Creative Review - Coca-Cola's Facebook Riddles

Coca-Cola has over 40 million fans on Facebook, and has recently been playfully interacting with them on the site by posting a series of enigmatic riddles. Fans that solve the riddles are then directed to a set of charming Coke 'sitelets', that aim to "provoke small moments of happiness"...

The campaign is the brainchild of Wieden + Kennedy Amsterdam. The first riddle posted on Facebook was as follows:

It’s warm and sandy, right under your feet
By this crackling fire, good friends will meet.
Fun music is played, by women and men
You’ll think to yourself, “When can we do this again?”
There’s nothing more that I desire,
Than hanging out at A _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ .com

The riddle was accompanied by an image of a bonfire, and fans quickly worked out that the link was abeachbonfire.com.

The sitelet for this riddle uses bold graphics to simulate a virtual beach bonfire, complete with a soundtrack featuring crackling flames, breaking waves, guitar sounds and the gentle clink of Coke bottles……. Read More

ADC_Graphic-Intervention_25 years of international Aids Awareness Posters

Original post on Imprint

Posters from Roudaki Hall - Tehran

we are collecting these posters with the Idea of publishing the complete set as a book in the hopefully near future. Here are some samples.  If you want some of the original tiff’s just drop me a line.

He is Merciful / او بخشنده است/ Mohammad Ehsaei

Hi everyone  I am back with Two works from Mohammad Ehsaei.  Quranic Text , religious symbolism, distinct Persian  Style of Calligraphy executed with  the technique of paintings or rather illustration.  They are stunning as they are among the best specimens of a modern take on calligraphy in Iran,  BTW there is also a Blue one  but we didn’t have time to take a photo.

 

Related articles

• Calligraphy by Darah Shikoh (taimur.org)
• Gerd Antz: Pictograms (violetsareflowers.wordpress.com)

Photographs by Shadi Ghadirian

عکس‌های شادی قدیریان
گالری راه‌ابریشم
افتتاحیه: ۲ اردیبهشت ۱۳۹۰، ساعت ۱۶ تا ۲۰
۳ اردیبهشت تا ۱ خرداد ۱۳۹۰
ساعات بازدید: شنبه تا چهارشنبه ۱۵ تا ۱۹ / پنجشنبه ۱۷ تا ۲۰



خیابان لواسانی غربی (فرمانیه) بین شهروند و خیابان آبکوه، شماره ۱۰۳

Shadi Ghadirian's photographs
Silk Road Gallery
Opening: 22 April 2011, 16-20
23 April - 22 May 2011
Visiting Hrs: Saturday to Wednesday 15-19 / Thursday 17-20
No.103, Shahid Lavasani Ave

Shadi is one if the better known Iranian Photographers working today -- a visit may prove well worth it.

نگاهی به پوستر تئاتر در ایران/ A look at Theater Posters in Iran

با حضور حمید سمندریان، ابراهیم حقیقی، محمد یعقوبی، امیر اسمی و آرش تنهایی
خانه‌ی هنرمندان، تالار بتهوون
دوشنبه، ۱۲ اردیبهشت‌ماه ۱۳۹۰
ساعت ۱۸
خیابان طالقانی، خیابان موسوی شمالی

With Hamid Samandrian, Ebrahim Haghighi, Mohammad Yaghoubi, Amir Esmi & Arash Tanhai
Beethoven Hall, Iranian Artists Forum
Monday, 2 May 2011
6 pm.
North Mousavi St., Taleghani Ave.

This is this afternoon 6 pm.  Any takers?

Bahrain - the photos that started it all

 

Australian real estate company moving very interesting -- albeit macho inventory

1  - 15 Queen Anne Court

2  -  19 Binda Place

The Star of Manners and Letters

Illustrations by Aazarnoush Ebraahemiroushan for The Star of Manners and Letters (Iran, 1986). The book features "a selection of 4 poems by a famous contemporary poet teaching a code of morals."

































From the International Children's Digital Library

Languages of Iran

 

Click here or on the Picture for a full size pic

User experience is not just about your website « Boagworld

 

Meet Jill. Jill is in the market to buy a reasonable quality digital SLR. She’s fed up with her point-and-shoot camera and wants something a little more sophisticated. However Jill doesn’t want to rush into a purchase as digital SLR’s are not cheap. Instead she has been researching the options online.

Jill bought a camera. However, that involved a lot more than just visiting a website.

Video

Eventually she discovers a video review on YouTube for camera that looks perfect. The video has been produced by a company called “Professional Cameras”. The review was very thorough and provided her with all the information she required.

User experience is not just about your website « Boagworld

Morteza Momayez Founder of Modern Iranian Graphic Design

teza Momayez (Persian: مرتضی ممیز, August 26, 1935 - October 25, 2005) was an Iranian graphic designer. He was one of the founders of Iranian Graphic Design Society (IGDS)[1] and held a membership to Alliance Graphique Internationale (AGI) [2]. He was the president of Tehran International Poster Biennial and Editor-in-chief of “Neshan” [3][4]. Throughout his career, Momayez initiated many cultural institutes, exhibitions and graphic design publications. The renowned pioneer of graphic design in Iran, Momayez received the Art & Culture Award of Excellency from the president of Iran in 2004.

