Caine’s Arcade

Since our whole project revolves around creativity and visual culture (and maybe also a little bit of entrepreneurship to some extend), today I want to show you something cute which will hopefully make you smile or maybe even shed a tear of hapiness…

Earlier this year I came across this video of Caine, who build his own Arcade in the car shop of his father in East LA. The amount of creativity, originality and just dedication of this little 9 year old boy really warms my heart. On the other hand the power of social media and a movie (as part of visual culture) also really impressed me. BUT there is not much more to say about it, you have to see for yourself…

Enjoy!

 SH

Networking Session 2.0 a.k.a. next step towards social innovation

As my colleagues have already mentioned, we have had our second experiment today – or as we call it ‘Creative Network Session 2.0’!

Here’s a brief update on what has been going on today in the Academy for Leisure Breda, NL…

As you know (if not, go read our previous posts ;D) the first session was about defining problems within the food sector which could be solved by means of social innovation – for this we have invited people from the food sector and people from visual culture, to  have the creative input. Since the results of the first session were still rather broad and due to the positive feedback of the participants, we have decided to carry out a second session and to test more creative techniques to make the ideas more concrete.

The techniques we have used were the Six Thinking Hats by De Bono (see my colleague’s post here) and an adaption of the world café method, which is about creating a special environment and dividing the participants into several groups, giving them the chance to discuss and share ideas in three rounds (where each member of the group is moving to a different table after each round).

We have combined this method with the six thinking hats and have ‘themed’ each round with a different hat – the outcomes we, or better the participants, have achieved after this were more concrete and workable. Furthermore, we hope to have persuaded the participants to take the initiative to work on this project and to take it a step closer to social innovation, since we will not be able to do so in this short time frame (yep, we’re almost done with studying and preparing ourselves for our bachelor’s degree!).

Cannot really say anything about the outcomes at this moment, since we need to evaluate them first – therefore, I suggest that you stay tuned for more updates!

Pictures tell more than words, so here are a few impressions of today’s session!

GZM

How to Launch a Milkshake

Dear Readers,

We are having our Creative Network Session 2.0 tomorrow and we’re currently pretty busy with the preparation to make sure it’s going to be as successful as possible! That’s why I won’t be writing a long, extensive post today… Apologies! But don’t be too sad cause I do want to share something really cool!

Two weeks ago I showed you ‘Dumb Ways to Die” which is in my opinion a fantastic example of creative marketing, but I have another video for you today. It is basically an interactive marketing campaign in the form of a modern treasure hunt. And guess what? It is all about a milkshake! Watch the video to find out what happens to cows in Norway:

Keep an eye on this blog if you want to know which ideas come out of the Creative Network Session!

A.S.

Typography

These days I have spent a lot of time on my computer typing reports for the final weeks of school. I noticed that I always use the same font and started wondering about different ones and their influence. Today I thought I would share this with you.

Typoraphy is the art and technique to make language visible. The term comprises type faces, point size, line lenght and spacing and several other factors. The most commonly used fonts are probably Times New Roman or the new standard font “Calibri” by word. But there are many more than just these. On visualswirl.com I found a few very nice examples of Typography in Marketing.

Optimum Health – Never Eat More Than You Can Lift

Huawei – Finger Fun

Gulf News – Second Thing in the Morning

Bombay Red Cross – Martin Luther King

 

Jung von Matt – Anatomy of a Great Idea

Rogaine – Thinner

Typography is actually a pretty important tool for marketing. Logos for brands like  for example Coca Cola are completely based on just the typography and can create a unique value of brand recognition.

I personally have never paid attention to typography before, but the examples I found on visualswirl.com and blogs like ilovetypography.com or welovetypograpgy.com are very inspiring and creative.

 
Take a minute and have a look and get inspired. Enjoy!

 

SH

 

 

Tip for the weekend!

Amsterdam Art Weekend

This weekend November 30 and December 1 and 2 is the Amsterdam Art Weekend. Explore the contemporary art scene throughout the entire city. 27 leading and best-known art institutes will participate and present some interesting contemporary art pieces. And to get you warmed up a bit I will show you some of the exhibitions that can be seen this weekend.

If you are interested to visit, or just interested, take a look at their website http://www.capitala.nl

Nicole

Dumb Ways to Die!

Marketing campaigns that are aiming at raising awareness for safety usually make use of the ‘’shock effect’’. For an old campaign a video of a train passing by, followed by someone zipping up a body bag was showed. However, this video is seen as ineffective nowadays and people do not like to be told what to do.

Today, I would like to share a creative marketing campaign that was devised by advertising agency McCann Melbourne. Since we’ve seen this video we have been singing the song over and over again and I must warn you that you probably won’t get it out of your head either.

The key metrics for the new campaign were simple and easy: It must be incredibly likable and different and it must tell a story. McCann Melbourne’s success also derived from the fact that they know their audience. This video is what came out of it (Keep an eye on the skeleton in the back, he’s my favourite!):

YouTube said that this is the biggest shared campaign ever, with reaching over 28,000,000 views in just two weeks time. It is a long term campaign and they are currently working on the development of games and books for schools. The message from Metro Trains Melbourne is very clever and clear in my opinion and the song (by Tangerine Kitty) is brilliant. So be safe around the train guys! And don’t use your private parts as piranha bait….

