December 22, 2010 • 5:53 pm • POSTED BY Rosemary Fahmie
In the spirit of the holidays our veteran whistler, Tim Beitz, has made a wonderful compilation of special Christmas carols.
Why is this A Very Special 160over90 Christmas you ask? Well, because all of the songs are whistled, in perfect tune I might add, by none other than Mr. Beitz.
Enjoy world! And to Tim, we thank you for this special gift.
December 20, 2010 • 1:22 pm • POSTED BY Kyle Arango
In every profession there are those pinnacle moments. The “makin’ it to the majors.” For most designers, copywriters and account execs it’s working on one of the big three: Apple, Coca-Cola, and of course, Nike.
Earlier this year we had one of those moments. Now we’re making it official. 160over90 is working with Nike Tennis. Swoosh, there it is.
It started with a small project—a quick turnaround to see what we could do. So, for 96 hours (pretty much straight) a team of designers and writers—running on nothing but excitement and 5-Hour Energy—burned and turned out some brand ideas that struck a chord with Nike Tennis’ marketing team.
They liked it. So much so, they adopted two of the concepts to be their 2010 global campaigns for Wimbledon and the US Open. Now the door was open to take the tennis category to the next level.
We got to work.
With names like Federer, Nadal, Serena and Sharapova, it was clear we had the best athletes in the game. We had great products to work with as well, including Rafa’s Courtballistec shoe and Roger’s Vapor Tour line. Now we needed to learn about the sport on a deeper level.
Our discovery process began when Nike invited our team to the Sony Ericsson Open in Miami to interview a slew of players, coaches, agents, journalists and commentators. From Patrick McEnroe, Captain of the U.S. Davis Team, to Federer’s agent, Tony Godsick and Serena’s Fitness Trainer, Mackie Shilstone, we questioned, delved into and prodded some of the greatest minds in the sport.
What did we find out? Tennis is kind of badass. When you take it out of the country clubs and “old money” estates, it more resembles a modern day duel or gladiatorial event than a genteel pastime. Competitive tennis is like trying to play chess while running a marathon and being in a homerun derby.
We poured all this newfound knowledge into the work—refining our original concepts to embody the sport, the events and what it means to wear Nike. Nike Tennis’ UK Division liked our Wimbledon work enough to tap us for their partnership with the RED Campaign. Under the line “Save More Than Break Points” we created outdoor, interactive and merchandise—you might have seen Serena wearing the Nike RED T-shirt we designed at several press conferences and interviews throughout Wimbledon.
For the US Open Nike took the campaign unveiling to the next level. It was launched in a massive pre-tournament event at NYC’s Chelsea Pier. Here, tennis fans were able to interact with our “Lights On. Lights Out.” campaign in-person through photo booths with branded backdrops, colossal outdoor installations, merchandise and a popup court where Roger played Rafa.
The agency also sent our Nike team to NYC so they could experience a slam event and see their work firsthand. We got to witness some great matchups, experience the energy of the tournament and see our work throughout the area, including on the fans—many of them wearing Nike shirts with our tagline on them.
This was just the beginning.
Since then we’ve been working full force on the 2011 Global Campaigns. You should be seeing the Spring and Summer 2011 Campaigns launching with the Australian Open and the French Open. Check out our case study here and come back to see more of our Nike work as it’s unveiled. Just do it.
December 15, 2010 • 11:43 am • POSTED BY Tammo Walter
Pretty crazy test Japanese sound artist Daito Manabe did together with Masaki Teruoka and Katsuhiko Harada. Daito’s face is twisted to the music via electrical-pulse that stimulates his muscles, 10 channels in total, 8 to control his facial expressions, 2 to keep the music and face in sync. According to Daito it depends on the part of the track whether it hurts or not. Imagine him doing the test to death metal track, his face would probably be a constant grimace.
Being the young, fairly cool and particularly social person that I am, I enjoy reading scandalous and “LOL-able” Facebook status updates, tweets and blog posts. For example, if you have a weird habit, awkward story, funny memory, inappropriate thought, or anything else that will make me laugh while simultaneously feeling relieved that I am not you, I definitely want to hear about it. Social media feeds act as today’s source of entertainment, news, gossip and otherwise conversational topics for those of us who have chosen to log in. I’m curious, though, if there is a universal line to (not) be crossed for what we share on the internet.
As the newest intern addition to the 160over90 team, I remain cautious in giving away too much information about myself. For now. (Or at least until the holiday party next week.) While I recognize and practice the importance of revealing enough personality and charisma to make a positive impression, I also understand that there exists a line (blurrier for some than others) of privacy and proper; especially in the confines of an office. The same, however, goes for social media: How much is too much?
