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Super U!

Mark prides itself in showcasing great South African advertising to the world. Now we are taking it one step further by looking showcasing the work of our neighbouring African states and territories. Creative work done by Luvi Ogilvy, based in St Denis on Reunion Island, will be featured throughout the week on Marklives!com.

One very important Super U value is proximity. It’s often a neighbourhood store, just a walk away. Another important value is the warm welcome to clients. It’s so close it almost feels like home.

Advertising Agency: Luvi Ogilvy
Advertising Agency City: St Denis Reunion Island
Creative Director: Pedro De Oliveira/Philippe Amsallem
Art Director: Pedro De Oliveira
Copywriter: Luis Vieira

Digg the sustainable placemats

The House and Leisure Green Designers at Woolworths competition was launched in August 2008, with the aim of showcasing home product design from students at tertiary design institutions around the country. Students were briefed to design environmentally friendly homeware in a specific category that is suitable for a discerning consumer. The competition ran in the past seven issues, with designs from three semi-finalists showcased each month. The work of some of the students featured will be chosen to go into production, and will be available at selected Woolworths stores.

The 10 finalists in the House and Leisure Green Designers at Woolworths competition (Product category in brackets) will be featured on MarkLives!com throughout the week. First up is Kirsti van Zyl and Nivesh Rawatlal. The winner will be announced at Design Indaba on 26 February.

Kirsti van Zyl, Cape Peninsula University of Technology (bed linen)

It is exciting to be part of the increasing awareness that surrounds environmental issues. The root imagery in my design is a representation of both my own and society’s growing involvement.

Nivesh Rawatlal, Durban Institute of Technology (place mats)

My design is sustainable as it’s durable and nontoxic. My place mats would be cost effective to produce. The material I chose was canvas, as it’s great to work with. I got my inspiration from looking around me … in my studio, wherever I walked. It was a combination of many things that had been building up in my headspace.

Images: Associated Magazines

Digiguru shows some love

Desktop Wallpaper – Designed with love by Digiguru

Quick fix: How to open a docx file without Office 2007

If you Google that question you find a number of sites explaining that docx files (Office 2007 files) cannot be opened by Office Word 2003 or earlier and that you will need to download and install all 27 megs of a compatibility pack made available by Microsoft. There are also several online document converters that supposedly convert docx files to PDF or doc files but in my experience they either don’t deliver or they charge.

The simplest way to open a docx file is to email it to your Gmail.com account, and then to view the file as html, which lets Gmail do all the converting, and save you a lot of hassle!

The brands you never thought you would see on the Internet – but did

Lucky Star is one of those iconic consumer brands we all know and, well, know. Given that so many consumer brands still choose to give the Internet a miss I think its fantastic that Lucky Star has ventured online, not only with a website (basic but a start), but an online ad campaign that gets the brand I never thought I would see on the Internet in sight of South African netizens.Check out some of their recipes while you are there…

Any other brands you never thought you would see on the Internet but did? Email us!

Coca-Cola Company responds to MyCoke.co.za closure

MarkLives.com contacted and received the following statement from Kaizer M. Nyatsumba, Public Affairs and Communications Director for Coca-Cola South Africa, regarding the closure of popular MY Coke Fest blog MyCoke.co.za. The blog was set up South African blogger Jason Bagley who announced the blogs closure earlier this week following legal action taken by The Coca-Cola Company.

The statement in full:

In early December 2008, The Coca-Cola Company became aware of a website being operated at www.mycoke.co.za, which contained information and blogs about the MY COKE FEST 2008 events. Of concern to the Company was unauthorized use of its registered and well-known trademarks, including MY COKE FEST, COCA-COLA, COKE and the famous CONTOUR BOTTLE. Large portions of The Coca-Cola Company’s official MY COKE FEST 2008 website had also been copied and reproduced on Mr Bagley’s website in contravention of copyright legislation.

The images, wording, statements and domain name used for mycoke.co.za created the impression that the website was official and/or authorized by The Coca-Cola Company. However, this is not the case as there is no relationship between Mr Bagley and The Coca-Cola Company. The Coca-Cola Company had not supplied or authorized the content of the website although visitors to the website were being led to believe that this was the official MY COKE FEST website.

At that time, the unauthorized website contained a number of sponsored advertisements which were generating revenue for Mr Bagley.
The Coca-Cola Company’s intellectual property rights (trademarks, copyright works, goodwill, etc.) are assets of substantial value which require constant protection. Allowing third parties to make use of this intellectual property without authority can lead to confusion among members of the public and, ultimately, a dilution of important brands. The Coca-Cola Company cannot countenance such an infringement of its intellectual property rights under any circumstances.

In this case, since The Coca-Cola Company had no relationship with Mr Bagley and no review of the content on the mycoke.co.za website, there was great potential for harm. In the circumstances, The Coca-Cola Company obtained legal advice and then instructed its intellectual property attorneys to address a letter to Mr Bagley, explaining its position and rights and requesting him to delete the domain name mycoke.co.za and cease all and any unauthorized use of the Company’s trademarks. This letter was addressed to Mr Bagley by e-mail on 12 December 2008, with a response being requested by 15 December 2008.

