Grey London has produced a wonderful little interview with Monotype’s Dan Rhatigan on the worlds most eco friendly typeface, “Ryman Eco”. In the three and a half minute short film Rhatigan talks about not only the intricacy of type design, but the larger picture of how inkjet printers impact the environment. The film reveals how this beautiful, and delicate typeface was designed to reduce inkjet, and laser toner use by 33%. We all use computer printers on a regular basis, yet very few of us think about the issues Rhatigan brings up. I love how the film focuses on more than the font itself, and how it delves into the design thinking, the design problem solving that reaches beyond just these letter forms.
Grey London
The Sound of Taste. Grey London Creates a Musical Poster.
E-Ink isn’t really a new technology. Forms of it have been around for over a decade being used in some form of the print industry to create levels of mild interactivity. What I love about the video below is, Grey London and Herb & Spice brand Schwartz have combined it with your smartphone and Bluetooth to create a fresh interactive approach to a poster.
The assignment was simple, the execution more complex, the result fantastic. Illustrator Billie Jean was invited to create a visual articulation of what taste might look like. Starting with traditional media he painted the artwork for the poster. The illustration was then digitized, and divided into segments. Segments were printed with an electronic ink and coordinated to a smartphone app that talked to your mobile device using a Bluetooth connection. Your phone literally became the speaker for the poster. The result is a printed, interactive musical instrument.
Puma Dance Dictionary from Grey London.
Grey London. has created a new interactive campaign for Puma called “Dance Dictionary”. The website features a series of freestyle dancers that interpret words to create new sentences that can be shared through all major social networks.
With the launch of the site Puma is stating that have invented a new language using dance. What they have actually done is to build a dance translation engine that allows people to send personalised dance messages to friends and family. The site is promoting the new Puma fragrance line “Sync” for men and for women which is being targeted to a younger audience.
The site is really well designed with a clean simple interface that hooks directly to your social network of choice. The look features full frame images, with text overlays. When the play button for each sentence is clicked, full frame video is displayed with each word overlaid across the image. It’s a simple easy to use site and a great idea that is hard to forget. The only thing I don’t get though is when you click the “Watch Music Video” link it takes you to YouTube instead of having the video embedded on the Puma Sync website. I’m not sure why Puma would want to direct traffic away from the parent site/page but they do.
Friday Inspiration. Vodafone “Surprise”.
I’m not bypassing Thanksgiving, but for some reason I’m in a very Christmas mood this morning when it comes to inspiration. While surfing around the internet this morning checking out Christmas related videos I came across this beautiful looking piece for Vodaphone Ireland.
The character design is beautiful, and the animation and 3D set design is really outstanding. Directed by Nexus Productions FX Goby, and created by Grey London this spot tells the story of a young reindeer coming home for Christmas. His mother plotts a surprise party with all of his forest friends to welcome him home.
The animation brings the characters to life and the perfect amount of humanity and warmth that they need to sell the holiday feeling, ll done with a few light hearted touches of humor. Like the piece for John Lewis, Vodaphone isn’t trying to sell me a product for Christmas. They are simply telling a story about one of the things that makes the season great. The brand reinforcement is secondary to the message, and that is a winner for me.
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