Morteza Momayez was born on August 26, 1935 in Tehran, Iran .His father was Mohammad-Ali and his mother was Kochak. He got his bachelor in painting from school of Fine Art at University of Tehran in 1965 and his diploma from Ecole National Superier des Art Deco in Paris, France in 1968[5].

Awards:
2004 National Award of Art achievements from the Academy of Art in Tehran.

Nocturnal Letter by Mohammad Zohari cover design by Morteza Momayez

References:
^ "Iranian Graphic Designers Society".
^ "Alliance Graphique Internationale Membership Database".
^ "IGDS Farewell to great master".
^ "Neshan Magazine's Organization".
^ Moshki, Saed: Signs [Persian: Neshaneha], Yassavoli publication 2005
Text from Wikipedia - see the wiki page

(Persian: مرتضی ممیز, August 26, 1935 - October 25, 2005) was an Iranian graphic designer. He was one of the founders of Iranian Graphic Design Society (IGDS)^[1] and held a membership to Alliance Graphique Internationale (AGI) ^[2]. He was the president of Tehran International Poster Biennial and Editor-in-chief of “Neshan” ^[3][4]. Throughout his career, Momayez initiated many cultural institutes, exhibitions and graphic design publications. The renowned pioneer of graphic design in Iran, Momayez received the Art & Culture Award of Excellency from the president of Iran in 2004.

esphahan 5am

an insomniac, a pocket camera, and some of the finest Islamic architecture in existence.

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• Isfahan: Destination Of The Day (PHOTOS) (huffingtonpost.com)
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• Oleg Grabar, Historian Who Studied Islamic Culture, Dies at 81 (nytimes.com)

Ghazieh shekle aval shekle dovvom /قضیه شکل اول شکل دوم – abbas Kiarostami

Ghazieh shekle aval shekle dovvom via Vimeo

تهران انار ندارد - Tehran has no more Pomegranates

 

A film by Masoud Bakhshi

Iranian films at 53rd San Francisco International Film Festival

 

Founded in 1957, the San Francisco International Film Festival is the longest-running film festival in the Americas, featuring some 150 films and live events with more than 100 filmmakers.

This year there are three Iranian films participating in the festival; Nader Takmil Homayoun’s TEHROUN, Mohammad Rasoulof’s  THE WHITE MEADOWS, and  Babak Jalali’s FRONTIER BLUES.

 

 

 

 

THE WHITE MEADOWS

Mohammad Rasoulof s The White Meadows is a mesmeric, discomforting journey – punctuated by enigmatic motifs and metaphors – through a nightmarish bleached-white landscape of barren salt marshes. Defying any genre, the fable-like tale follows the odyssey of a man who sets out by boat to collect the tears of the inhabitants scattered across an archipelago of stark, inhospitable islands on a nameless sea.

On March 2, 2010, Mohammad Rasoulof was arrested in Iran along with filmmaker Jafar Panahi and 14 others as part of the crackdown in response to post-election disputes.

 

 

FRONTIER BLUES

Frontier Blues takes place on Iran’s northern frontier with Turkmenistan. It consists of 4 stories. Alam is a 28 year-old Turkmen man who lives with his father and works in a chicken farm. He is teaching himself English in order to marry a girl called Ana and take her to Baku. Hassan is a 28 year-old Persian man who lives with his uncle. His only companions are his pet donkey and tape player.

Kazem, is Hassan’s uncle and he owns a clothing store but the clothes he tries to sell never seem to fit anyone.

A 55 year-old Turkmen minstrel is the subject of a book of photography by a photographer from Tehran. His wife was stolen by a Sheppard in a green Mercedes many years ago.

 

 

Related articles

• Peter Bradshaw on Jafar Panahi and Mohammad Rasoulof (guardian.co.uk)
• Sundance Gets a Taste of Iranian Politics (carpetbagger.blogs.nytimes.com)
• Standing strong (boston.com)
• The Circle (chicagoreader.com)

The House is Black / خانه سیاه است

Image via Wikipedia

1962, 22 Minutes, Black and White, 35mm

It is the only film from Forough Farrokhzad, possibly Iran's most noted and controversial female poet. A look inside a leper colony, the documentary short has been called "the greatest of all Iranian films" by Jonathan Rosenbaum, and is (now) frequently referred to as one of the lynchpins of the Iranian New Wave. Following an opening statement accompanying a black screen that simultaneously warns and invites viewers to gaze upon that which society has deemed horrifying, Farrokhzad trains her lens insistently on the decay of human faces in bleak honesty, observing the lepers' flaccid eyelids (incapable of doing the biological job of protecting the eyes behind them from flies), the crusty, flaking stumps that used to be their feet, and their exposed nose cavities completely devoid of cartilage (one of them casually and surreally exhales cigarette smoke from the orifice). While showing the leper community forging an ersatz societal representation of normalcy.  Old gents playing board games, women dressing up and donning make-up for what appears to be a wedding march (and once you've seen a woman apply mascara to the inside of her eyelid, the image will not soon leave your head), kids tossing a plastic ball around the courtyard. 