On 16 December 2008, Mr Bagley responded to Adams & Adams, advising that he would be on leave until 7 January 2009. In response, Adams & Adams advised that, in view of the very serious nature of the infringements, the matter could not be held over until 7 January but that, provided the website was suspended immediately, they would be prepared to wait until mid-January for a comprehensive response to the demands.

On 18 December 2008, Mr Bagley sent a further e-mail to Adams & Adams advising that the website had built up a large following and enquiring about the possibility of entering into an arrangement with The Coca-Cola Company to leverage the marketing value of the blog. He also advised that he had taken down the advertising from the website.

In view of the fact that Mr Bagley’s conduct in using The Coca-Cola Company’s intellectual property without its authority was unlawful, the Company felt that it was neither obliged to, nor willing to, enter into any discussions with Mr Bagley which would involve paying him any amount of money or taking over the website. He was advised of this decision in mid-January and was again requested to cease the infringing conduct by no later than 23 January 2009. Mr. Bagley’s site remained active and continued to include intellectual property of The Coca-Cola Company without authorization.

In the meantime, the 2009 COCA-COLA ZERO FEST event was announced and the mycoke.co.za website was amended to include details of this announcement, again worded in such a way that the mycoke.co.za website appeared to be the official website for the event, despite the correspondence exchanged between Mr. Bagley and outside counsel for The Coca-Cola Company. The Coca-Cola Company has its own, official website for this year’s event at www.cokezero.co.za/fest.

No response to the requests to Mr Bagley was received by Adams & Adams, despite further and final reminders being sent to him on 4 and 9 February. On 9 February, however, Mr Bagley announced on the mycoke.co.za blog, that he had decided to comply and would be taking down the website by 16 February 2009.

The Coca-Cola Company appreciates all comments and feedback received from fans of the MY COKE FEST events and encourages discussion and dialogue about these events in open forums. However, the Company cannot knowingly permit such discussions to take place in conjunction with the unauthorized use of its trade marks which could ultimately result in harm to its brands and image.

SA Newspapers sees growth in followers on Twitter

MarkLives is tracking SA newspapers using Twitter to try and gauge which if any are implementing strategies that could benefit both users (followers in Twitter tongue) and publication. We published the first data in December last year.

Not much have changed since January in terms of strategic implementation. IOL and News24 continue to dump a thousand plus headlines on their poor Twitter followers every month. An interesting development from News24 though – it launched a Twitter feed for MyNews24 which has a human moderator interacting with users and posts breaking news only. It launched February 4 and has already managed to sign up 69 followers. It did so by getting its name out there – following 228 Twitter feeds itself.

TheTimes knocked IOL off the number 1 spot. It is also making strategic use of Twitters viral power by following 117 feeds itself. The top 4 sites all experienced positive growth in subscriber numbers.

Grocott’s Mail and the Sowetan limited updates. Maybe their interns forgot their Twitter passwords?

[TABLE=5]

See January 2009 data update. See December 2008 data update.
Follow MarkLives on Twitter @marklives or on the @CABNetwork

If you find other news organisations online let me know so I can add them to the list.

A History of Aggressive Design Magazines

Design Observer recently ran an interesting article on early design magazines, including PM, the forerunner of AD.

Founded in 1934 by Dr. Robert Leslie, a medical doctor by training, type aficionado by choice and co-founder of the Composing Room Inc, a leading New York type house, PM was a trade magazine imbued with missionary zeal.

See the full story here

When Gmail isn’t Gmail

South African webmail host Webmail International and Gardale Solutions, the owners of the South African Gmail domain, have combined forces to form a local free email solution on the www.gmail.co.za domain.

Gardale has owned the domain name since mid 2003 and claims the local domain name is abbreviated from Gardale Mail. Google’s offering launched April 2004 as an invitation-only beta release and became available to the general public in February 2007.

Will Google take legal action? Is Webmail deceiving the South African public? This story is just starting to write itself…

Photoshop CS4: a quick tour

The guys at Adobe must derive much perverse pleasure from keeping us mortals on our toes, or perhaps they’re just a particularly motivated bunch of guys. I’m not sure, but just when you thought it was OK to sit back, relax and sink your teeth into CS3, Creative Suite 4 parades across our software landscape amidst much fanfare and mouse-clicking.Adobe’s latest incarnation is packed with new features that will no doubt entice the most reticent of users to reach for their wallets.

What follows is a broad overview of the latest incarnation of that pixel pushing behemoth – Adobe Photoshop. Photoshop CS4 heralds big news for Windows Vista users – it not only ships in a standard 32-bit version, but also a RAM friendly 64-bit version that will make previously unmanageable 300dpi 2 gig files seem like 72dpi 2 meg files, if of course you have loads of RAM to back it up. Bear in mind that Photoshop requires you to manually allocate a desired amount RAM. Simply put, if you’re running Windows Vista and the 64-bit version of Photoshop CS4, go out and buy lots of RAM – it will be the most cost- effective solution of boosting Photoshop’s abilities when working with seriously large amounts of pixels. There’s one other catch though; even if you’ve upgraded your RAM, there’s no denying that the reading and writing of massive amounts of information to a hard disk is ultimately time-consuming. You’ve been warned.

