Breakfast Clubbing

Ever heard the expression - I'm having a party in head?

Well now imagine a collection of random Open folks doing this together while munching down crumpets, muffins and bagels and slurping lovely mugs of tea.

That'll give you some idea of what our weekly Breakfast Clubbing sessions are like. We get together at 8am every Friday morning to share the thoughts that have been burning a hole in our heads.

We use it as a way to discuss cultural issues and breaking trends... today we were swearing. Well talking about it anyway and discussing language and how social culture effects our perception of different words. This and where belief comes from.

Yeah, not your usual banter about last night's TV, but that what flicks our switches.

If ever you want to raise a topic for us to discuss and share via the BC, feel free to drop us a line.

The Art of Being chipper

We're not up for plagarism, but this excerpt from the Hospital Club publication rings so true, we felt compelled to share it...


It's a critical time for the creative industries. The gloom and doom of the credit crunch, the redundancies, budget slashing, ring fencing, cost cutting - this vocabulary of financial misery is surrounding us. As Auden said 'For nothing now can ever come to any good.' Glooooomy or what?

But hold on a minute - isn't this the language of 20 years ago?

Following the 1980's Black Monday, Dim Tuesday, Darker Wednesday, Very Gloomy Thursday and Could-it-get-worse-than-this? Friday, something extraordinary happened in the creative industries.

A positive reaction. Bands from nowhere began making lots of noise, the new generation fashion designers back-lashed, artists took control - there was a renaissance in British creative attitude and the following decade became Cool Britannia. Blur, Damien Hirst, Pop Magazine, Alexander McQueen, Oasis, John Galliano, the Turner Prize, Isabella Blow, the Brit Awards, Portobello Road, St John's Restaurant, White Cube and Moro.

All over the place people took creative risks; the underground pushed its way into the mainstream and drove a stake into the heart of the Yuppie filled world of Neighbours, Wine Bars and Stock, Aitken and Waterman. It was a turning point in British Culture.

With a little less in the bank, how does the creative future pan out this time round?

When the cost of paper went up during The War, Penguin simply made their books smaller. Adjust, rethink, take risks and be creative. Welcome to 2009.

Neophilia : a love for things new.

Last week we got along to trends co PSFK's 2009's Good Ideas Salon in London.


Some interesting multi-disciplined designers, Troika with their ‘Cloud’ installation, currently being showcased at Heathrow's Terminal 5 and brand new concepts to storytelling from Punch Drunk engaging experiences.

And on a less positive note, A slow afternoon, with not many aspiring views coming out of it. The day needed less chattering around subjects with more clear points being made.

The day was stirring but unfortunately not outstanding, although what made it a success was the inspirational mix of content - Good Ideas Salon did have a number of engaging speakers, and the balance between designers and experts in their field was just right.

We definitely took away an interesting outlook on world trends but as we already have active absorbent minds here, we're not sure if sitting inside the ‘Good Ideas Salons’ four walls inspired us enough.

Highland whisky tour for The Glenlivet

Last week we were lucky enough to fly up to the Scottish Highlands and pay a visit to a couple of Pernod Ricard's Single Malt distilleries.

We picked an awesome time to visit with about 3ft of snow it really set the scenery off.

We were really well looked after and learned loads about the spiritual home of the err... spirits.

We came back perhaps a little tired and hazy, but definitely inspired by what we saw and could bring to the brands from our experiences.

And talking of experiences, Bex and GInny discovered the massage chairs at the airport, which proved a bit too much to handle!


Thanks for setting this up Mark.

Creativity all around us

People are tiring of the traditional forms of advertising and in turn brands are having to work harder to be more innovative in looking for new formats in communication.

We all want our public environments to provide more inspiration and less noise, so we're starting to see more effort coming out using creative application.

The launch of the new Nike store in Covent Garden created a glow street advert which was produced using UV ink onto the pavement so that the trainers stood out all night long!

Adidas Grün – known as plantvertising – the campaign was enhanced by using the words ‘made from’, ‘recycled’ and ‘reground’ giving it that all important ‘natural’ feel which is becoming more and more important for people in today’s society.
Another trend ‘sweeping the streets’ is clean graffiti, this is where a pressure washer is used to graffiti onto a dirty wall. An artist universally known as Moose has made a name for himself by creating a brand of street art which livens up streets and cleans up the dirt too!
Finally, artist Michael Bosanko who uses a torch and a camera to create light graffiti – the beauty of this work is that it looks like neon sculptures but it is 100% natural.

by Katie H

Web 3.0

It's a funny thing marketing. Everytime someone does something vaguely new, they put a tag on it. So in this great tradition, we're claiming web 3.0!

This Dutch site for a department store has created an online guerrilla animated experience for their own online shopping site.

The idea of using web space as an experience playing with our expectations of the site is a good one.

We look forward to the next generation of digital, the online experience place.

http://producten.hema.nl/