Last month, Shepard Fairy rolled into Cincinnati, pasting his iconic murals all over town and hanging a TON of work in the Contemporary Art Center. Lookin’ hip, Cincinnati.

Next up: More around-town murals, this time provided by The London Police.

“Born in Chelmsford, Essex, The London Police founders, Chaz and Bob, moved to Amsterdam in 1998. Recognized for their iconic LADS characters and precision marking, TLP is universally renowned as “pivotal voices in the history of street art.” Their acclaimed works include: murals of titanic proportion, (The largest can be found in Kreuzberg, Berlin a mere 6 story outdoor installation.) coveted original canvases, short films and even shorter music quips of high regard.” – BLDGrefuge.com

Fresh from across the pond, they have been drawing murals and completing pieces for their opening at the BLDG gallery in Covington this Friday, 8-11pm. Come on down and watch me, Julie Hill, and a few other local illustrators join the London Police lads to rock out a final mural, live and in person.

At its inception, Bounce fabric softener was created for and reflective of an era steeped in new modern convenience. With only negligible updates to the brand identity since the late 1970’s, Bounce needed to find a way to rekindle that energetic spirit, and reignite people’s excitement about the brand.

Older Bounce Packaging

HQ was approached to redesign the Bounce brand and launch a new Premium Scent Line Extension, Awakenings, as well as updating additional SKUs within the brand, in order to both strengthen the brand’s equity and increase stopping power in the retail environment. For each element in the project, (Base Bounce, Awakenings and assorted Club SKUs) HyperQuake developed Aspirational Design Targets and influenced brand exploration through brand board development, strategic process, consumer focus groups, vision work and technical exploration.

HQ also updated Bounce’s logo, paying homage to the 30-year-old brand while also giving it a new, modern feel and energy.

The result was a modern, clean package which creates a billboard effect on shelf, making the product both visually stunning and easier for consumers to find. HyperQuake’s work on this project was featured on several prominent design blogs, such as Brand New and The Die Line, to positive reviews. One reviewer commented, “Dig it. It’s got bounce.”

Up until this point, watches have served a few key purposes. Of course, the importance of telling the wearer of one what time it is has been key to their success over the years, however, we can’t forget innovations that helped pushed them into new and better applications, extending their reach and value beyond the mere aspect of showing you the hour/minutes of the day.

First came the watch that integrated the calculator on keypad, arming the watch with the power of a Texas Instruments super-calculator. At 12:45pm someone asked you to find out the square root of the number 765 you say? Before this innovation hit, you just weren’t in a position to do that. Then came the ever-successful remote control watch. This came in especially handy in high school when TVs were installed in the classroom and students were able to surreptitiously turn on and off the TV during class, much to the surprise and bewilderment of many teachers and substitutes. Lastly on the innovation front for watches was the indiglo light which took a mere backlit display to a whole new level, allowing the wearer to not only see the time at night, but also utilize the watch as a flashlight in a number of instances.

Well, it appears the watch has done it again and with a level of design-style.
Enter, the Happy Hour Watch.

If you like to know the time, but also regularly find yourself in situation where beverages are served that require a bottle opener, well borrowing and modifying a line from an unnamed beer manufacturer, “This watch is for you!” With digital and analog read outs, a solid/large face design and a sharp looking layout, as a watch guy myself, I’m pretty impressed. When you think about what the watches above looked like back in the day, the Happy Hour Watch is on its way to revolutionizing the industry. Well perhaps not revolutionizing, but having fun and delivering with some style, the makers are on the right path with that.

This year’s Oscar winner for Best Animated Short Film, Logorama, is seriously, seriously awesome. Buy it on iTunes for $1.99, and watch a hostage crisis with perp Ronald McDonald, exciting car chases, plenty of swears and a delightful onslaught of logos. If your boss catches you and is like, omgwtfNSFW just be like, “It’s cool, see? Logos. This is totally research.”

Check out a great interview with the filmmakers here.

This might be one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen – One Bit Increment created an interactive website using handmade papercut shapes and figures, which were then individually photographed and animated in flash. You can also play along and move the animals like a video game. Visit the site, then check out the creation process here.

