Airlock 2008

Lesson 1: Be Likeable, And People Will Like You

Obvious, no? But it’s a fine line - try too hard and you’ll come across as irritating and ingratiating. Don’t try enough and you’ll seem aloof and arrogant. But here, a two-fold lesson in likeability courtesy of the Hope of a Nation^TM. Firstly, Barack Obama is a likeable guy (let’s face it, he didn’t have to do a hell of a lot to improve on the incumbent prez), so his audience is doing a good deal of his marketing for him - like the sweet new site Barack Obama Is Your New Bicycle. If you needed any more reasons to like Barack Obama, here’s a heaped serving.

Lesson 2: Good Content Is Sometimes Enough

The second interactive music video for Arcade Fire, this one for ‘Black Mirror’, is so simple it seems obvious - switch various strains of the recording on and off to enjoy all its subtleties and intricate layers, and discover a familiar song anew. The reason it works is also simple - the song, and the band’s musicianship, is strong enough to stand alone, even broken into its composite parts (think it would be as effective if McFly tried this approach?).

Making feature films supplemented with lots of computer processing is nothing new. Many scenes from blockbuster films have been made this way. Indeed, a few hit movies in recent years have been filmed this way entirely. The difference between actual location, a set, or computer graphics is almost nil in the eye of the audience, liberating film makers from the costs and hassles associated with staging scenes in costly locations; with computers as cameras you can generate whatever you can imagine.

So far, so nothing new. However the barrier to entry has been falling steadily for a decade and the advent of HD has only hastened this movement.

We are in the midst of a revolution in broadcasting, hot on the heals of the democratisation of music which swept the world so dramatically at the turn of the century. If I were a movie producer, I’d be loosing sleep.

As ever, (moving) pictures say more than words…

Trawling the interweb day in and day out, the sheer volume of available information is vertigo-inducing. But VisualComplexity.com is here to help. In much the same way as Harry Beck’s iconic Tube map simplified the tangle of Underground lines, VisualComplexity.com makes complex networks and connections visible and accessible (and they’re pretty, too).

In other news, Neil Gaiman’s going all open source on us. To celebrate the seventh birthday of his blog, he’s asking readers to vote for which of his books they would most like to be able to read (free!) online. As he explained to the New York Times:

Neil Gaiman, the fantasy novelist, short story and comics writer, is asking readers of his blog to vote on the title they would most like to give as a gift. An electronic scan of the winning title will be offered free on the HarperCollins site later this month. Mr. Gaiman said the online effort was not so different from what has been going on for generations.

“I didn’t grow up buying every book I read,” said the English born Mr. Gaiman, 47. “I read books at libraries, I read books at friend’s houses, I read books that I found on people’s window sills.” Eventually, he said, he bought his own books and he believes other readers will, too.

Cast your vote! (Pssst: Neverwhere!)

Nothing to do with the Seven Seas, rather a great article over at Condé Nast Portfolio.com with the latest from the trenches in the battle for control of media distribution…

“A teenager hacked into the outfit charged with protecting companies like Sony, Universal, and Activision from online piracy - the most daring exploit yet in the escalating war between fans and corporate giants. Guess which side is winning.”

It’s all getting a bit hectic in the studio this week - loads going on, which nobody’s complaining about - but here are three tiny antidotes to all the noise and bustle:

First up, the incredible Frozen Grand Central:

Idiosyncratic thinker and all-round good guy John Maeda’s blog on digital simplicity.

And lastly, renegade designer Stefan Sagmeister’s simple, sweetly interactive lesson about truth (from his lovely list Things I Have Learned In My Life So Far, also available in exhibition or book form…)

And - breathe. More on the work that’s keeping us on our collective toes soon, honest, guv.

Being a) an agency, b) an agency based in Shoreditch, and c) an agency based in Shoreditch overwhelmingly composed of XY chromosomes, Vice Magazine tends to be eagerly awaited in the office. But unusually for a magazine, it’s the back page that causes the clamour – and it’s American Apparel’s fault.

At first glance, it’s a pretty weird way to sell clothes, to photograph your models more not wearing them than wearing them. But as an informal survey, the number of outstretched hands in our office grabbing for the latest edition seems to prove that it’s a pretty successful way of doing business…

But what about the products? Does it shift more toeless spandex thigh highs or whatever it is the models are kind of pretending to wear? When you look at this picture are you thinking about y-fronts?

This one even helpfully carries a description of what the models are dressed in:

(But bet you only got 5 words in before your eyes were dragged upwards again, no?)

The answer seems to lie with the charismatic – and very controversial – founder Dov Charney. According to Wikipedia, he has masturbated in front of journalists, often walks around the factory in his pants, and has been known to dish out vibrators to employees. Interestingly, he also recruits young models himself and even photographs some of the ads himself, in his flat.

When American Apparel first started cranking out t-shirts, its USP was its ’vertical integration’ and sweatshop-free approach to production. But then came the shift towards a more urban, overtly sexual, ‘down with the kids’ approach. Now comes the news that they’re changing tack again, this time to the untouchable subject of immigration. From prepubescent girls to politics, there’s not much American Apparel won’t go near in their advertising. But it’s this flying-close-to-the-wind approach that gives them their credibility. They’re a massive brand, but they take massive risks. They’ve got brand personality in spades, but – woah! – it’s actually a personality! Makes you wonder how both people and brands might fare better if they were more honest about who they are, and more willing to sometimes be unlikeable, because it makes them more real and relatable.

But we’ll see how it goes down here in the office when next month’s Vice hits our desks…

So it’s 2008 and we’re starting a blog. Critics might point out that this is hardly bleeding edge for a digital agency, but we’re telling ourselves it actually makes us the first digital agency to ride out the blogging backlash. Cool in ‘04, cringeworthy in ‘06, back in ‘08. By our logic, they’re positively retro now, which almost makes us cool. Almost.

Hello. We’re Airlock. We make digital stuff for brands we love. And this is our blog. We’re not sure what it will be yet, but good money is on chat about things that make our brains whir or eyes widen, work we’re doing/ hoping to do/ have just finished, and maybe some banter about what we can see from our fourth floor windows (so far this year: the fire at the Olympics site, a snowy owl, and hordes of scantily clad beauties in the fashion studios across the road).

Nice to meet you.