ICM blog

Weetabix Steeplechase

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 15:40:09 +0100

Whilst watching television the other night an advert came on featuring a horse race, nothing out of the ordinary there. But as this race was taking place the jockey fell off his horse and to my amazement, the horse told him to go on and finish the race – which the jockey won. It turned out the advert was for Weetabix but until this was stated in the advert I had no idea what this was advertising.

I really like they way that Weetabix have done this advert by not stating from the very beginning who the advertisement is for they leave the audience guessing. They are not placing (or singing) their brand at you every opportunity like the annoying ‘Go Compare’ adverts. They just keep it simple by saying ‘Someone’s had their Weetabix’ at the end. It even made me laugh a little too!

Changing the Face of Men's Health

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 11:46:57 +0100

Movember is an annual, month-long celebration of the moustache, highlighting men’s health issues, specifically prostate cancer.

Mo Bros, supported by their Mo Sistas, start Movember (November 1st) clean shaven and then have the remainder of the month to grow and groom their moustache. During Movember, each Mo Bro effectively becomes a walking billboard for men’s health and, via their Mo, raises essential funds and awareness for Movember’s men’s health partner – The Prostate Cancer Charity.

To date, Movember has raised over £30 million globally for the fight against prostate cancer and depression in men. And, more importantly, as a direct result, male awareness of health issues has improved with Movember helping to spread health messages directly to millions of Mo Bros & Sistas around the world.

Going forward, Movember will continue to work towards helping to change established habits and attitudes and make men aware of the risks they face, thereby increasing early detection, diagnosis and effective treatment.

To donate to this worthy cause (and to see members of ICM with once-in-a-lifetime moustaches) please visit the official donation page for our Movember Team: Moustaches Beyond Design HERE

Branding Geeks Of The World Rejoice!!

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 15:39:07 +0100

No longer will you have to stick up with parties where you have to use this General Knowledge and Intelligence stuff!!. Now you can use your knowledge of marketing, branding and everyday advertising. Geography? Popular Music? Science??!!?? I don’t think so . . . Wow your guests with the quickfire answers to partially obscured icons and images. Dazzle your neighbours with your Google-esqe prowess of breakfast cereal character names.

Awesome . . .

On the flipside – what does this say about the state of board games today? Have they run out of ideas? There are plenty of film franchise and TV show tie-in games around (I am pretty sure I have seen a High School Musical game kicking around my daughters bedroom!). They have become the norm as part of the larger moneymaking machine around productions like that.

But what target market is THIS game aiming for? Surely not JUST designers and marketeers? Or has the society as a while become SO used to brands, image, marketing and in particular logos, that we absorb it as part of daily life – Like background noise, does a logo have the same effect even if it is in your peripheral vision? Have we become SO used to branding that products and services are seen as having a lesser value if they have little or no branding?

What do you think? Are you a Logo Geek? Can you tell the difference between flavors of Walkers crisps just by the colour of packet?

Halloween!

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 15:23:43 +0100

With Halloween fast approaching us, how creative are you being? Will you be making your own scary costume or making some gruesome food to give to the local Trick or Treaters that come knocking?

When most people buy their pumpkin for Halloween, they usually just carve a scary looking simple face but there are so many more possibilities for pumpkin art.

To use up the insides of your pumpkins you could then make a traditional pumpkin pie, a pumpkin cauldron which is pumpkin and chicken stew or for something a little more sweet some chocolate, pumpkin and pecan brownies

For more pumpkin recipes click here

Halloween is the time of year when people can get very creative with their food. An easy way to make sweet treats scary would be to make cakes or biscuits and decorate them. You could make some spider web chocolate fudge muffins or some hooting Halloween owls

For those very creative out there you could make some like these brain cakes.

For more Halloween recipe ideas click here

Halloween is also a time where people can become very creative with their costumes, here at icm we have Ben who is dressing up as a Skeleton and Haley who is dressing up as Poison Ivy. We would like to see pictures of these please!

Let us know if you make any scary food or dress up this Halloween.

