SPINNING AROUND: SEVENTY SEVEN THINKING OUT LOUD

MAKING THE POINT GRAPHICALLY

US Presidents through history ... by illustrator Patrick Moberg

Hat tip to Todd Andrlik

A VERY PERSONAL PRESIDENT

Amazing ... Obama has posted a bunch of actually quite personal looking snaps from election night in his flickr stream.

The fact that the man's communications team have used Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and a host of other social media tools in the campaign should mean that this is no surprise.

But the two things that I thought were worth mentioning were.

First of all how personal these things feel - a real sense of a president for the people is what you get from them ... perhaps this is what brands should be watching and learning from.

Second of all my amazement at the tone that people are using to make comments on the shots ... "You don't know how good it feels to address you this way.  I have waited forty years, since Bobby Kennedy" ... was the one that stood out to me.

Amazing. People think that the president of the United States is a guy who you can leave comments for on flickr. Things have come along way, huh?!

JUST GORGEOUS ... MYT MUGS

Came across these lovely MYT Mugs for everyone in the office via the guys who designed them as a self-initiated project ... A+B Studio.

And very lovely they are, too.

The perfect solution for large orders of tea and coffee in the office (not that I would actually know, truth be told, I'm shocking at getting the rounds in, being a latte lover myself). Still, I'm told that, if I were to make a round of tea, these would solve a basic memory problem ...

They're available at the Design Museum, Magma and on the A+B site.

QUICK THING ... IT'S NICE THAT SHOW

Bit of a quick note to recommend that folks take a look at the It's Nice That ... exhibition, which runs until 24th October at Plymouth College of Art.

It's the first in a series of exhibitions that will feature a selection of the work posted on the design blog It's Nice That - all in its original format. What's more, there will be a show up in London in the not-too-distant future.

Which is jolly good news for those of use who dwell in the capital.

For those who fancy a sneak preview of what those who live in/travel to Plymouth are enjoying, you might want to check out the flickr set of the exhibition.

A SHADOW OF THEMSELVES

Came across Henrietta Swift's self-initiated project, Shadow Monuments.

Made me think that, as a stunt for a travel website (just for example, but where are we going to find one of those ...?!) it might be quite cute to commission her to do this sort of thing against a backdrop that would give them a monumental scale - you can kind of see the image below re-created against the backdrop of the Tate Modern Gallery ...

Just a thought ...

MORE DESIGNERLY EPHEMERA ... POP-DOWNS

Er ... even by the normal standards of Spinning Around, this is a bit left-of-field.

A French project - Pop Down - that offers folks the chance to make a comment on the advertising interruptions around them.

A series of little stickers that imitate the "close" button on a browser window, the group behind the stunts encourages people to append the stickers to advertising - pointing out that ads are as irritating as the pop-ups that plagued the internet once-upon-a-time.

Told you ... random.

PLACESPOTTING ... ACROSS THE UNIVERSE

A fun way to spend a short amount of time ...

You click on this link. You take a look at the image from Google maps that will appear. You read the clues (if the clues are not in a language you understand, you click the next arrow).

You then use the second map (a Google world map without a zoom) to find and zoom-in on the destination shown in the first image and - assuming that you are right), the quiz rewards your cleverness.

It is good, honest.

A WORLD OF COLOUR ...

This is just brilliant ... a set of colour tools from Idee Inc.

The favourite at the moment is this fella, MultiClr: a tool that searches either flickr or an Alamy set of images to return pictures that match the colour that you click on the programme's palette. Rather fun, I reckon.

Also included on the Idee Inc site are Visual Seach and BYO Image Search Lab. The first enables you to type in specific words and concepts, at which point it shows various images from its Alamy image set. Not that interesting.

The second, however, enables you to upload your own image, at which point the site finds images with similar shades and tones. It's bloody clever, it has to be said.

FAVOURITE IPHONE WALLPAPERS

All manner of wallpapers have come out for iPhone (and iPod Touch too, I guess).

Being Apple brands and hence having a loyal cohort of the world's top designers in their fan-base, the iPhone has a stunning crop of digital fashion with which to adorn itself.

Thought that it would be worth selecting what I reckon are the best pieces to date - with thanks to Poolga, Laszlo Kovacs and We Made This in particuilar.

Click the piccies to bring up the full-sized version ...

For lots and lots and lots more, you might try the flickr Wallpaper pool.

THIS IS LOVELY ... THISISSAND

An odd online sand painting making thing. Try it ... you'll like it.

FACEBOOK HAMLET

Nice to see that people are still doing entertainingly original things with the world's favourite social network ...

by Sarah Schmelling via McSweeneys.

HAD TO HAPPEN ... I-PHONE WALLPAPERS

Quite cute ...

Poolga.com does iPhone wallpapers so that you can make your little bundle of Apple-branded joy into an attractive graphic design-fest.

