The best thing in the world

Last week I made this amazing discovery. I am still a teenager trapped in a man's body, and that teenager wants to fly. Over dirt jumps.

When I was a kid I had a Raleigh Burner BMX. You may have had one too. There was not much choice back then. The Redline came standard with red mags (those plastic five-spoke type) and the Mongoose was the ultimate, from what I can remember, it had a beautiful chrome finish. I had a blue Raleigh Burner and I loved it. (It looked a bit like this.) A few kilometers down the road from my house on Town Bush Road, at the bottom of Montgomery Drive, there was an open field where someone had built a bmx track. Unfortunately, it wasn't very well made. The course was laid out badly, which meant after 15 secs you were pedaling up hill. Not great for gaining speed and clearing a table top jump. The only other bmx course was across town at Roy Hesketh and there was no way my pins would get me there, before sunset.

The picture above is where I intend to rekindle those fantasies of guts and glory. Tom has just received a helmet-cam, so there should be some video entertainment on its way very very soon.

UPDATE: check out these classic Burners

We're galloping towards the Starship Enterprise. It's also called: Project Natal.

There is some truly amazing computer technology out there at the moment. But right now is seems there is a big race to change the way in which we interact with our computer software. This pursuit of banishing the archaic mouse and keyboard to the museum is not surprising.

Who could forget the interactive gestures Tom Cruise made at his computer screen in the Minority Report. That movie came out seven years ago.

Well, it looks like Microsoft has just caught up, big time.

We're rolling like thunder (and we won our pitch!)

We have just been told that we won our pitch for new business. As you can imagine there was some loopin' and a woopin' going on in the studio at about 3pm when we got the news.

Im normally against pitches. I think that an agency should be appointed for its design skills and reputation. But when I met the client and received the brief, it sparked something inside me, and I decided to take the risk. We love design, technology and those things called brands. So its great when you get a chance to be involved with their inception.

A good friend and brilliant designer once said to me, "If you're going to pitch, just make sure you get it."

You cant be sure if you will win a pitch, or how the final decision will be made, but if you take part in one, you might as well knock it out the park.

This is the third time we have ever pitched on new business. I suppose if you apply the law of averages, luck, and that thing called elbow grease it was only a matter of time. Maybe it was also on brief, and just what they were looking for.

Well done to the guys in the studio. Special thanks to Tanya for being our lucky charm and clicker.

Keep a look out on our portfolio site for the logo that will be launching a new boutique hotel brand in Cape Town.
(This is not the logo, its just one of the doodles during the process of developing the final one.)

New headphones, new music, classic videos

This is such a classic video, nice little twist in the tail.



I first saw this video at RezFest in 2004 (i think) - its a classic track and cool video.


In other news: I just bought some South African music for the first time in ages. Actually cant remember the last time I bought a cd: The Dirty Skirts - Daddy Dont Disco

But I kept it real by downloading an album by Empire of the Sun - Walking on a Dream. I used mininova and Tranmission for mac. Im just listening to this on 'trial' ;)

There you go its all out now.

if only I still had young bendy bones, i would try this...

A friend just sent me the link to this video. I have seen this mad man before; riding on chains and hopping on to rainway lines. The intro of him not quite maintaining the line he is one puts the whole thing in to context. Enjoy.

Create your own monster!

The newest member to the studio has arrived. Say hello to Tentaclopse.

When you use a computer to make things all day, its great to go back to paper and a craft knife. The hardest part about making Tentaclopse was finding the right glue and making him look like the picture on Readymech.com - I think he's a pretty good clone.

How much does it cost to Google

About a year and a half ago I wrote a post about Blackle.com, the black google that may reduce the carbon footprint of search. But now the results of an official study which has been released. Its quite surprising. Read it here

Extreme Respect!

This really appeals to me. This looks so steep and so fast, I would definatey be in line for a trip down this slipway in Wales. Check it out.

I guess that wont be surprising to some of you, especially since I went down this escalator at Angel in London at about the same pace. Only, I did it without skis, broke a knee-cap and lived to tell the tail.

The greatest magic trick in the world

Ok, so this is a shameless test of how a headline can affect the visibility of a post, I admit it. I do know a good card trick or two. They are just better in person.

Saafi Brothers gets my vote today for their Mystic Cigarettes album.

The superweed gets my vote for being shot in time lapse and being brought to the worlds attention on the bbc website. What a famous weed! Respect. But hold on someone hooked up a plant so that it could make its own blog posts. That's so ridiculously green.

The little robot that can ride a uni-cycle gets my vote for US president. Come on, everyone thinks Barack is better than McCain, but have you seen Barack without his teleprompter?

And lastly - this is a an amazing picture from today's web-surfing.

Peace.

Throwing yourself off a cliff for guts and glory

Im afraid this blog has been a bit off piste recently. Usually I blog about technology or design, or throw up some cool links, but today its all about bikes and the insanity of freeride.

This is the biggest canyon jump I have ever seen. This would make Evel Knievel proud, because this is like turbo charging the stakes, cloning the legend, making him compete for best trick against himself, and distributing the results on dvd and blu-ray. This is Red Bull Rampage.

On the weekend I took my 10 year old nephew for a ride in Tokai. Shamefully I tried to show off a bit, pulling a few wheelies and taking a few jumps. He knows whats out there, I must have looked a fool.

