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Day May 17, 2009

Entries 2 Total

Nelly Duff/Eine World Record Print and private view

May 17, ’09 3:55 PM

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We’ve been fans of Nelly Duff for ages, and our growing collection of prints attests to this. Cassius & Co are not only knowledgeable and infectiously enthusiastic, but also full of great ideas and a sense of fun.

The latest ‘wheeze’ was collaborating with Eine (rumoured to be, ahem, Banksy’s print-maker and of course recognised creator of the alphabet of ‘circus font’ stencils that adorn most of Shoreditch and Hoxton’s store shutters). The collaboration involved a world record attempt for the largest number of individual screens and colours in a single print. More info is on Eine’s page at Nelly Duff.

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The print is a w-less alphabet, with each letter taking 3 separate passes: the base colour, the outline/border colour and then the stripey fill. None of the colours are used elsewhere in the print so this is 3×25 ie 75 individual screen passes, plus the black and white – 77 in total. All of course need to be precisely in register.

We ordered the print white, but there’s also a run on black and on gold.

The private view on 7 May, 2009 was a real scream. It was held in a car respraying place just north of Brick Lane. The added cunningness was that they’d pulled a print at each stage of the printing process (ie #1 had only the white base, while #76 had every letter finished, bar one final colour pass). The whole 77 series was arrayed around the room. You can see the panorama of the PV at the top.

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UPDATE: See the photos of the event on Nelly’s blog.

Comments (1)

Google’s “Survival of the Fastest”: my video contribution on YouTube

May 17, ’09 10:17 AM

A couple of months ago the folk at Google asked if I’d contribute to a YouTube channel they were creating, soliciting input from a range of practitioners, thinkers and leaders in eCommerce on the subject of how best to survive the economic downturn.

I agreed (very pleased to have been asked) and then immediately regretted it (a combination of _hating_ being filmed and a bit of a panic attack that I’d have nothing to say in such august company).

Both of these concerns were well founded and the first attempt was utterly awful. Google kindly allowed me to hit the virtual ‘delete’ button and re-shoot. I (and all viewers) owe them a debt of gratitude ;)

The format was a difficult one: a straight-to-camera piece on a topic. This requires more skill and preparation that I had understood. I generally prefer a ‘Q&A’ approach – being interviewed by someone else makes it easier to keep on topic and respond to a lead.

That said, I’m really pleased that I’ve had this experience. At InternetRetailing we’re starting our video podcasting programme in June and going through this experience has been a timely shock that I hope will improve our approach.

In the meantime you can find me burbling and only loosely in charge of a Welsh accent here:

In fact, this piece was a ‘version’ of my ‘profit per pixel second‘ metric provocation that I’ve been covering in print. It’s an area in which I’m interested, but I think it suffers here from being too long (maybe I’m too used to giving this as part of a presentation?).

All of this goes to prove Mark Twain’s (well, Blaise Pascal) thought: “I have only made this [letter] longer, because I have not had the time to make it shorter”. The same seems true of videos ;)

You’ll see in the linked videos some very impressive (and more succinct!) contributions from a great range of people – from Boris Johnson, Mayor of London and Martin Sorrell of WPP to numerous leading academics and practitioners.

I’m pleased to be in illustrious company (even if as the slight splotch on the otherwise immaculate canvas) and I’ve learned some good lessons about video presentation.

You can see the whole channel here:

http://www.youtube.com/user/survivalofthefastest

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