I AM T-PAIN iPHONE APP!!

I began hearing strange sounds and laughing coming from my living room... I went to see what my brother was doing...to find him singing to himself in hysterics, with his earphones in, in his iPhone! 

He then played me a recording, where he'd used a dowloaded app called 'I am T-Pain', which had changed his slightly tuneless voice, into this technologic/electronic, studio quality sounding rapper! 

His altered voice together with his imaginative, hilarious, on the spot thinking lyrics...something like 'chilllliiiee sauceeeeee.....james turner...james ttttt turminator, t u r m intaor' made me crack up and want to download the app straight away! 

'I am T-Pain' auto-tunes your voice, literally in the palm of your hand! It uses the same Antares Audio Technology, T-Pain himself uses in the studio to record his music! Its really simple to use, you simply load the app, then select your favourite song and sing into the mic on your iPhone. You can record each song and publich them over social networks and email. There is also the freestyle option where you just sing/speak into the Auto Tuning Mic, without a companion track!

I think this app is hilarious and will provide hours of fun! Hopefully there will be more apps like his in the future!! SShhorrrttttteeehhhy!!

MUSE NEW ALBUM ART

Some may describe Muse's music as masterpieces and their new album cover for The Resistance (due to be released on the 15th September), is in my opinion a beautiful piece of cover art. It caught my eye and since I have scoured the internet to see what inspiration was drawn to create it.

I found that in a BBC Radio 1 interview with Zane Lowe, the lead singer Matt Bellamy explained that 1984, the George Orwell novel featuring a dystopian future, is the main inspiration. He was paricularly taken with the love story within the book between character Juliette and Winston. I feel that the strong, rich, warm colours within the hexagonal shapes reflect this loving emotion. The colours appear to grow stronger and brighter as they get nearer to earth, possibly suggesting a need for a stronger love for our world. You can also feel the miserable view of society, shown through the figure standing alone, far away from the earth looking down on it quite literally, with a cold detachment. This is echoed again through the colours surrounding the figure , which are more cold and darker. 

The Resistance album art, has a really fresh, vibrant graphical feel to it...I look forward to seeing the rest of the artwork to go with the releases from this album.

New Hard Hitting Ad - Texting at the Wheel

This extremely hard-hitting, very real, gory ad has created alot of attention, even worldwide. It begins with a young girl driving with friends in the car, whilst trying to text. You are taken through this very graphic, bone breaking, horrific accident and everyone else who is involved, right up to the emergency services arriving trying to pull the victims from the wreckage.

I personally think this explicitly brutal ad does have a shock factor that works. Both the Visual imagery and the audio work together to mirror the realness of the situation and exemplify the inherent danger with texting in cars. Some may think it is unnecessarily hard-hitting, but I think it has been designed specifically this way, which makes it re-memorable. Hopefully when your next in the car with your phone you will think twice. If you haven't seen it yet... take a look:

 

Set my Peperami Free....lance!!!

Peperami have dropped their Advertising Agency Lowe, who they have worked with for the last 16 years and are now asking us, the creative public to do their job! They are following the likes of Doritios and Pringles, whose recent campaigns have been consumer generated and for a reduced cost. Peperami want to take their advertising to the next level, with radical creative ideas that anyone can come up with and enter, for a chance to win.

The Peperami campaign is using an online creative networking site, ideabounty.com, as the tool to getting creative talent involved. You simply register on the site and are given the brief to enter in for a chance to win $10 000 (£6,087) and see the campaign worldwide. The campaign is still focused around the 'animal' character, originally devised from Lowe.

Unilever have stopped their relationship with Lowe on good terms and were especially pleased with their work they have done for them over the years. They also have no intention of using this 'crowd sourcing' technique across any other of their brands currently, but want to still give out briefs to the public in this way for Peperami and not go back to using a retained agency. 

To still keep the high-quality finished executions of their previous ads, Peperami will still be working alongside specialist agency Smartworks to create the winning work. This brief was open to enter from 28th August and is running till 23rd October...so why not give it ago yourself?!