The best coffee in Observatory

I woke up on Saturday in search of food and coffee. So I ambled down to Tina's coffee shop on lower main road called Queen of Tarts and ordered a cappuccino.

It arrived with a small kiwi looking fern leaf embroyded out of smooth foam and espresso cream. It was the best cappuccino I have ever had.

If you have been to our studio in Observatory, you will know that we love coffee. We have had 3 different espresso machines downstairs, a Breville, an Expobar, and now a San Marco. Our current one is in for a service. Its seen some action. We found it on gumtree and it makes an amazing espresso. But if you know your flat white from your latte, you'll also know there is a real science to get it all right, and then hand it over for a tasting.

Tina (Queen of Tarts on Lower Main Road) has a new Barista and he is a legend. Go and see for yourself.

iphoned you from my iphone in my dreams

Is this a joke?

I have no idea who has that sort of cash for an iphone which will either, get nicked, be dropped or run out of storage space.

[update] - turns out that Gary has that sort of cash.

Creativity comes as radiohead stems

no need to apologise for brilliance, just nod your head and accept the compliment graciously. radiohead: a rock band that rocks has again open sourced under GPL (so to speak) their various stems from one of their tracks, Reckoner.

I received an email from radiohead about this development personally, although it did not say "dear trevor" at the top, which was a bit of a let down, because they know me, it was beautifully to the point and did not include a single graphic or piece of design. no need to dress up and leave a false name here, just us, radio (rock your mind control) head sending you a quick mail about something thats not sugar coated.

(sigh)

Creativity comes in many forms

Light-Paint Piano Player from Ryan Cashman on Vimeo.

I am rediscovering VIMEO. I should be doing a proposal but the temptation of surfing started when someone sent me this link of two crazy guys riding their skateboards at incredible speed, in suits. Turns out it is a viral campaign made by the fashion designer Adam Kimmel. I downloaded the HD version without realising, and now Im too scared to close my browser and feel it would be rude not to surf the internet.

girls and boys

I was in Konstanz Germany on my way to Zurich, when I stopped to use a WC. For those Canadians out there who dont know what that is, its a toilet. And look at the rad little icons I found on the doors. Makes a nice change from the standard icons that look like they were designed in days of shoulder pads and bad hairdo's.

People are obsessed by the strangest things, I have stumbled upon an entire FLICKR set dedicated to this subject!

Large Hadron Collider, whats all the fuss about?!

I got a little sucked up in the media hype last week about CERN, and as a result I went and ate a McDonald's burger because I thought that our earth space time would be sucked into a little tiny black hole.

The LHC started up today, and it seems the earth is still here. I found a very interesting article as why the earth is still here today. Anyway, that's such good news because I had so much still to do today.

Do you have a business card?

What do you do when your supplier doesn't deliver the stuff you requested before a trade show?

The one thing you really need at a trade show is business cards. When you're a designer you need business cards that are cool.

This is a sheet of stickers. The plan was to pull them off and stick them to my plain white cards.

I emailed a regular supplier some artwork for printing and asked for a cost. The correspondence went something like this.

-----
Hi,
Please see the attached artwork. I'd like these printed on A4. What would it cost per page?
-----
Hello, R30 + vat per A4
-----
Can I have 5 copies by 12 tomorrow?
-----
you can pick up at 2pm
-----

Literally, those were his last words. Now, I don't know about you, but that sounds pretty conclusive to me. When I arrived at about 3pm on my way to the airport, he looked at me as if I was mad, and said "You didn't mail me back so I didn't do em."



Anyway I don't have the stickers that I wanted to stick to my plain white cards, so I'm drawing pictures on them.

Peace!

A new morewood website

We very happy to announce the launch of the latest morewood bikes website. And we managed to do it the day before Eurobike started.

Eurobike started today. It is the biggest bicycle expo in the Europe and probably the world. Its great to be here doing some research for the brand and to chat to the suppliers and distributors that we work with.

There is plenty to blog about here at the bike show, from weird bike company names to decals that look identical, or the new flavour of the month, I'll keep you posted.

By the way, we also did all the sticker designs for the bikes, and chose the frame colours so take a look and tell us what you think: morewoodbikes.com

Should we be conCERNed?

What makes us change our mind, or do something that we thought we wouldn't?

For those of you who know me, I'm anti McDonald's. There's plenty of reasons why it might be a bad idea to eat it out there.

But today, being on the road on the way from France to Germany, hungry and considering the slight possibility of a black hole swallowing up the earth on the 10th September when they start up the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, I thought, to hell with it.

What would you do with your time if we only had a week left on the planet?

future proof

Sorry, I have been on the move. I am in France and on my way to Germany next week to the biggest bicycle expo in Europe called Eurobike. It should be fun. It will all be revealed on the new Morewood website which is being launched next week. Our studio will posting pictures and videos everyday to keep the forums and traffic buzzing.

It seems technology has been on the move too. Did you know that Intel is doing this?

But the jury is out on who was first, of course, and so there will be a lot of noise from these guys, and maybe these guys about who gets the credit.

Personally I hope we dont fry ourselves with all the electromagnetic radiation. Or are they gamma rays? Aaaaaaah, shut it down!

I'll be back at the blog, with serious posts, next week.