. We bumped into John Jay in one of the stores and he invited us to visit his studio which was nearby. He was really friendly and for some reason he took a group shot of us in his studio. It felt kind of unreal, checking out his personal studio after his inspiring presentation the day before. We journeyed on to explore Portland and ended up in Powell’s books in the afternoon, the largest bookstore in USA, or so they claim. The good thing about Portland is that they have no sales tax, and so some of us splurged on books as much as we can before we went back to our tax-filled cities. Dinner was at 6.30pm, and a bunch of us decided to check out the Lebanese restaurant. One of the participants in W+K Seeking was performing that night in a bar in Portland, so we made our way down to give our support. It was pretty cool seeing a whole bunch of people from different cultures filling up the bar and making a whole lot of noise. I flew off that very night and that was the end of my W+K Seeking adventure.

———————————————————————————————

So what happens from here? I have no idea. 

link to Christian’s report of the Portland weekend.

to john: this is an interesting way to display a portfolio, check it out.

Christiane Feser Frauen

Out of context photoshopping usually reserved for models in magazines etc.

http://www.suture.com/

Established in November 2001, The Future Laboratory is recognised internationally for its innovative approach to trend forecasting, consumer insight and brand strategy. Via our 3,000-strong global LifeSigns Network and in-house team of trend analysts and ethnographic researchers, we offer clients qualitative and quantitative insights into future consumers and how to target them. Clients in the retail, technology, finance, automotive, food, fashion and creative industries sectors use our daily, weekly and quarterly news feeds, insight reports, analyses, strategy documents and brand personality audits to keep their brand on track, and their marketing, strategy and research teams informed and insightful.

Fabrica, the Benetton research centre on communication, is primarily a meeting place. Meetings between people, of course, but also between artistic fields, languages, forms of expression, territories. Even the space, the architecture is witness to this. An old villa, restored and augmented by one of the most renowned contemporary architects, Tadao Ando, like a bridge thrown between the past and the future, with cement roots solidly anchored into the earth and columns that stretch into the emptiness to hold up the sky. Is Fabrica a school? A research center? A cultural reservoir? Fabrica is a little of each but in the end doesn’t allow itself to be rigidly cataloged and homogenized. This is also a sign of its uniqueness and innovation. So far, as a center for the production of culture, it has been actively involved with films awarded prizes at international festivals, books, CDs and DVDs published by renowned publishers, musical projects, exhibitions, objects and international campaigns for major institutions. Each year a group of young artists invited from all over the world, is dedicated, through photography, design, music,video, writing, interactive and visual communication, to uncover the future.

Fabrica Exhibition in Shaghai
“Les Yeux Ouverts” check out this section for Video Diary

Haha, after ur awesome type class experience Nelson, wouldn’t you want to be stuck in the woods thinking about trajan columns? This is actually at an Island near Vancouver, and I think can actaully be quite an interesting summer event. If I’m around then, why not..

The Myth of Innovation: Pretty Long, dunno how youtube allowed it, but really interesting..I found myself wanting to watch till the end :)

A guy in W+K Shanghai stumbled upon a little town near the border between China and Korea where all the kids in this town were into beatboxing. The beatboxing culture is so intense there even though they are in a rural area. W+K later on took 4 of these kids, brought them to Shanghai, put them on stage and had a blast of an event.

This is fucking awesome.

Nice work, interesting typefaces and good presentation of work (format and site).

JT: When studios start out, they spend a lot of time telling clients what they can offer. Now, you’re telling clients how they should behave. What was the impetus for the How to Be a Better Client book? It all seems rather tongue in cheek, but I gather you did it for a reason.

read more of the interview here.

FREE: download the “How to be a better client” here

French poster and design festival…