Here's the cheeky/mad BBQ flavour Peperami Ad By Lowe London:

Friendly Fires Homecoming Gig

FRIENDLY FIRES

The Mercury-prize nominated band Friendly Fires, returned to their hometown of St Albans last night to an excited local crowd of 900, in the small sold-out venue of the Alban Arena. The gig was said to be for lead singer Ed; "definitely one of the most surreal, bizarre days of my life, but I'm loving it!". 

The trio, Ed MacFarlane, Jack Savidge and Edd Gibson met at St Albans School and formed their band from the age of 14. Their success and popularity has grown especially over the last two years with their sparkling beautiful electric/pop/percussion sounding epic party tracks, being played across all main radio stations and around the world, from them touring across festivals from the UK, to Japan and America. Their unusual percussion instruments, comprise of shaking maracas, playing cowbells and even using a hoover on a guitar! Somehow these sounds blend in perfectly with each track and make each track as individual as the last.

From their relentless touring and practice, they performed an impressively tight set with, perfect vocals and high energy, extremely-watchable dancing from lead singer Ed Macfarlane. After the gig there was a small and friendly after party (which i was lucky enough to attend) at The Horn (Musical Live Pub of the year), where the band, band friends and family were invited.

Their set-list was comprised of all their big tracks from their debut album, including my favourite "Jump In The Pool" and their latest track "Kiss of Life".

Set-List:

'Lovesick'
'Jump In The Pool'
'Skeleton Boy'
'In The Hospital'
'White Diamonds'
'Strobe'
'Kiss Of Life'
'Photobooth'
'On Board'
'Paris'

'Ex Lover''

Twilight The Movie

After being engrossed in reading Twilight, I was excited to see the film adaptation and bought the dvd straight away.

Whilst I read the book I had seen posters pretty much everywhere for the film, so unfortunately I already had the main characters Bella and Edward, visually in my mind. Apart from my imagination not creating their profiles, before watching a film (like The Da Vinchi Code), if the director takes a different approach or style to what you envisaged, it automatically quickly becomes very disappointing. I have to say I was impressed. I think the surroundings, set and atmosphere where captured and portrayed really well and the actors were well chosen for each role.

My main frustration with the film, was how they had slightly rushed and compacted nearly all the chapters into less than half the running time. It just didn't feel well-balanced. I felt it missed out a lot of the detail and small but notable events from the book, which would have added to the depth and substance of the film. It also seemed to quite simply focus on Bella and Edward and made the other sub-characters (eg Mike) play much smaller, less memberable roles.

Kristin Stewart (who plays Bella) and Robert Pattison (who plays Edward), I think made a great pair, which were both beautiful and mesmerising to watch on screen. The misunderstood teenagers brilliantly create high sexual tension, which you can almost feel through the screen. A definite highlight of the film was watching the gorgeously handsome Pattison, playing Edward. In the book more time is spent detailing their blossoming romance and how they both have to come to terms with the dangers that come with their relationship. This again is a detail which is too quickly surpassed in my opinion.

Apart from the details mentioned above, there were not any other major key elements missing and the film was both action-packed and enjoyable, but nowhere near as believable. It was low budget, so i think the slightly questionable special effects were due to this. I really look forward to the sequel, which I am currently reading to come out on the big screen! Im pretty sure though, the films will never beat reading the books!

IKEA: Why fix something that isn’t broken?

Ikea have just changed their Futura typeface to Verdana. This interested me as I wondered why would they bother changing something that i personally think works well... basically why try fixing something that isn't already broken! 

The Verdana typeface was designed by Microsoft especially for use on the web, due to its easy readability from the wide spaces left between each character, enabling it to be used at small sizes on computer screens. I feel that the slightly quirky/constructivist elements of Futura have been lost in Verdana, which is more modern and a homogenous typeface that does not stand out with originality, but has been used for its exceptional clarity needed in our growing digital age.

An Ikea spokeswoman, Monika Gocic, has said that Verdana is for them because "it is more efficient and cost-effective", therefore has been chosen more from an economics point of view. Verdana enables their business to work across the globe in many different languages, by being clear and unambiguous.