Use Tagxedo to create cool word clouds

Here's my new word cloud for SWATE courtesy of Tagxedo:

Project: Canadian Club

You've undoubtedly seen the Canadian Club ads around town and in magazines that take a light hearted retro look at how men used to behave - I'm sure they would describe it as a time when men were men and the idea of a metrosexual couldn't even have been imagined. And, of course, these men drank CC. The campaign is called 'Damn Right' and you can view the print ads here. (Sadly the "best" one isn't there? The 'Your dad had a van for a reason' ad. Funny and cringeworthy)

Project: Canadian Club takes on these ads (branding them offensive) and puts their own, clever spin on them. View Project: Canadian Club here.

Movie Posters As Art

Smashing presents Fifty Beautiful Movie Posters. I believe I had the Star Wars one above my bed as a kid.

Headphone culture meets advertising in head-on collision

Sony attempts to steal some of Apple's cool with this clever (although vaguely familiar) ad: New York by Walkman.

And NSW Australia preaches teen, iPod safety with these ads.

Haircuts as performance art?

Well, when it is Darren O’Donnell is famous for his show Haircuts by Children, in which prepubescent barbers sculpt adult dos all over the world then you are on to something. Not quite the same as when I go to Top Cuts every couple of months. Okay, every few months.

Cool Spoof Posters

http://culturepopped.blogspot.com/2008/11/popaganda-pop-culture-revolution.html

Vintage Time Travel Posters

I'm a big fan of vintage travel posters and thought these new posters were pretty clever. They were created (and are being sold) to benefit the non-profit literary institution, the Echo Park Time Travel Mart in Los Angeles.

Real life Fight Club (of sorts) in New York City

Apparently last Friday afternoon there was a real "fight club" (of sorts) at Union Square in New York. I guess this is the new "in" thing, replacing the dearly departed knitting fad of some time ago. This is odd and makes for strangely compelling viewing. Almost as if it were an elaborate performance art piece writ large. And violent. And kind of moronic.

From the posting I read about it: "Hundreds of people stood in a big ring right there by the Shoe Mania, cheering and chanting. All kinds of people: old people, moms with strollers, skateboarding teens, foreign tourists throwing Euros around.

They could have been watching some awesome breakdancing group or an unusually good street magician. But instead, two shirtless guys were flopping around on the ground, grunting and grating one another’s faces across the cobblestones. One guy pinned the other and a shirtless ref called the match. Both fighters leapt up, gave each other the universally-approved one-armed bro-hug and left the ring together, laughing.

The rules were simple: find a partner, get in the ring. No face shots, tapping out ends the fight. No settling scores, just fighting for the fun of fighting. No experience or discernible skill required." Good times, people, good times.

I really hope they have a First Rule for their public fight club. That would be cool.

And when you are done reading about the Union Square fight club (I hope I didn't just name it?), make sure to click on the link about William Hundley's art project. Mr. Hundley is, apparently, a real artist living and working in Austin, Texas and this is his art. Really. I don't even know what to say but that might be my favourite picture of the year. For more of Mr. Hundley's art, you can visit his website. This probably doesn't even need to be said, but Austin's city slogan is "Keep Austin Weird".

Lego in a whole new light

Amateur photographer Mike Stimpson has recreated some of the most iconic photographs of the 20th century... in Lego. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/04/03/nlego103.xml