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Urban Cone is a great Swedish Indie group. Perfect tune to get that weekend started.
Author Neil Gailman gives a wonderful speech to the graduating class of The University of the Arts Class ‘12. He talks a lot about finding success in the modern art/creative industry of today:
“The nature of distribution is changing. […] No one knows what the landscape will look like two years from now, let alone two decades from now. The distribution channels people have built in the last century or so are in flux … the rules, the assumptions, the “now-we-are-suppose-tos” are breaking down. Which is on the one hand intimidating yet immensely liberating.[…]The old rules are crumbling, nobody knows what the new rules are, so make up your own rules.”
(Source: Laughing Squid, via laughingsquid)
Rough news from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt as they file for Bankruptcy today
IKEA’S KNÄPPA CARDBOARD DIGITAL CAMERA
IKEA is on an innovative roll these days and have just announce the KNÄPPA flat-pack cardboard digital camera. The KNÄPPA the flat-pack cardboard digital camera (made out one a single folded piece of cardboard) runs on two AA batteries and can hold up to 40 pictures of 2.3 megapixels.
It also has a swing-out USB plug, viewfinder cutout, shutter key and paperclip-friendly erase button. The camera will be handed out for free to all customers who purchase anything from their PS Furniture Collection.
Check out the video (above) for more info! Pretty cool, no?
This weeks marketing fail is brought to you by Bowdoin Alum and comedian Hari Kondabolu. Hari is actually coming to Bowdoin tonight, so of course I’m putting off this essay due tomorrow to go laugh my face off for a bit. Apparently the Kondabolu family has talent in surplus, Hari’s brother is a member of Das Racist(Hulu just did an episode of “A Day in the Life” on them, so check it out here).
This marketing fail of the week falls on the heads of our friends at Chipotle. Hari explains Chipotle’s attempt at starting a Marxist revolution, while apparently completley forgetting that they’re what people will be fighting against. Get it together Chipotle.
Hari Kondabolu- Chipotle Revolution (by harithecomic)
"You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive"
— James Baldwin
amazing video about Ian Ruhter, an absolute bro who decided to turn this food truck into a camera and rides around the US taking these HUGE prints. Makes me miss photography.
(Source: nriker)
Check out this amazing Tupac hologram at Coachella 2012. Coachella 2012 post coming soon.
(Source: youtube.com)
Marketing & 3D Street Art w/ Aakash Nihalani
I am not a very happy camper right now. Why? Ok, so a couple of months ago I came across a really cool picture of 3D Street art (Trompe-l’œil street art for you bourgeois readers) of the characters from Charlie Brown crossing a sidewalk. I thought it was pretty cool, but more importantly I instantly made connections between this type of art and some sort of gorilla marketing campaign for publishing.
Think about it: your walking out of the subway station on your way to work, and you pass the same brick wall… except today the brick wall looks like the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets, or some mythical creature is coming charging out of the wall. Certainly something that’ll stand out and stay with you all day, right? Exactly. So here I was, thinking that I was some genius for coming up with the campaign all on my own—the word inventor was certainly rolling around my mind. But Tommy, did you really think no one has ever thought of this before? Did you not Google “3D Marketing Campaign”? No, I did not.
Not only has 3D art certainly been used in marketing campaigns before, but Reebok had a campaign on creating a huge—and frankly pretty cool—3D chalk art to promote their Reebok Crossfit Challenge event.
While Reebok’s certainly did beat me to the punch, I don’t like the way their campaign was focused. What makes street art cool is the whole guerilla surprise attack aspect of it. It’s much more of a shock to all of a sudden find a small piece of art somewhere it wasn’t the day before, than to walk by the big spectacle created by Reebok. Going for the Guinness World Record was a bit much. The GWR has lost much of its former appeal; I mean isn’t there some guy who holds like 8 of them? After I saw Chiddy Bang break the world record for the longest freestyle, I gave up on the whole organization.
No, subtlety is certainly the way to go with street art. Enter Aakash Nihalani, a street artist based in New York with a serious obsession with pop color tape and some serious talent. Nihalani has got the whole guerilla street art thing down, with the exception of the fact that he does it during the day in plain of pedestrians and the cops—BAMF.
