Rooting for Apple

Don't you just hate Microsoft and Creative for being such cop-outs! If you don't know how to create and market cool gadgets that will sell as well as the iPod has - just make sure you patent the nebulous technology that's behind it so that you get paid for someone else's success. Lame! I'm rooting for Apple to prevail.

VPod - Video IPod Out!

Just kidding. Sony is releasing a white version of the Playstation Portable.
It sure does look and work like what an Apple Video IPod would though.
Equally desirable for fans i would guess.

Wicked Aura Batucada

A plug for our friends and Singapore's rising percussion stars Wicked Aura Batucada. Catch them at WOMAD 2005 at fort canning...


Wicked Aura Batucada is a percussion group made up of over a dozen noise mongers. As avid disciples of the drums, they play their own brand of Brazilian samba batucada music fused with funk, afrobeat, local ethnic rhythms and whatever sounds these urban jungle dwellers devour and regurgitate...

More at Wickedaura.com

Red Table in Pudong

Check out these latest additions to the Shanghai skyline... compliments of China Executive Leadership Academy in Pudong. Expect more and a China version of Trump's The Apprentice soon too.

RED TABLE (Where the master sits)

The Pickled Organ

The Pickled Organ: shot in our studios with a Nikon D50 and lit with the Lomo Colorsplash Flash

Creative Circle & Young Asian Designers Awards 2005

Spoon will be participating at The Creative Circle Awards and The Young Asian Designers Awards 2005 as part of the judging panel.

The Creative Circle Awards 2005
David Soo will be participating on behalf of Spoon as one of the interactive judges for The Creative Circle Awards (CCA) 2005. The CCA organised by The Association of Accredited Advertising Agents Singapore celebrates its 25th Anniversary this year. The Creative Circle Awards is Singapore's one and only creative award show for the advertising and marketing communications industry.

The Young Asian Designers Awards 2005
Felix Fong will be serving on behalf of Spoon as one of the judges for The Young Asian Designers Awards (YADA) 2005. YADA is organised by Designers Association Singapore and aims to recognize the potential creative talents in Asian designers and to encourage the application of Asian culture and understanding in design.

We wish our best to all the entries at both awards this year.

Gorillaz live at Habbo Hotel

The world famous animated hip-pop collective Gorillaz will be entertaining fans at Habbo Hotels (the popular avatar driven community portal) in 12 countries between August 22 and September 2.

More> Gorillaz live at Habbo Hotel

What a nifty co-branding idea!
Brilliant we must say.

New Beans To Bully Ipod?

Sony has just released a new range of flash memory players " Walkman Bean™ MP3 Player" to take on the iPod Shuffle. What do you think? Jelly or Bully?

Check 'em out here

Baidu.Com: 100 Degrees And Rising

First it was Lenovo that hit the West with it's IBM courtship, now it's Baidu.Com and China's newest billionaire Li Yanhong.

Baidu.com touted as China's Google debuted on Nasdaq earlier this month and almost quadrupled in share value - the biggest IPO splash in half a decade. The frenzied buy into the belief that China's emerging digital class is the new world order made Baidu.Com founder Li Yanhong one of China's ten most wealthiest people overnight.

Ahh. How glistering thy cute bubble.

(We'll pardon the paws and the google "homage" for now)

New Marketing/Creative Video Series

Creative recruitment agency Aquent has launched a new video series online aimed at marketing and creative professionals - insights and strategies for today's challenging marketing and creative services environments.

Worth a plug... check it out: Aquent Inside Marketing

Adaptability & Being In Context

Two of the most over-looked qualities to being fruitful in whatever you do - be that creative, business or personal - is the quality of adaptability and the ability to be in context.

For the designer, this means having an arsenal of applicable styles and adaptive thinking to provide the brief and the client with the best possible solution to the problem at hand. A designer with one style alone (I would be inclined to call such an artist) may not be in the best position when faced with a diverse range of briefs in his/her lifetime. A one-style designer may find himself forcing the same approach and that, most often than not, is out of context to the current task at hand.

This can also be metaphorically applied to the business person planning against ever-changing economic situations and to the enthusiastic socialite trying to increase her circle of friends. If you concur, lets raise our glasses to the famous words of the Late Great Little Dragon: "Be like water my friend. Water fills the cup and becomes the cup." Ching Ching.

Samsung Singapore Wins Regional & Global Grand Prize!

The other day we found out that Samsung Singapore first won regional then went on to take the global grand prize in an Internal Samsung Worldwide Consumer and Product Value Innovation Competition.

We recently completed delivery of a major web revamp and enhancement for Samsung (Singapore) - the hottest consumer electronics brand in the world today. The project was produced and completed in a record 40 days and helped account for about a third of Samsung Singapore's impressive win over it's regional and global divisions. We're proud to acknowledge that our work helped raise Singapore's bar over the other countries. The competition measured consumer touch-point and marketing effectiveness, usability and content substantiality amongst other criteria.

We would like to congratulate Hongki, Desmond and the whole team at Samsung Singapore for their great win!

Itadakimas!

Take away a mega-bite of freshly-made sushi: kappa-maki or cucumber roll, ikura or salmon roe, tekka-maki or tuna roll, uni or sea urchin, maguro or tuna. This SushiDisk (top) is a USB flash-memory device: life-size, hand-finished, and good enough to eat. Comes in a soft plastic body, which slips over a tiny USB flash-memory module powered by the computer's USB port. 100% compatible with any Mac or PC. Hmm... Overnight shipping with dry ice pack available??!!

