The Toffie Pop Culture Festival and Design Conference is back in Cape Town for its second year and promises to give delegates lots to chew on (ok, that was cheap – like the tickets!). The festival/conference hybrid, which takes place at the truly lovely grand dame of Cape Town, the City Hall, Thursday 24 March – Saturday 26 March 2011, offers a mix of workshops, speakers, curated exhibitions, films, boxing matches and parties.
Javier Lourenco is the Buenos Aires-based creative director of visual studio Flamboyant Paradise and founder of TheUncoolHunter, a website throwing a cheeky middle finger to the trendoids of the world by insisting on filling in the often-ignored aspects of popular culture Wallpaper and Visi decide to give a miss.
Harley-Davidson, IBM, General Electric, Coca-Cola and Nike. How is this for a client list? Delegates to the annual Design Indaba, which kicks off tomorrow (it runs from 23-25 February 2011) at the Cape Town International Convention Centre (CTICC), will find out when Dana Arnett, a founding principal and CEO of VSA Partners, takes to the stage.
Last week I found myself on an island in the Indian Ocean – and spent most of my time in hospital. But first impressions count and if hospitals are anything to go by, Antananarivo, Madagascar is a magical place.
I’ve seen no gunshot, stabbing or minibus victims, only a broken arm and a smokers’ cough – and that was one of the surgeons. She smokes a pack a day and drinks more coffee than is healthy but her hands are as steady as a rock. They have to be if you are operating on about 8 patients a day over five full days.
Most of the patients I’ve seen in the hospital are smiling, happy characters, made more remarkable by the fact that over 400 of them have cleft lips or palates.
The University of Stellenbosch Business School has teamed up with online retailer Kalahari.net to investigate the impact and value of making content available in eBook format to academic institutions. The project aims to ensure that South African academic institutions base future decisions around the adoption of eBooks as a viable alternative to printed text on fact rather than hype.
Every so often you find a campaign which a jpeg simply doesn’t do justice. You need a hard copy in your hands to admire the detail and the printing or to get a real sense of how effective this can actually be.
One such campaign was created for Art South Africa magazine by Y&R Cape Town. Executive Creative Director Clinton Bridgeford explains the concept: "We created four different 80 buck notes (the price of Art SA magazine) each illustrated by different artists and all carried the line "Get the latest issue of Art SA and see how art is making money, or not". Whenever a customer bought a magazine or book in the store that also sells Art South Africa, the store staff slipped our notes in amongst the customers’ real change.
Executive Creative Director – Clinton Bridgeford
Art Director – Andrew O’Donoghue
Copy Writer – Emily Veitch
Illustration – Word of Art (Faith 47, Paul Senyol, Bison, Wesley Van Eeden)
Printers – Trident Press
Andrew Whitehouse, Executive Creative Director at FoxP2, attended the AfrikaBurn (a South African take on the famous Burning Man) event held in the Karoo in April. He took some pictures and jotted down some words exclusively for MarkLives.
On Digital Media (ODM) has finally announced details of its multi-channel television brand TopTV. It offers the first real alternative to the DSTv monopoly. The service will see a staggered roll-out from May 2010 with pricing options ranging from R99 to R249 per month. It will be targeted at customers in LSM5-8.
Just as the New York Times prepares to start charging for their carefully fact-checked content The Huffington Post goes and make their case for them. The Huffington Post published a piece by Jeffrey Hoffman headlined “Could The 2010 World Cup Be A Disaster In the Making?” (Posted: January 14, 2010 09:15 AM), thought better of it, and then pulled it from its website to the apparent surprise of the author. It can still be accessed at this URL but does not appear on a public list of stories attributed to Hoffman.
Loeries 2009: Apocalypse Now? Loeries 2009 happened this past weekend and as creative directors popped corks and downed shooters Jarred Cinman tells us why he believes their job prospects are no longer what it used to be.