By the way, the scene transforms into nighttime when the sun sets in Los Angeles. The weather (wind and rain) is also driven by Los Angeles data retrieved from Yahoo weather.

Yeah, I’ll admit it. I LOVE PROPER PUNCTUATION AND GRAMMAR. I’m not ashamed to say I’ve read Eats, Shoots and Leaves no fewer than three times, and Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style currently resides on my desk. What of it? And now I no longer have to compromise grammatically when making stuff for the Internets, with this handy guide! Typography Quick Tips, from CSS Wizardry.

Ellipses Mac shortcut: Option + ;
Ellipses PC alt code: Alt + 0133

The Bengals finally made the playoffs last year and, as luck would have it, hosted the game at Paul Brown Stadium, right here in HQ’s hometown. The team wanted to create a really exciting Playoff Book to be sold during the game, and they felt HyperQuake would be a great fit for taking the design to the next level.

The goal of the project was to create a commemorative piece to showcase the Bengals’ awesome accomplishment. We all agreed that teamwork should be the primary focus of the design – the Bengals view making the playoffs as a collective achievement – with a strong emphasis on the host city of Cincinnati as well.

The end result was an exciting design that hit all of the team’s objectives and really made the Bengals come across as the high caliber team they are. Despite the fact that the game didn’t finish in the Bengals’ favor, fans can still cherish the memories, and have the playoff book to prove it.

70 Million by Hold Your Horses ! from L'Ogre on Vimeo.

Anyone who’s been through art or design school has probably had to sit through a color theory class or two. There truly is a lot of interesting science behind the way particular colors and combination of tones behave optically: how you can fake three-dimensionality by splitting color channels and wearing blue- and red-lensed glasses, how two squares of the same grey can look totally different surrounded by contrasting fields of color, OMG and don’t even get me started on synesthesia. No argument that all that stuff is really fascinating.

What I’ve never been a huge fan of are things like color forecasting, or testing 41 shades of blue to see which “performs better”. I tend to fall more in the camp described by Stephen Drucker (editor of House Beautiful Magazine) who, in a recent Huffington Post article, compared color to sex.

“Color is like sex. It’s mysterious. It’s unknowable. It never looks the same twice. No two people see the same thing. No two people feel the same thing. I once went to China on a cruise ship. Eight hundred of us got off the ship wearing white, because it feels festive and shippy and says “I’m on a cruise.” In China white is the color of mourning. We
looked insane.”

We all know that movie releases are big business, and that social media has moved to the center of all things marketing-related, thus how social media is handled by movie studios is a core component to a modern film’s success. But let’s face it, it’s annoying to have to go to the movie’s microsite AND Facebook AND YouTube AND Twitter etc etc for your movie info. Total ugh, amiright? Not to mention it is also annoying and expensive for studios to build all that for every movie. It is this exact issue that Lionsgate Films, partnered with online media firm ThisMoment, aim to address in promotion of LG’s new film, Kick-Ass.

ThisMoment has developed the Distributed Engagement Channel, which essentially aggregates all of a movie’s social media stuff (Twitter/Myspace/Facebook/YouTube comments and ability to friend/follow/subscribe in those channels), and all of the movie’s official stuff (videos, downloads, contests etc.) into one place, which is THEN posted up onto Myspace, Facebook and YouTube in theoretical-lieu of a custom microsite/branding for each of those sites. (Although they HAVE covered all their bases with a traditional movie website as well in this case. Baby steps.)

The advantage to users and fans is obvious (so convenient!), but less apparent is the advantage afforded to Lionsgate in this move. The Distributed Engagement Channel technology is controlled by one single CMS system, allowing LG to manage their content on all the social channels at once (except Twitter, alas!) and providing consolidated metrics all in one place. Simplicity FTW!

There is a pretty confusing article on Ad Age about it, I recommend reading through the comments, there is a great dialogue going on between commenters and representatives from ThisMoment.

Thanks to Chris Strong for the tip.