Otl Aicher

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 16:55:11 +0100

Otl Aicher created possible the finest set of sports posters for the 1972 Olympics, and I’d go as far as saying the finest sports posters ever. He is held in such high regard over his involvement with that olympics that he set the bench mark for many future designs.The posters are timeless and wouldn’t look out of place at this years olympics.

What made them so great was the fact they captured the nature of each event they represented, simplistic yet bold and with great use of typography.

The canoe and 100 metre sprint posters capture the movement of the sport so well because of their simplicity, straight lines on the track give the feeling of speed, and the mass of texture on the canoe poster make you feel the power of the rapids.

The boxing poster has an certain intensity because of the contrasting colours, almost looking like a thermal image you can feel the heat of the two boxers.

In contrast the on archery poster you get a sense of concentration due to the calmness of the olympians face.

I’m really looking forward to the 2012 London olympics posters and hope they live up to the standards set by a truly great designer.

Hello Baby Wardle!

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 10:32:11 +0100

We would like to congratulate our Account Manager Louise on the safe arrival of her little baby boy. Oliver David Wardle as born on Thursday 8th October, only 1 day after Louise had began her maternity leave!

Louise, Chris and Oliver came in to visit us last Friday so we could say hello to Oliver – we were all amazed to see how much hair he has for a new born as you can see from the picture below.

Creative Insight: Physical Theatre

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 14:29:41 +0100

The term ‘physical theatre’ tends to conjure images of nothing more than crazy, hippy-types exclaiming ‘I’m a tree’ at the top of their voices. These people are alive and well waving their branches in the breeze, but physical theatre is much more than this and when done well is completely mind-blowing.

There is much debate as to how physical theatre started. A relatively new term (it has only been kicking around since the 1900’s – not long in the theatre world), even today it is often used as an umbrella term encompassing mime, contemporary dance, physical comedy, puppetry, mask theatre, acrobatics, circus skills and anything else that doesn’t easily fall into a typical genre. I tend to describe it as the telling of a story by primarily using the actor’s bodies rather than traditional means – some guy juggling dressed as a clown is not physical theatre! There may still be a script or it may be (more than likely) devised, but the outcome will still be highly visible.

Some believe that the form originated from mime. John-Louis Barrault started a revolution against the notion that all mime must be silent, utilising music and then voice within the physicality of the performance. One of his more famous performances was in the Children of Paradise:

Apparently our dearly departed Michael Jackson got the idea for the Moonwalk from Barrault’s performance in this movie.

It is widely acknowledged that physical theatre has been heavily influenced by the work of Bertolt Brecht.

His ‘Epic Theatre’ was a reaction to the naturalistic style which prevailed in the early 1920’s. In epic theatre pieces, the audience are not encouraged to identify with individual characters emotions, but rather encouraged to engage in thought. Brecht saw the naturalistic ‘getting lost in the character’s emotions’ style as merely a means of escapism – nothing more than a latter day soap opera. He thought theatre could be much much more; a tool to make society think. It should be accessible to the working classes and audiences will be aware they are watching a play but will move along with it questioning, rather than ‘getting lost.’ He used surrealism to great effect to break the audience link with the characters.

His earliest use of epic theatre in one of his own plays was “The Life of Edward II of England”, but perhaps his most famous play is “The Threepenny Opera”

seen here randomly starring Cyndi Lauper…I don’t know how much Brecht would approve of this…

Actors would frequently ‘break the fourth wall’ and address the audience, a devise which hasn’t aged a day, now being used to great effect on television programmes with ‘to camera’ narrative. My favourite use of it is in Malcolm in the Middle, which also uses a great deal of surrealism making it very Brechtian indeed!

This surreal, non conformist style lent itself well to physical theatre and cemented the genre into the theatre landscape.

Physical theatre has also picked up parts of Eastern culture in its development – Noh, a form of Japanese music theatre was heavily drawn upon.

Theorists like Jerzy Grotowski took the highly physical training the Noh actors had to pass through and used it as inspiration for their physical theatre theories.