Here’s video from the New York Times Style Magazine’s website:
Aakash Nihalani’s art is exactly the type I would use if incorporating street art into some sort of marketing campaign for a book release. Expect to see a lot of his work popping up here on CAST and on my Pinterest (it’s already pretty dominant). Aakash Nihalani also has best website I have seen in a very long time. Do yourself a favor a head over to http://www.aakashnihalani.com/ (not even hyperlinked, that’s how good I think it is). Be warned, expect to spend the next 30 minutes glued to the site.
He’s also on Twitter (@aakashnihalani) and tumblr (eyescreamsunday).
I am off to invent another genius marketing strategy.
10. Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken
Famous Quote: “I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.”
The United States’ most famous poet’s most famous poem is a timeless ode to the American ideals of “individuality” and “forging your own path.” It’s one of those poems that’s so famous, even people who hate poetry can quote it. These are the reasons it appears on The Academy of American Poets’ list of top poems for college graduation.
Except aside from that last part, everything we just said isn’t true. Frost is actually using an old technique known as the “unreliable narrator,” and he isn’t even being all that subtle about it: in spite of the famous quote’s insistence that one road is “less traveled by,” the second stanza of the poem clarifies that both roads are “worn… really about the same.” Oh, and also, Frost himself admitted that he was actually mocking the idea that single decisions would change your life, and specifically making fun of a friend of his who had a tendency to over-think things that really weren’t that big a deal.
So what you thought was life-affirming was really just another poet/hipster condescendingly saying “you think you’re an individual, when really you’re just a cog in the machine, man!”
9. William Shakespeare, Romeo & Juliet
Famous Quote: “Star-Crossed Lovers”
Aww, Romeo & Juliet: two teenagers in the throes of what could possibly be the most pure love in literary history. This is why when a magazine wants to comment on, say, Justin Bieber’s love life or the relationship between a little boy and his horse, they’re likely to reference the sonnet that opens Shakespeare’s most famous play by calling them “Star-Crossed Lovers.”
And sure, this is totally appropriate, if you’re expecting these people to die. ”Star-Crossed” doesn’t mean “brought together by fate,” it means “fated to die,” because the stars (fate) have “crossed” you. Shakespeare is intentionally reminding everyone at the beginning of his play that this is a frickin’ tragedy, you guys, and you’re in for a miserable ride.
8. Lewis Carrol, Alice in Wonderland
Famous Quote: “Oh, ’tis love, ’tis love that makes the world go round.”
This is an amazingly misunderstood line from an amazingly misunderstood writer. Pretty much everything about the life of Lewis Carroll (real name Charles Dodgson) is shrouded in confusion and slander; rather than being about drugs, Alice in Wonderland is most likely a criticism of then-new forms of mathematics that were becoming popular at Dodgson’s own Oxford College. In addition, though he was commonly accused of pedophilia, The Annotated Alice and The Carroll Myth makes the argument that Dodgson was actually asexual, and preferred the company of children because he was extremely uncomfortable with courting and any form of sexual innuendo.
Finally, and perhaps fittingly, his most famous quote is the one here about love making the world go ’round, and it is directly contrary to all of his pessimistic and strictly logical real-world values. In context, this quote is said by The Duchess, a character who is introduced as a potential child murderer. Hardly the kind of character a writer would want to speak the moral of his story.
Finally, need we remind you that Dodgson was a mathematician? Almost every detail of his biography — as well as the actual context of this story — show that this idea of love as a geo-revolutionary repellant is supposed to be scoffed at, not adored.
So it’s true that you might believe this to be true, but if that’s the case then it’s also true that one of history’s greatest writers is making fun of you.
Follow the link to read all 10.
(Source: amandaonwriting)
Comic Sans > You.
This is the book trailer for Diplo’s 7 year project “128 Beats Per Minute.” Don’t really know much about the book itself except that it leads the reader into the past 7 years his life. To be honest, Diplo is either hit or miss for me, but this trailer shows that book trailers can indeed be cool. I’ll post something on them soon. thecultureofme
(Source: youtube.com)
NYTimes.com’s ‘Room for Debate’ column pairs 7 articles all centered around the issue of YA fiction. Some of the authors agree with each other, while other dont—hence the whole debate situation. My favorite pieces are “Authors Taking Risks Isn’t Kid Stuff” and “Social Media Has Fed the Fever.”