A.S.

Natures Visual Art

As you all know,  last week we have been very busy with the preparation for the creative network sessions. I apologize for the delay in posting! To make up for that I am gonna present you something really amazing today, the Aurora Borealis.

About a year ago I had the incredible possibility to see one of the most impressive naturally occuring phenomenons, a true display of visual art in nature: the Aurora Borealis also known as the Nothern Lights.

The Aurora Borealis, is a light display caused by the collision of energetic charged particles with atoms in the high altitude atmosphere. It is a simply amazing picture and has been one of the most inspiring moments of my life. You can see the Northern Lights in the northern parts of countries like Finland, Norway, Sweden and Alaska, but also in high altitudes in Canada, Iceland and northern Russia. Enough with the technical stuff, here is a incredible video about the Aurora Borealis in Finland. Sit back, relax and enjoy!

 

And a little picture with proof:

 

I can’t explain the feeling when I stepped out of the house and saw the colors dancing right above us. It was worth every second of standing out in -15°C. I highly encourage everyone to go on an adventure like this.

Have you ever seen something truly amazing like this? Visual Art created by nature? I would love to hear some of your experiences…

SH

 

Green up the city!

Street art or graffiti has always been and always will be the guerilla kind of visual culture. One of my colleagues has recently posted about Banksy in her post ‘Banging your head against a brick wall’.

Today I would like to write about guerilla gardening, specifically about the technique Moss Graffiti.

I have seen posts and instructions how to make moss graffiti on several websites and blogs and was really impressed and inspired by this movement. Moss graffiti is basically the green version of regular graffiti – mixing moss with natural ingredients (here is a tutorial if you ever want to try this out) and painting this mixture on walls and other objects. The difference, apart from the obvious, is that this kind of graffiti needs to be watered – it is a living object!

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Most of the people are opposed to graffiti because in their opinion it is vandalism of public and private properties – but I believe that graffiti adds value to the character of a city and makes it unique in its own way. And moss graffiti is a great new approach to turn this much hated illegal guerilla art movement into something that is socially more accepted. Everybody is talking about eco-friendliness and sustainability – eco-friendly graffiti that green up cities? Nothing wrong with that!

Unfortunately I have not seen any moss graffiti in real life yet but I hope that these pieces of art will pop up everywhere soon.

Green up your cities!

GZM

Social Innovation sessions with network opportunity 2.0

As promised, today we will give you an insight into the content and set up of the two sessions we have planned on Thursday the 22nd of November.

For the past 10 weeks, the members of the Bridge Research Agency worked hard to set up a foundation of research on which an experiment concerning social innovation would be built. This research, concerning best practices, stakeholders, networking, social innovation and of course the issues, trends and current situation of North-Brabant in relation to the sectors of food and visual culture, has been conducted by performing over 17 expert interviews, reviewing scientific and governmental documents and reading numerous books and reports.

Because of this research, we are able to set up an experiment with several stakeholders that aim to create social innovation. This experiment, or better said these ‘creative networking sessions’, will bring people together from two completely different sectors in which they cooperate to form innovative ideas or concepts that aim to solve, partially solve or contribute to creating awareness for problems within the food sector.

These sessions will include stakeholders from both the visual culture and the food sector and are designed to stimulate social innovation. Therefore several methods and techniques will be applied during these sessions to test their effectiveness. The results of the experiment will be published in the next edition of the Uncover Magazine.

On Thursday the 22nd of November we will have two creative networking sessions, which both have their own topic. The first session will concern problems in the food industry in relation to health and lifestyle; such as overconsumption of salt or food waste from consumers. And the second session will concern problems in the food industry in relation to agriculture, production and packaging; such as intensive farming or recycling.
These sessions consist of two active parts in which we display problems within the sector, discuss these, brainstorm about possible solutions and design these by creating a more concrete idea or concept. Furthermore, as well as in between the two sessions and afterwards, there will be an opportunity to network with others over some delicious finger food and beverages.

Are you active within the visual culture sector or the food industry? Are you looking for networking opportunities? But above all, did we raise your interest? If you would like to participate or know someone that would like to come, just sent us an email to bridge.researchagency@gmail.com.

Don’t hesitate to contact us!

Tessa.

”Healthier Men, One Moustache at a Time”

As you all know by now (I hope), our project is about finding creative solutions to societal challenges and problems. Today, I would like to write about a project that does the same thing and has become very well-known over the previous years. It challenges people to do something collectively in order to raise awareness (and money) for a certain problem. Do you  already have idea what it is when I say it is related to November?

Exactly, Movember. The concept is rather simple: The challenge starts on the first of November with thousands of clean shaven men, who will let their moustaches grow for the next 30 days. The aim is to seek sponsorships for these efforts in order to raise money for prostate cancer research. Why is this project successful? Because In 2011, Movember raised $126 million in 14 countries! Pretty succesful in my opinion!

Below you can find a video with Adam Garone (co-founder of Movember):

Movember

“Movember—the growing tradition for men to sport a mustache during the month of November to raise awareness of prostate cancer—will soon be on the tip of everyone’s tongue—or lip rather. ” Los Angeles Magazine

A.S.