The Forbidden Corner

Advertised as ‘the strangest place in the world’ The Forbidden Corner in North Yorkshire really is one of those places you have to see and experience for yourself to really understand it. The best way I can describe the experience is that when you enter The Forbidden Corner it is like becoming Alice in Wonderland and going down the rabbit hole. You given a list of ‘things to see’ when you enter the garden full of cryptic clues such as “The snake pulsates, with light it sheds, Dare you pass, between the heads.” And sure enough as you walk around the winedy footpaths, in and out of woods, through mazes and over bridges you will come across an entrance to a cave in the shape of a snakes mouth. If you go through the cave, after seeing more unusual things such as a village of mice that are attacked by a giant cat, you will appear through a window into another part of the garden. One of the things I like about the experience is that there is no set route, you just wander from clue to clue down the various footpaths meaning if you where to visit again the experience would be completely unique again. Although it is really aimed at children it’s the sort of experience anybody of any age can enjoy, it’s a real life fantasy adventure.

Visit the website at http://www.theforbiddencorner.co.uk

www.kneebouncers.com/kneebouncers.html

Kneebouncers is a fun site designed for young children to play on, it’s full of simple games where you press a button on the keyboard and some thing bright and colourful happens on screen. The site is really well designed, the designers have identified that there was a need for a site that very young children can use with their parents, where the games aren’t difficult or need any sort of hand eye coordination. I was first shown the website a couple of years ago but I’ve recently been working on a project at work where we wanted to build some simple games into it so I got in contact with the designers who built this site to fin out how they did it – here is the response I got from Jim Robinson of PUNCH

“Hi Danny, Thanks for the email! Yes kneebouncers is all flash -- Kurt Dommermuth (flash guru you may want to visit more stuff he has done -- kurtdommermuth.com or thetruthiswhatyoubelieve.com or the flash community organicflash.com) is my best friend and once I came up with the idea and drawings he brought it all to life.”

www.spimsonizeme.com - Simsonize Me!

I guess a lot of people will have already stumbled upon or been shown this website already but if you haven’t and you’ve got 10 minutes to spare it’s well worth a visit. www.spimsonizeme.com is a neat little micro site / marketing ploy set up as a joint venture between Burger King and the creators of the Simpson’s movie when they where launching it. Basically it allows anybody to up-load a photo of themselves which the site then ‘Simpsonizes’ you – creating a picture of what you would look like if you where a Simpson’s character. Once it has done this you can fine-tune your picture before adding a background and downloading it (or sending it to be printed on a mug, if you really want).

You can have some great fun with the site, last Christmas I got a photo of everybody in our office and spent an evening Simpsonizing them all for a big group portrait that I gave to the team for Christmas. The pictures that the site gives you aren’t good enough quality to print from so I had to re-draw each person in Adobe Illustrator (which was a bit of a pain) but the effect was well worth it as it made a pretty unique and amusing gift.

So, if the credit crunch has hit you hard and you’ve got a friend who likes the Simpson’s feel free to steal this idea at Christmas (and if you don’t have the design software to redraw your characters for printing you can get a whole evenings worth of work out of me for a box of Jaffa Cakes…).

Design and build your own typeface for free - http://fontstruct.fontshop.com

This is a fantastic new website from FontShop which allows you to design and then build your own unique typeface. Once you have created it you can then download it (both for a Mac and a PC) and share it with other users of the site (you can also search and download theirs). This is a fantastic idea – if you are working on a logo you can create a really unique typeface for a client or if you want a typeface with a really specific look that you just cant find anywhere now you can just build it yourself (and name it after yourself, naturally). I can’t wait to use it in a project!

Visit http://fontstruct.fontshop.com

Nike PHOTOiD

Nike are once again taking advantage of new technologies in their new campaign called Nike PHOTOiD. Previously they had a very successful and ground braking campaign when they teamed up the Apple I-Pod to create a website / shoe that allowed you to create a music playlists to go with your workouts and then get feedback. Now they have created a service that allows customers (especially fans of customising their own clothes/shoes) to take a photo with their camera phone of an object or scene from their environment that has interesting colours then send it as a message to Nike. Nike will then send them back a link to a website where they can view their own unique pair of Nike Dunks customised using the key colours from the photo plus the original photo – if the customer likes them they can even buy the shoes. This is an example of a brand embracing new technology to market and sell their products. Visit www.nikeid.com/photo

AEG Washing Machines – Noise Awareness Campaign

This is fantastic new campaign by BBH and online agency Perfect Fools which uses interactive billboards placed in five major European cities and an website to promote the fact that AEG washing machines are quieter than their rivals. The Billboards have built in noise sensors which display on the billboard just how load the area is in decibels at that moment in time. All this information feeds into the website and you can see how the different cities compare through a series of graphs and charts. According to BBH Creative Director Kevin Stark an interesting side affect of the campaign has been that they have had groups of people stood in front of the billboards shouting and making noise – trying to make the decibel metre go up. Instead of just walking past the billboards and ignoring them as they do the hundreds of other billboards they see on a daily basis people are actually paying attention to this one – BBH have created and advert that doesn’t look like an advert (see my Paul Bedford article).

Visit http://www.noiseawareness.co.uk/ to see the site.