Actually, has to be said that there are a whole heap of lovely bits and bobs on the site if you are into that sort of thing (which, embarassing tho it may be to admit, I am).

Also worth a look is the Poolga photostream on flickr.

JUST FUN ... WE WANT TAP (.COM)

Thought that wewanttap.com was worthy of wider sharing. You can get a set of stickers that you can then pop onto a water bottle that you refill. Cute, eh?!

RANDOM I KNOW ... WINE LABELS

Alan and I were chatting about wine labels today. And then I just came across the work above from Sonoma Vinyards, which was done by SF-based agency Voicebox.

And over the weekend, I found myself spending a good ten minutes perusing the wall of wine in Waitrose not with a view to terroir or varietal, but to have a bloody good look at the label design (actually, the wine section at Harvey Nicks London is the best place for this sort of activity).

As far as I can see, the Aussies, Kiwis and Yanks do the best modern label work. But the Italians, Spani sh and Argentines are giving them a run for their money.

Anyway, it got me to wondering whether there is a collection anywhere of wine labels from around the world. I've been having a really good look around but I can't find anything much beyond these classics.

Might be another wee project for a rainy afternoon.

Sort of thing that someone like Berry Bros. should do - it would make quite a compelling little exhibition in one of their stores, in a little gallery or indeed in somewhere like the Design Museum. It'd get some fab coverage in the wine mags and the supps - perhaps in the design media, the blogs. Actually, it would work quite well. One to pursue ...

Just a thought.

PHOTOSHOP FOR REAL

I came across these super-cute Photoshop-made-real photos on the ever-lovely We Made This.

By a couple of design graduates, I just thought they were a really good idea well-realised and on that basis deserved a wider audience. They're by Henry Hadlow and Ed Cornish.

HELP RESTORE THE DEPARTURES LOUNGE

Once upon a long time ago, I (with long-term collaborator, Adrian Chitty) ran a viral site called theDeparturesLounge.com.

It was (and now is once more) a site containing the best commercial viral work and comedy ads – a sort of Jimmy Carr Commercial Breakdown but online. We thought that it would be great to have an easy way of finding that sort of thing having failed to track down anything we ever wanted on the web more generally.

Then the hosts went bust and vanished, taking with them the several hundred files that we had painstakingly collected, uploaded and written witty and erudite commentaries for. Bugger.

Now, some 18 months later and with enormous help from the chaps at web agency Glass Partnership and with some sponsorship from the nice people at Rackspace, we’ve managed to get it back up and running.

Slowly but surely, we are getting the back catalogue together (and there are a load of clips that will go up over the next couple of weeks). So do have a look at the site and let me know what you think.

At the same time, if there are great virals that you remember, please do let us know. If you run a viral site or agency, please send some through and we will be happy to pop them up. If there is stuff on YouTube, please post a link and we will track down the originators.

Basically, please get involved and give us a hand to get the site back to where it was. We’d be enormously grateful.

THE BEST THING THIS WEEK ...

This is the best thing that I am going to find this week. Without question. And it's only 9.15 am.

Seriously, I am thinking that it might be sensible to bugger off home right now and put my feet up, happy that I have accumulated sufficient knowledge of new stuff to last a full seven days.

My M&Ms is amazing. Brilliant.

You can actually print your own M&Ms. You can have your own messages on them, print your face on them (you can upload a photo and they sort it for you), you can put your logo onto them. Bloody magic. Oh, and you can choose which colours of M&Ms you want in your pack of personalised confectionery.

Love this very dearly.

And what is more, it's a brilliant business-building idea. Now, M&Ms are something different - a medium no less - for self-expression. Mars has found a new way in which to open up a whole revenue stream, engage people, make them ambassadors for their product and brand.

And if a small, round sugar-coated chocolate globule can go web2.0, you have to ask the question: why can't other brands come up with ideas like this to change the way that they engage with people across the web and the world?

This came via the excellent ...

QUICK ONE ... GRAHAM CARTER AND WONDERBRA

I'm a big fan of Brighton-based artist and illustrator Graham Carter (and in fact own a couple of his pieces, which is nice). Popped onto his site for the first time in a while and came across the picture above. Just made me smile, really.

QUICK ONE ... PICTURES OF TV

Mike Sacks is ... well, I don't actually know what Mike Sacks is. He's a humourist, I guess (or should that be humorist, given that he is American?).

Anyway, came across his site via a copy of US Esquire - he puts together a page called This Way Out which often makes me chuckle.

He also does an odd thing: photographing the ridiculousness of American news channels. There are heaps of photos on his website, but the couple below made me smile broadest.

PICLENS: A DIFFERENT WAY TO BROWSE?

Came across PicLens this weekend.

A really different and entertaining way of browsing pictures and videos across the web - above the results of a search for "blue" on flickr - although you can also search across Google, YouTube, Photobucket and Yahoo.

Well worth a look - thought that it was worth sharing with others.