Social media encourages us to tell the world, and the world’s friends, and the cousins of the world’s friends, what we are doing and where we are doing it at the exact moment it is happening. Through numerous social media outlets, we have the opportunity to inform the public of our thoughts and opinions on practically anything and everything, appropriate or inappropriate. This could range from our love for beets (cue subtle client shout-out) to how loud the crash was when our boss slipped in the hallway this morning (subtle shout-out to Gina) to where we ate dinner last night (Chickie’s and Pete’s, if you wanted to know). There are both personal and corporate privacy issues surrounding social media yet we (I) are (am) still drawn most to the ridiculous updates from our craziest/rudest/funniest/most outlandish friends. And friends of friends. And friends of friends of friends.
I began to consider all of this after watching 60 Minutes’ interview with Mark Zuckerberg, the creator and cleverly coined “Toddler CEO” of Facebook, a couple nights ago. Correspondent Leslie Stahl discussed that, aside from the most obvious concern that is the selling of user information to advertisers, the new Facebook layout actually encourages us to reveal even more about ourselves; it’s a double-edged sword to say the least. Yet, I continue to see newer and newer information-spilling applications added to the embarrassingly-addicting, status-updating, picture-stalking, stranger-friending, ultimate-procrastinating website. So, seriously, how much sharing is too much sharing when we’re provoked to share it all?
As previously mentioned, this line is blurry. Not the kind of blurry that I imagine goes down at office holiday parties, but for real blurred. It’s a complicated topic to navigate, but I think that we, as social media (ab)users, must ultimately own our individual standards and expectations for giving too much of ourselves away. And as one of the newer team members here, not to mention an intern, I think I’ll keep my tweets and status updates on the more graceful side.
December 2, 2010 • 4:46 pm • POSTED BY Susan Murphy
I don’t know about you, but I have had no problem parting with my dollars here (as sensationally demonstrated on Black Friday, but that’s another story). As an Irish design student living in the States I’ve often wondered why the dollar sign has on occasion one, or sometimes two, lines through the S.
After asking people over here – the majority in the design field – I discovered not a lot of people knew or noticed that the dollar sign differed in some cases. Who knew this infamous symbol could be so.. infamous?
After looking into this icon I discovered it was quite an interesting story. Ayn Rand wrote in her novel ‘Atlas Shrugged’ that the letters U and S superimposed created the double stroke dollar sign. I can make that out that if I squint my eyes, so, is the dollar sign a monogram?
Another theory is the dollar symbol originates from the figure 8, representing the Spanish ‘piece of eight’. Hmmm….
The Oxford Dictionary (“the world’s must trusted dictionary” no less) states that it is actually derived from the handwritten ‘ps’, an abbrevition for ‘peso’ in old Spanish-American books. The $ symbol first occurs in the 1770s, in manuscript documents of English-Americans who had business dealings with Spanish-Americans, and it starts to appear in print after 1800.
Whatever you choose to believe is completely up to you, but maybe you’ll keep it in mind next time you’re $pending.
November 29, 2010 • 4:02 pm • POSTED BY Kyle Arango
PHILADELPHIA—Designer Mike Burton started the Thanksgiving holiday week on a high. Fresh off an above-mediocre performance at the annual Art Director’s Club Foosball Tournament in NYC and with only a three-day week ahead, all seemed right in the world for the 28-year old Kent State graduate.
Come Wednesday evening things began to change.
It started with the post-five-pitchers-of-margaritas decision not to catch his 8 a.m. flight back to Ohio to spend Thanksgiving with his family. Instead, he rationalized the four-day weekend would be better spent catching up on things.
When questioned what things he had to catch up on, the cherub-faced Burton said, “Uh you know, projects: like updating my website, sprucing up the pad and coming up with new facial hair configurations.”
To Burton’s dismay, these projects didn’t take as much time as he expected. He then spent the majority of the day watching TBS, starting with Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, followed by Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls, The Mask and the first half hour of The Truman Show. “That movie was a little too emotional for me, so I switched to the History Channel’s all-day marathon—Happy Tanksgiving. It was about tanks, which was pretty sweet.”
Mealtime was equally as depressing for the Com Arts winner. Instead of the traditional turkey dinner with all the trimmings, Burton opted for a mostly liquid meal of good beer, decent beer, not-so-good beer, wine and a half of a bottle of Root.
After a run to 7-11 for some bacon taquitos and a bag of Muchos, Burton returned home just in time to catch the last half of Bruce Almighty. At which point he admitted that sometimes he wished Morgan Freeman really was God.
Burton spent the remainder of the weekend mostly bottomless pacing between his computer and the couch. Friends of Burton quickly became aware that something was awry by his numerous and increasingly disturbing Twitter posts over the weekend, which included “Pizza Flags of the World,” “I am Sir Lord Baltimore” and “Ron Swanson Breakfast Buffet.”
Friend/co-worker/antagonist Daniel Blackman planned to meet up with Burton later in the weekend but was unable as he was still recovering from his own holiday experience, which included 16 hours in a rental car with a busted radio and an OutKast CD jammed in the player.