Grotowski was responsible for ‘The Poor Theatre’ theory, the idea that the actor’s voice and body skills should be the primary spectacle on stage. Grotowski removed everything that could distract the audience from the actor. No more elaborate sets, lights and sound. The relationship between the audience and the actor became the emphasis of the production.

In his actor’s workshops, which he called a laboratory, the focus was on the actor. He focused on stripping down the actor into his essential self. The techniques and exercises used in Grotowski’s laboratory required serious concentration and commitment. The actor needed to find the strength of his natural voice and body. The perfection of the techniques was not as important as the awareness of the process. The video below shows one of Grotowski’s laboratories in action. He obviously felt the need to strip their clothes away too…!

As it stands today, there are a number of successful physical theatre companies across the world, some of the most successful of which being in England.

DV8 started in the 1980’s when a group of dancers became disillusioned with the direction of most modern dance.

The Chotto Ookii Theatre Company are based in our very own Leeds, forming into 2005 but already doing really well and getting great reviews at the Edinburgh Festival. Visit their website here: Chotto Ookii Theatre Company

Then there is one of my favourite theatre companies, Forced Entertainment based in Sheffield who produce the most wonderful, thought provoking pieces. There website can be found here: Forced Entertainment

If you haven’t seen any physical theatre before I would urge you to. Granted, there is a lot of rubbish out there, but there is in any theatre genre, or artform for that matter. When it is done well nothing can beat it in my humble opinion!

2012 Olympics pictograms launched

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 12:31:22 +0100

There has been a lot of debate in the office about the London 2012 olympic logo designed by Wolff Ollins, who likes it, who doesn’t, is it now, is it street (only time I will ever use this term I promise). Personally at first I must admit I hated it, now though it’s grown on me and seems to be getting a lot more younger people interested in the olympics.

So following on from the logo one of the most eagerly-awaited design elements of the London 2012 Olympics was definitely the pictograms, everybody remembers Otl Aicher’s set for Munich in 1972

These set the standard for years to come, and are what all new pictograms get compared to.
SomeOne a London design practice was given the task of creating the new set, looking at the criticism the logo got it was an unenviable task.

The concept for the pictograms and one of the outcomes of this was to create two style versions – a silhouette version used for high visibility and information-based applications, and a dynamic version used both as decoration and where a more exciting version is called for, such as on posters or banners.

Again at first I wasn’t sure about the silhouette version, I’m sure this will grow on me. I really like the dynamic version though which apparently was inspired by the London Underground map and can see potential when animated or, for example, rendered in 3D.

Below are some additional images from the SomeOne site showing the ‘dynamic’ set in use

Could the pictograms and these rival the Munich Games versions?

WOAH!!! Branded Cornflakes!!!!!

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 13:59:16 +0100

WOAH!!!!!

A story that has appeared – that at first seemed like a hoax – turns out to be true!! Kellogg’s are testing LASER ENGRAVING ON THEIR PRODUCTS!!!!! For those of you that want to know the whole story – other than the fact that – DUDE!!!!! LASER ENGRAVED CORNFLAKES!!!!! WOAH!!!!!

Then here are the links:

From the Daily Mail

From Kelloggs’ website

The idea being that Kellogg’s (The Original and Best) want to give the cheaper brands something to think about – BY SHOOTING A LASER AT THE FLAKES AND BURNING THE LOGO ON IT – THE AWESOMENESS IS BLINDING ME!!!!!!!!

The process may be in its early stages of testing, but the idea is fantastic (if a little strange at the same time). The laser burns just enough of the surface to engrave the logo – without changing the taste of the flake.

So where will this end? Probably here, on the internet. Until the cost of the technology comes down to millionths of pence per flake – I am sure that Kellogg’s will not be branding their flakes . . . but geeks like me will be crossing our fingers that it WILL happen . . . Pew Pew Pew.

Did you know?

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 11:24:17 +0100

Here’s the latest in a series of ‘Did you know’ viral videos from US company Xplane.

It features facts and stats focusing on the changing media landscape, including convergence and technology. The clip details compelling facts and statistics in a unique and clear design that visually depicts the information in a way that is understandable and intriguing to the viewer. Xplane created the video using Apple’s Keynote software.