Photoshop CS4’s main interface has also undergone some cosmetic surgery, and there’s been an obvious move on the part of Abode to streamline the interface. This includes tabbed documents and the addition of some common tools such as Zoom and Rotate to the Title bar of a current document. Photoshop CS4 is all about saving time and accessibility, and this philosophy extends to the Panel layout too. Noticeable changes to the Panel area is the exclusion of the somewhat irritating sidebar, the addition of a Masks Panel and a very functional facelift to the Adjustments Panel. The Masks Panel essentially gives you immediate access to all the masking features in Photoshop (including both pixel- and vector-based masks) while the new-look Adjustments Panel allows for user-friendly non-destructive edits and a rather cool set of presets.

Depth-of-field tweaks include a tool that allows you to combine a variety of images, each with a different exposure, colour and even focal point into a single colour-corrected image. It appears to have some relation to an HDR (High Dynamic Range) method of photography, so the use of a timed release and tripod would be mandatory. Adobe also have spruced up the colour correction tools in Photoshop CS4 by ‘reengineering’ the rather bedraggled looking Dodge, Burn and Sponge tools. These now have the ability to ‘intelligently preserve colour and tone details.’

Adobe Photoshop’s Camera Raw 5 plug-in now includes enhanced support for over 190 camera models, the ability to do localized corrections, post-crop vignetting and the usual flawless JPEG and TIFF processing.
Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2 and Photoshop CS4 are also on better terms. You can now simply select a set of images in Lightroom 2 and automatically open them in Photoshop CS4 for the creation of HDR photos, multi-layered montages and even panoramic compositions. Roundtrip editing between the two applications appears to have reached a real functional maturity, and in combination with the Camera Raw 5 plug-in and a speedier version of Bridge CS4, there’s no doubting the seamless integration of the respective applications. My personal favourite is Bridge’s Recent Folder tool that allows you access previous working folders in Bridge, and even Photoshop.

Returning to Photoshop CS4, there’s a host of new Transform related goodies that are worth mentioning. My personal favourite (Left-handed Wacom tablet users will love this one!) is non-destructive Fluid Canvas Rotation, which allows you to smoothly turn your canvas for distortion-free viewing at any desired angle at the click of a mouse. You can also Pan and Zoom with the click of the Hand tool, and even scroll automatically by means of mouse action. Bear in mind this feature requires an OpenGL Graphics card, but you might well consider upgrading your graphics card if it doesn’t support OpenGL. OpenGL rendering enhances the performance of Photoshop CS4 and it eliminates the jaggedness in the display of images at odd magnification percentages. In addition, OpenGL allows for silky-smooth zooming in CS4. Another impressive feature of Photoshop CS4 is Content-Aware Scaling. This feature essentially allows one to automatically recompose an image as you resize it. Vital areas of the image will adapt to the new scaling sans any distortion. Imagine transforming a 4:3 ratio image to 16:9 without any major horizontal distortion!
Extending Photoshop CS4 has been enhanced by allowing users to download and share Adobe Flash technology-based panels that developers create to accomplish customized tasks. There’s also a new Adobe Community Help online service where you can get help, tips and tricks.

Incidentally, Photoshop CS4’s online component now provides users with access to Kuler’s ‘colour themes’. These themes are hosted online, where you can create, share and upload them to Adobe’s online repository. It’s a fairly user-friendly way to find a fresh colour palette for a project.

The release of Photoshop CS3 saw impressive integration and viewing of 3D files. CS4 includes tools for an even better conversation between 3D files and Photoshop. Users can now paint directly on 3D models with ease and wrap a 2D image around a 3D shape. Gradient maps can be converted to 3D objects, and you can even add depth to layers and text. Photoshop CS4’s new ray-tracing rendering engine allows for commercial print quality output, and there’s the option of exporting your files to industry standard 3D formats. The 3D editing interface has been streamlined significantly and you can orient objects and position the camera using 3D axes and a ground plane.

Photoshop CS4’s printing abilities have also been given an overhaul with support for lush 16-bit printing on Mac OSX 10.5 and later. There’s far tighter support and integration with popular printer brands such as Canon, Epson and HP, hopefully translating to less colour management issues. The inclusion of an out-of-gamut preview in the print dialog is also a welcome addition to the process of soft-proofing print documents.

In closing, Adobe Photoshop CS4 appears to be brimming with new features, most notably 64-bit support for Windows Vista users and a host of worthy upgrades, additions and tweaks. If you haven’t made the move to CS3 yet, perhaps it’s time you gave Photoshop CS4 serious consideration. Happy Photoshopping!

_Text by Stephen Symons. Reprinted from Enjin magazine with permission.