Marty McFly: Nike seems to have filed patent papers for a shoe that will automatically lace itself - citizens of Maine will be relieved to hear this, since it’s illegal to walk down the street with your shoes untied there.
Ping Pong Wine: To try to create some buzz for their in-house package designers, Rethink created a series of table wines to show off their skills. (Sample text from one of the labels: “At Rethink, we believe great package design is like a ping-pong table: it should inspire intense competition and heated dialogue. Not to mention the occasional fist pump and victory dance”). We love the self-promo and wish wine was really labeled and packaged this way.
Boardwalk Empire: Take a look at this ad for HBO’s Boardwalk Empire, a new series taking place during Prohibition in, of all places, Atlantic City. The MTA bus station ad features a glass bottle filled with moonshine — each day closer to the premiere, the liquid in the bottle goes down, smoothly. (via @mattrichardson)
Get Your Sweet On: Not for any other reason than besides showing their sweet side (and, ahem, to drive traffic to the store), Opening Ceremony is offering in-store Candygrams. You can leave a card and lollipop candygram for a special someone and the swoonee can only get it by picking it up from the store - someone can do this for me at their Ace Hotel location.
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Talk Dirty (Laundry) to Me: Kenmore released a series of washer/dryers that come equipped with pretty fresh technology – when you have a service issue, you press some buttons on the machine, then hold your cell phone up to the unit (the service number will have already been dialed) and the machine will transmit data through the phone to the company and pinpoint exactly what is wrong.
What Would You Do For a Cool Mil?: Yesterday, we saw some pretty bizarre offerings – British billionaire Alki David will give a million dollars to the first person to flash President Obama – the one condition: “Battlecam” must be written across that person’s chest. Check out the explanation for that one here. The second – Anderson Cooper was offered a sweet mil by a company promoting Go Away Gray – a pill that will apparently turn gray hair back to it’s original color. Don’t do it, Andy!
A Dollar Is What I Need: The Dollar ReDe$ign Project hopes by rebranding US bills, we can rebuild our economy, and their latest entry by graphic design firm Dowling Duncan is making waves.
Save the English Language: In an attempt to take back the English language from our LOL-laden society, the Oxford University Press developed a new website, Save The Words. Along with simply browsing words that are almost extinct (most don’t even come up on Dictionary.com, gasp!), the site gives you humorous tips on how to revitalize these words, extends a “word-a-day” email offering (not to be confused with yours truly, “word. daily.”) and allows you to “adopt a word.” My foster word is “traboccant” – meaning SUPER abundant. Used in a sentence: I have a traboccant yearning for a Red Robin Whiskey River BBQ Burger.
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Now that AOL is spinning off from Time Warner, it has of course decided to rebrand itself. The company just released these new sneak peeks at its new look, and I’m not sure I like what they’re going for. Obviously that tired blue triangle had to go, but calling the company “Aol.” (yep, period and all) instead of “AOL” gives the impression that it should be pronounced as a phonetic word that sounds similar to “owl,” rather than being an acronym.
Minus the whole massive layoffs thing, I like the direction AOL has been going in as a company (less about e-mail for your grandma, more about editorial publishing), but I think they need to go back to the drawing board on this one. The new branding will be fully revealed on December 10. I’m kind of scared.
I’m not sure that this necessarily falls into the “digital trends” category — but I’ve always had a rather loose definition of that concept.
This is the ElectroluxScan Toaster — developed by Sung Bae Chang and entered into the Electrolux Design Contest. The premise is simple: you hook up the toaster to your computer via USB and then download an image, news story, or Cathy cartoon to the toaster. The modules within the machine then realign and toast the image onto your bread.
I don’t want to overstate this, but I’m fairly certain that this is the best thing to ever happen in the history of mankind. Take that, Guttenberg.
The paradigm of publishing is shifting, evidenced by this week’s Conde Nast closures. Newspapers and magazines need to move with the times, and that might mean literally embracing movement.
Entertainment Weekly and Esquire generated serious buzz with their respective forays into the integration of motion + magazine. What’s next? Check out the above video, which shows where the future of magazines could be headed. It is a fascinating look at what might be in store for a changing industry. It is also a helpful catalyst for thinking about how the public relations industry will shift in response.