Farrokhzad soundtracks her images with an alternating narration. A male voice (whose detached matter-of-factness brings to mind a contemporary Jean-Luc Godard at his most bemused) unpacks the medical implications of the condition, gently reminding the audience that leprosy is a treatable condition, provided the proper expediency, in what constitutes the film's most salient instance of activism. But between the clinical dialogue (in every sense of the definition) are snips of poetry by Farrokhzad, read by the author herself, that elevates the colony's plight to the level of that Old Testament paragon of unanswered and cruel kismet: Job. If Farrokhzad's poetic sensibilities were said to be both preoccupied with Eastern mores and influenced by Western modernism, then The House is Black authoritatively

clears the path for such aesthetic dilettantism. -- Eric Henderson

Via UBUWEB

Related articles

• The Circle (chicagoreader.com)
• Jafar Panahi's reward for bringing cinematic glory to Iran? Jail | Hamid Dabashi (guardian.co.uk)
• Letters: Iranian film-makers (guardian.co.uk)
• Directors of the Decade: Ramin Bahrani (filmexperience.blogspot.com)

A Journey Round My Skull: Persian Handstands

A new series exploring elements of Iranian Visual, architectural, and literary styles from The Safavids  onward. 

Mihr Ali, Fath Ali Shah, Qajar Painting, 1813-14
above and below images come from wikimedia

Mihr Ali, Qajar Painting, 1813-14

Anonymous, from the Shahinshahnameh, 1810
(detail of freaky camels)

Muhammad Hasan Afshar, portrait of Nasir al-Din Shah, with cherubs, 1854-55

Muhammad 'Ali, portrait miniature of Muhammad Shah, c. 1845

Unknown (again the Shirin painter?), A girl standing on her hands

These paintings come mostly from two books: Qajar Paintings (1972) and Qajar Portraits (1999) (the latter going for an obscene $500 on Amazon at the moment).
Read about Qajar art on wikipedia.
From a Sotheby's auction: "Court painting in Qajar Persia gave particular importance to the representation of women. From the mid-seventeenth century onwards, royal artists were attracted by European depictions of female subjects, borrowing certain poses, imagery and stylistic techniques into their own work."
Women were often the focal point of the Shirin Painter, and I can't wait to dig up more of his acrobats. Qajar Paintings contains a group of these, but not in color (hence that last scan).

Read more: A Journey Round My Skull: Persian Handstands

The Force

Top 10 Digital Advertising Innovations of 2010

 

As Mashable contributor Jesse Thomas recently noted, Silicon Valley is quickly becoming the new Madison Avenue. Looking back over the past year’s advertising landscape, it’s not the individual campaigns that stick in the mind as much as the use and pioneering of new technology.

This year was a transitional year in which much-hyped mobile advertising began to be a serious player, Apple once again changed the business and brands began fostering real, two-way conversations with consumers.

Here’s a look at some of the top new technologies that redefined advertising in 2010.

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1. Old Spice’s Response Videos

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Old Spice, a perennially troubled brand at Procter & Gamble, had watched Unilever’s Axe steal its thunder for most of the past decade. Miraculously, the brand was able to become relevant to a new generation of male consumers thanks to a clever ad campaign. The “Smell like a man, man,” ads featured an over-the-top confident Isaiah Mustafa, who somehow was able to make men insecure and be likable at the same time. If this was 1999, that would be the end of it, but agency Wieden + Kennedy offered a nice interactive twist: The agency and Mustafa shot more than 180 videos responding to consumers’ inquiries. Talk about breaking the fourth wall: For those raised on traditional TV advertising, it was like Mustafa was re-enacting Jeff Daniels’ role in The Purple Rose of Cairo — a matinee idol who popped out of the screen and into real life.

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2. Bar Code Scanning

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Marketers and mobile advertising firms had been trying for a while to foster the use of QR codes — logos that consumers could scan with their phones to access online content. But for makers of packaged goods, such codes take up valuable real estate on packaging. Stickybits and another firm called CauseWorld addressed this issue with new technologies that read bar codes. The former struck deals with both Coca-Cola and Pepsi as well as Campbell’s Soup. The latter worked with Procter & Gamble and Kraft on a program in which consumers could amass “karma points” for scanning the codes, which earned contributions to consumers’ favorite causes. Truth be told, the bar code readers don’t always work that well and it’s unclear how many consumers will take the time, but, by using bar codes, the two companies provided another big step toward mobile-enhanced interactive shopping.

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