nuzzaci - an online journal

The above video is Jeff Tweedy in an attempt to understand why people go to a concerts and then just talk to their mates instead of listening and taking part in the experience.

I think most of us have experienced it.
Jeff put’s it really well.

It’s really really cool, if you just, if everybody was really quiet for just one second. You feel yourself being in a room full of people. With all their hearts beating. And all of their thoughts and feelings and you’re part of it. You’re not just you. You’re part of a group of people. In a really beautiful way. It’s a really wonderful thing to be part of. But you have to pay attention to it.

It’s not just me. I’m not just being some pissy artist. It’s what you do when you go to a concert. You’re being a part of it.

You don’t set yourself apart from everybody.
You’re part of something.
It’s wonderful.
It’s joyous.

Via Joakim Jansson’s last.fm journal

One of my last projects at POKE was to design and build a tiny page for Motorola. The website ended up being quite a bit smaller, quite a bit different and took quite a bit longer to finish than initially planned. This is the kind of thing that might happen when dealing with large bureaucratic companies across the atlantic. However, the most important ingredient in this creative execution wasn’t the website though.

from the POKE website:

To demonstrate the features of the new Motorola E8, Poke enlisted the help of legendary mover David Elsewhere (to call him a dancer doesn’t really describe the half of it). We worked with Motorola to find a way that could combine content and product demo in a fresh way. Maybe even making it interesting enough that people might talk about (and distribute) a product demo…

And yes (before you ask); David Elsewhere has been used/seen in advertising before. Most famously the VW Golf remake on Gene Kelly’s Singin’ in the Rain dance. But browse youtube and you will find quite a few more.

To have a look at the website and the other four new videos of David Elsewhere visit:
http://direct.motorola.com/hellomoto/rokre8/experience/

Friday two weeks ago, 4th of July, was my 1727 day, and last, at POKE. For the day I made a special t-shirt to mark the occasion. A t-shirt listing the time elapsed since I joined in different formats. From top to bottom: 149212800 seconds, 2486880 minutes, 41448 hours, 1727 days, 246 weeks, 56.57 months and 4.71 years.

For as long as I can remember I’ve always wanted a Fiat 500. It’s just such an iconic and wonderful car with an enormous amount of character and charisma. Similar to the Vespa, a brilliant design solution for the Post World War II era.

The first time I was seriously looking to get one was the summer of 2002. I was down in Pulgia, south Italy, visiting my parents and took the opportunity to look at a few local Fiat 500’s for sale. I was waiting to hear whether or not I got in to the new media school Hyper Island. I thought that if I didn’t get accepted I could stay a bit longer in Italy, find a really nice one and drive it back to the north of Sweden.

As the story goes I got accepted to the school and didn’t get one.

A part of moving to Stockholm is getting to Stockholm. Since Willow and I have a cat, getting there gets a bit more complicated than visiting www.sas.se. After a bit of thought, Willow and I thought we should rent a car and do a road trip as a solution to our problem. Renting a car was quite expensive so we though we might as well buy a car. And, since we’re buying a car, why not buy the car you like? It all make sense, doesn’t it?

As it turns out buying a Fiat 500 isn’t easy. Or, well the buying — as in handling over money — is easy but deciding on which model etc is not. They are old cars. So the price comes down to how much has been invested in restoring the car vs how much you are prepared to invest in the coming years. So it’s comes down to investing now or investing later.

The Fiat 500 was produced between 1957 and 1977. Ranging over 6 models (Nuova, D, K, F, R, and L). Most of them look the same for the untrained eye. An easy way to separated them a bit is that the Nouva and D have suicide doors. K is the estate version. F has normal doors. The L has normal doors but a “modern” dashboard. The R version went back to the traditional dashboard but was given a new front badge.

After a lot of thinking, a lot of research and a few visits and test drives, we decided on BiBi, a 1962 Fiat 500D. She’s been completely restored and sold by Toto and Chet at ricambifiat500.com/.

We have only had her for two weeks, so our journey together have only just started. But keep tuned to Willow’s flickr set and i’m sure Bibi will keep you posted with all her adventures.

Following up on my Social Suicide post, Tig, (Matthew Grey) had two fashion trade shows on the agenda — White Homme in Milan, and Tranoï in Paris — and his business partner and friend, Simon Waterfall, was tied up with presidential D&AD duties. So, having nothing better planned i decided to follow along and help Tig set up and host two trade shows.

The whole week ended up a bit mental.

We left London for Milan on Friday morning, 4am. On Saturday we set up the stand. On Sunday evening I left Tig and flew up to Stockholm to do 5 interviews over two days. Tuesday evening I flew back to Milan to drive up to Paris on Wednesday morning and set up the stand the same evening. On Thursday evening I took the Eurostar train back to London to enjoy a well deserved and relaxed Friday.

The photograph leading this post is of an umbrella that was part of the White Homme stand. Next year’s spring summer collection from Social Suicide is about the weather and the Beaufort scale — a scale to measure weather and wind based mainly on observation. So as an small installation piece for the stand we had an umbrella hanging from the ceiling with a looping video projected on it’s inside of white clouds moving across a beautiful blue (most probably non-english) summer sky. We also handed out free umbrellas to interested parties. These umbrellas started to play the sound of rain when they were opened (most probably english summer rain).

I’m a bit surprised over the fact that I have maintained this blog since May 2006 and have hardly mentioned the fashion brand Social Suicide. Guess it’s one of those constantly ongoing things that you just don’t think to talk about.

Social Suicide is a fashion brand founded by two very good friends — Simon Waterfall and Matthew Grey. They started up the brand about the same time that I joined POKE back in 2003.

My final project at Hyper Island was to develop the brand online, build a website and develop the graphic profile. It was a well-received project and was even recognised and featured in Creative Review.

Photograph of the Creative Review piece featuring my final project on Social Suicide.

Photograph of the book that was part of the documentation of the project.

Since then i’ve been helping the boys out with everything from business cards, websites, online shop, suits, delivery etc and so on.

The best way to get an idea of what the brand is about is to visit socialsucide.co.uk and have a look at this video presentation.

Thw below photograph is one of many great stories surrounding Social Suicide. Simon Waterfall was invited to meet the Queen. For the occasion we designed a special suite.

The Pearly Kings and Queens are an East London tradition as old as the bricks and mortar of Bow Bells. They are the aristocracy of the working classes.

We used the tailoring traditions of the working class to make a suit for the monarch. 400 hand sewn mother of pearl buttons form an image of HRH as seen on British coinage and postage stamps. Simon was invited to the Palace and he went in the suit: “We were very kind your Majesty - we used a postage stamp from the 1970s”.

Since 2003 the brand and it’s products have matured a lot. The bold statements have become more subtle and have been fine tuned with a more sophisticated edge. The cut of the suite and material have been refined. Matthew, who’s working on Social Suicide full time, has built contacts with sellers as well as manufactures and prepared the whole concept with great success.