*******************************
Okay, here's the real thing.

No time for lunch? Introducing the new self-heating bento box (below) available in Japan. Just by one pull of a cord, you can enjoy instant steaming teriyaki chicken within seconds. Tada! Can someone tell me how this actually works???

Mixing Business With Design

In a recent discussion on mixing business with design i.e. should aspiring design students be armed with business savvy? I shared the following thoughts...

For young aspiring designers joining the craft, it's important that their idealistic creative/thinking capacity nurtured and preserved before unleashing them into the world of business. Let them rant, roam, think and create without boundaries. The sanctity and spirit of those early journeys of creative expression should be held with high regard and encouraged.

If I may use a metaphor...
We must ensure young Houdini is well versed in every escape imaginable before we lock him in a box. And yes, business in the real world is a box.

I would wish that seasoned design students that are versed in their craft technically and conditioned to truly explore options creatively go through a post extensive course called "The Brief" rather than specifically something with a "business"-slant. Design is about problem-solving and not all problems are of a business nature. And likewise not all career options in design and creativity are about business per se. The problem to be solved is what the brief prescribes. And problem-solving designers should be bred.

Singapore is not lacking in great business talent at all. It's the Houdinis we can do more with.

The One Man Brand Name On Being A Brand

"For me, being a brand certainly doesn't mean jumping at the best offers and slapping my name on anything I think people might buy that wouldn't embarrass me. I have to believe in whatever I put my name on, and it has to reflect who I truly am. To do otherwise would be a disservice to me, my loyal customers, and prospective customers.

In a nutshell, my branding strategy is "to thine self be true." Like a lot of pithy wisdom, Shakespeare said it first, and I second it here--and everywhere else I put the name Trump." Quoted from Trump and his Amazing Technicolour Toupee at The Trump University (They teach success. Apparently.)

I ponder the impending arrival of Trump Penis Enlargers.

A Sugar Coated Morality Yarn

Watching Charlie & The Chocolate Factory brings us back to a time when candy means more than anything in the world to a young child. The chocolate factory is like the realisation of all the hopes and dreams a child can ever have.

Naturally, every child in the world can't wait to his hand on one of the only 5 Golden Tickets to visit the chocolate factory. Charlie is the boy who keeps hoping and dreaming no matter what the odds are. But more importantly, only Charlie, through his loving family, realises that the golden ticket, or even all the candies he can find in the factory, are only the means to an end, but never the end.

The liberty that Tim Burton took on the little background story of Willy Wonka worked out quite well. Here, we get to see why Willy Wonka grew up to be that socially inept, eccentric genius chocolatier, a character played to sweet perfection by Johnny Depp.

Memorable characters in a timeless Roald Dahl classic, beautifully designed, great music, just a trivia, the oompa-loompas' songs were voiced by Danny Elfman, the long-ime Burton collaborator who had composed such classics as Batman, Edward Scissorhands, and even the Simpsons' theme.

Not to be missed. 5/10.

Red Wind : A Nikon D50 Perspective

Red Wind : A flowing perspective from our first digital slr - The Nikon D50.

Adibok!

Watch out Nike they just did it. Adidas is buying Reebok for 3.8billion in a move that could transform the very soles of the lucrative $145billion Sports Goods market. Question now is what's gonna happen to Puma's recent pounce?

Miss Seinfeld?

Then watch Larry David's Curb Your Enthusiasm. I just happened to have caught an episode on Arts Central, and it feels like Seinfeld all over again. To the uninitiated, Larry David, together with Jerry Seinfeld, is the other brilliant mind who co-created probably one of the most successful sitcom ever....Seinfeld.

In Curb Your Enthusiasm, Larry actually plays himself...Larry David, the TV producer who co-created Seinfeld. It's easy to see his influence on the characters of Seinfeld...he is as cynical as Jerry, as self-obssessed as George, as witty as Elaine, and as neurotic as Kramer, even sharing some physical resemblence, except that he's bald compared to Kramer's crazy full locks.

Like Seinfeld, this show is also about people going through their meaningless petty little lives; it's a show about NOTHING. In this episode I saw, it shows Larry trying to end his relationship with his shrink, just because he saw him wearing a thong at the beach. It's absolutely hilarious to see how he tried in vain to convince the shrink that he is CURED, and he didn't need his service anymore.

I felt a big void after Seinfeld ended its run. In many ways, Seinfeld was more than a sitcom, it was a philosophy. In a world of information overload, shallow commercialisation, touch-n-go relationships, only Seinfeld could make sense of it all. After Seinfeld, Curb Your Enthusiasm is probably the next best thing, until or unless Jerry and Larry decide to collaborate again.

By the way, Curb Your Enthusiasm is not exactly a sitcom, it's feels more like a reality show. The absence of canned laughter gives it a unique realness. Tuesday, 9.30pm, on Arts Central. Watch it!

Fugitive smokers

The Smoke Screen, a.k.a Urban Hookah, is a clever solution by Boston based Moskow Architects for smokers on the streets of North America. These pre-fabricated screens can be fixed onto most lamp posts and come complete with a leaning cushion, built-in lighters, air filtration system, heaters and ashtrays. Hitting many birds with 1 stone, it keeps the butts off the streets and the smoke from atmosphere.

How thoughtful. If only we could have a few of these over here, perhaps the ban wouldn't bother me that much. *shrug*