We’re the first to admit that our company Language in Common is unusual. Strange even. Sometimes we wonder if we’re crazy.
And it’s super hard to tell people what we do because we don’t quite fit into existing categories. And that’s ok with us. We’re into doing something new–merging lotsa creative practices into one studio. But today I’m really psyched because it’s becoming clear that a new category is emerging. It’s becoming clear that we’re definitely not crazy, and that a movement is being born.
I won’t try to define this category here. Instead, I invite you to check out this list of links. Different as these studios are, they share a lot in common with each other and with us.
What do you think? Do you see the common threads? Do you know of other like-minded creative shops? What do you think this kind of practice should be called?
Have you checked out LinkedIn lately? It’s become seriously good.
Three points:
1. No walled garden.
By far the best thing about LinkedIn is that I can export my contacts. All the connections I make belong to me, and I can take them with me. All the value I create in my social network is fully accessible to me, as it should be. This is not possible on Facebook, and this is the number one reason I’ve stopped investing time into Facebook.
2. Super smart partnerships.
LinkedIn has recently launched a bunch of apps that are actually useful and interesting. For example, when I read the nytimes online, the right hand column has a LinkedIn-sponsored sidebar that sugges ts articles relevant to my work. It’s really good. And there are some new apps/partnerships that facilitate greater collaboration and biz dev, such as ftp dropboxes and portfolio presentation platforms and embedded google docs. All of this suggests a trend that makes a lot of sense to me: the contact list is becoming the hub of web-based collaboration.
3. Niche focus.
LinkedIn has a clear purpose: work-related social networking. Every aspect of their offering is aligned with that focus, and everybody is the network for the same reasons. As a result, there’s way less clutter than you’d find on FB or MySpace.
So yeah, check it out. And while you’re there, go ahead and add me and Josh (and select “friend” when prompted). We’re always psyched to make new connections:
It’s a new kind of image search. TinEye will look at any image you give it, and then compare it to other images. It can find a wide range of matches, including cropped images and photoshopped images. It actually searches visually, unlike Google’s image search, which uses keywords and image names.
My good friend Enmi Kendall just launched an interesting new company called replyforall.
Here’s the executive summary: users sign up to have special email signatures attached to their email; these signatures carry some environmental or charitable message, and they also display a small ad; a portion of the ad revenue goes to the environmental or charitable cause of the user’s choice.
In other words, you can send money to charity by allowing a small ad to be tacked on to your email sig.
Putting ads around email is as old as the interweb, but the thing that makes this so interesting is that it gives users control of what ads will run. It suggest that in the future advertisers will have less power, and it’ll take more than just money to get an ad placed.
Using bone conduction, a technology developed for hearing devices, the “touched echo” installation in Dresdon transmits sounds of the cities devastating 1945 carpet bombing through the visitors arms when they rest their elbows on the balustrade and hold their ears. Several custom made sound conductors mounted to the railing send sounds of the airplanes and bombs exploding through vibrations, it’s completely silent unless you touch the rail.
Yasmin Sethi has designed a super sexy chess set inspired by Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass.
In ‘Alice through the Looking Glass’ by Lewis Carroll, Alice falls through a mirror and on the other side of the mirror, she becomes a piece in a game of chess. Inspired by this, the chess pieces have an opaque mirror finish, when they touch the surface of the board they magically turn transparent and reveal the identity of the piece contained inside them. When removed from the board they revert to being opaque, hiding the identity of the piece.
I’ve just begun using Blackle, a Google search engine with the colors removed, and white type on a black background. And since your computer uses more power to create colors on your screen, or even to create the white background of your traditional Google search screen. What’s smart about this is that very little behavior change on the part of the user is necessary, and people still get the satisfaction of feeling like they’re at least doing something to help. You could call this armchair activism if you want to, but I think that everyone doing small achievable things has more power than a few people endlessly pushing giant activist initiatives up a hill.
Lucy and Bart like to get conceptual about body stuff. Their work gives me feelings of vague uneasiness. Check this link if you want to feel uneasy too.
this is the sky bridge in langkawi, malaysia, a stunning cable-stayed bridge which actually curves around the single support column from which it’s suspended, 687 metres above sea level. completed in october 2004, the structure relies on an 87 metre high support column to hold the weight of the deck, this weight distributed through 8 load balancing cables attached to its head.
And I can’t help but take this idea even further: what if we combined location-aware technology like RFID or GPS with a networked database of images so that the figures in red were drawn to look like the driver’s loved ones? Yikes!
Troika was asked to create a piece to mark the entrance to British Airway’s new luxury lounges at Heathrow. Beautiful.
In response, we created ‘Cloud’, a five meter long digital sculpture whose surface is covered with 4638 flip-dots that can be individually addressed by a computer to animate the entire skin of the sculpture. Flip-dots were conventionally used in the 70s and 80s to create signs in train-stations and airports. We were fascinated by their materiality, by the way they physically flip from one side to the other. The sound they generate is also instantly reminiscent of travel, and we therefore decided to explore their aesthetic potential in ‘Cloud’.
“…the ‘Temples of Damanhur’ are not the great legacy of some long-lost civilisation, they are the work of a 57-year-old former insurance broker from northern Italy who, inspired by a childhood vision, began digging into the rock.
The first time the police came it was over alleged tax evasion and still the temples lay undiscovered. But a year later the police swooped on the community demanding: “Show us these temples or we will dynamite the entire hillside.”
Stunned by what they had found, the authorities decided to seize the temples on behalf of the government.”
The Free Rice project is so fucking smart that I can’t help but want to copy it, or build on it, or evolve it, or something. I’m jealous. And also very grateful.
HumanKindMedia describes it nicely:
Head straight to Free Rice, play a vocab game, and for every right answer, 10 grains of rice are donated to the UN. Don’t click if you don’t have a few minutes though — it’ll snare you! While you play this insanely addictive game, the advertisers at the bottom are sending bits of that excess American capital known as advertising revenue to countries that need food. If you can pull yourself away from the game for a second, take a look at their stats. They’ve gone from hundreds of grains of rice a day donated to millions a day in only a month. Isn’t it amazing what you can do to end poverty … in just a few clicks?
A fellow out in Chicago just emailed us to share his concept for using newspaper dispensers as a place to replate your leftovers. It’s a great idea, especially in cities that don’t have ledges or hoods on their trash cans. Check it out here.
Newsweek calls it "Poignant ... funny ... and thought-provoking." Sweeeet!
Someone is trying to tell you something.
They are writing messages on the walls and sidewalks of the places we live.
Our book, Written on the City, explores the conversation happening in graffiti around the world. Check it out.
ANTICS
When we're not dorking around on the web, we make stuff. Enjoy: Tweetbuzzer tracks the brand buzz on twitter.
Replate is an open-source food activism project in which you may already be participating.
Dirty words & dick jokes will show you that "shit," "fuck," and "piss" aren't the dirtiest words in the creative industry. (pdf)
How to clean out your desk will kick your ass into being creative at work again. (pdf)
How to be a better lover is the definitive sex manual for good business. (pdf)
Written on the City celebrates the conversations happening on the walls and sidewalks of the places we live.
Dear Bosses, get your creative staff to stop quitting. Here's what they wish they could tell you. (pdf)
10 Writing Tips to Make Your Mother Proud is the writing help Mom would give, if she were still speaking to you. (pdf)
Inventions
Q: Is it a gift card or a camera?
This is fuckin smart.
