We are big fans of Beth Ditto of The Gossip over here at Zandland. Here's an incredible performance of Ditto rocking it out on German talk show, Wetten Dass. The breathtaking performance is followed by a somewhat awkward interview in German. Like video art. Love this woman (and her kickin style).
via dlisted
p.s. homegirl sure could teach those American Idol kids a thing or two. just sayin.
- jmd, bks
"The Fresh & Easy products are free of artificial colorings and flavors and contain less sugar than many of the mainstream brands, but we wanted to promote these core Fresh and Easy values with a sense of fun. We transformed the boxes into individual characters, each one about to guzzle back a bowl of their favorite cereal. Their bold, graphic style is unique to the market and stands apart from the more visually cluttered branded competitors. To increase engagement and repeat purchase, and imbue the packs with Fresh & Easy’s personality, we also created games, such as mazes and fun word-finders, to feature on back of pack."-jmd
[via TheDieline.com]
Maybe it's just that sentimental spirit in the air, but we're actually pretty excited about the upcoming film, Ramona and Beezus, based on Beverly Clearly's Ramona Quimby series, spanning 1955 (!) through 1999. And over those five decades, the series has impacted multiple generations of young kids.
Well, Ms. Quimby is getting a bit of a boost for the new decade, with the film version starring Disney superstar Selena Gomez (Beezus), and a slew of famous faces including John Corbett, Ginnifer Goodwin, Josh Duhamel and Sandra Oh. And the role of Ramona goes to 11 year-old Joey King (whose credits include spots on Zack and Cody, Entourage, Medium, CSI and voice work in Horton Hears a Who! and Ice Age: Dawn of Dinosaurs).
The film is sure to spark a resurgence of interest in the book series amongst kids (and even young adults+ in search for a piece of nostalgia).
Appropriately cheesy and feel good with a clear artistic touch, Ramona and Beezus, directed by Elizabeth Allen looks like it's going to provide a truly uplifting G-rated experience.
Ramona and Beezus arrives August 13, 2010.
www.walden.com
-jmd
March 23, 2010via PSFK
Re: Launch of New Portable Game Machine
Nintendo Co., Ltd.(Minami-ward of Kyoto-city, President Satoru Iwata) will launch “Nintendo 3DS”(temp) during the fiscal year ending March 2011, on which games can be enjoyed with 3D effects without the need for any special glasses.
“Nintendo 3DS”(temp) is going to be the new portable game machine to succeed “Nintendo DS series”, whose cumulative consolidated sales from Nintendo amounted to 125million units as of the end of December 2009, and will include backward compatibility so that the software for Nintendo DS series, including the ones for Nintendo DSi, can also be enjoyed.
We are planning to announce additional details at E3 show, which is scheduled to be held from June 15, 2010 at Los Angeles in the U.S.
"Chemically, HFCS is a mix of fructose and glucose, the two components of table sugar. Unlike in table sugar (sucrose), however, the two are not chemically linked, and there's a slight excess of fructose instead of the 50:50 mix present in sucrose. These differences are relatively minor in the grand scheme of things, but there has been a consistent flow of studies that suggest the body responds quite differently to sucrose and HFCS, including indications of different fat metabolism and insulin responses. One idea that that's been proposed is that fructose doesn't induce the same sense of satiation that glucose does, meaning that we're less likely to stop eating after we've ingested sufficient calories."
[via ars technica]
"Dimension said its 2011 slate focuses on continuing its most successful franchises. The original "Scream" grossed more than $170 million worldwide in 1996; "Scream 2" also took in more than $170 million in 1997 and "Scream 3" topped $160 million after it was released in 2000."Balancing genre-referential jabs with a sincere embrace of those very same conventions, Scream revolutionized the camp horror genre back in 1996, breathing fresh life into the horror world and bringing back strong interest in horror to the theater-going masses; effectively paving the way for a breadth of similarly positioned films both good and bad.
[via Variety]
"CREATED OUT OF A LOVE FOR POSTERS, MODERNISM AND TELEVISION, THERE WASN'T A CLIENT OUT THERE TO COMMISSION SUCH A JOB SO AUSTRIAN DESIGNER ALBERT EXERGIAN WROTE HIS OWN BRIEF AND CREATED THIS SELF INITIATED SERIES OF POSTERS THROWING ALL OF THE ABOVE INSPIRATIONS INTO THE CREATIVE MELTING POT. DUE TO A HUGE AMOUNT OF INQUIRIES FOR THESE PRINTS TO BE MADE AVAILABLE, WE ARE BRINGING THEM TO YOU AS A SERIES OF A1 EPSON GICLEE PRINTS."
[via Blanka]
"Good to see Abe Lincoln gets his revenge on old John Wilkes Booth."
-Flynn079, YouTube Commenter
We all [should] remember 'Pride and Prejudice and Zombies,' Seth Grahame-Smith's New York Times Bestseller (zombified) version of the Jane Austin classic. Well, from the looks of it, Grahame-Smith's latest book, 'Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter' is another to-be-classic twist on a classic...It's certainly going to the top of our reading list. And the people at Hachette Book Group even produced a 2 minute trailer for the novel (above)...
And on that note, we're also kind of loving the concept of video trailers for books. What a great way to draw in potential readers...There might be great application for the book trailer on the new iPad interface...Just a thought.
-jmd
"if you can’t wait you can get sketch drawings of the collection on March 23rd to coincide with the Season 3 DVD.
The dolls capture each character’s 60s style; Don Draper (played by Jon Hamm) has his red-lined suit, hat and overcoat. Betty (played by January Jones) is complete with her faux pearl necklace and her pumps."
[via RadarOnline.com]
Spring fever!
We've been doing some Spring cleaning over here in Brooklyn at the Zandl Group office -- And we've freshened up our company materials with a new Company Profile/Information Packet. For our Zandland readers who may not be familiar with our company offerings, we wanted to share a bit about what we do...The Zandland Blog is just a small part of the Zandl-sphere. We have a full scope of trend-tracking, consumer research and consulting offerings...Check it out, and let us know how we help your business get in touch with your consumer!
We've embedded the PDF below. Check it:
Don't know how we missed this one when it first aired a few months ago, but this roadkill themed animated Michelin Man ad is certainly noteworthy. With this quirky concept, they're totally breaking the traditional tire commercial format. From creative agency TBWA\Chiat\Day New York, the group also responsible for some other wacky tv spots, like this (below) Skittles ad.
For us kids of the '80s, Corey Haim played a major role in our childhoods...From License To Drive to The Lost Boys and Dream A Little Dream...to name a few...His work lives on.
RELATED ARTICLES:
E Online: Haim: Five Essential Film Roles
Entertainment Weekly: Celebrities react to Corey Haim death via Twitter
Aesthetics of Joy is a blog and book-in-progress by Ingrid Fetell, exploring the intersection between design and positive emotion.
We've been freaking out about the upcoming Goldfrapp album (March 23!!)...Based on the couple singles we've heard, Rocket and Believer, we predict this one is gonna be big. And now after a couple months of waiting, we finally get to check out this much-awaited music video. Keeping up with tradition, this one's weird and awesome and...well, just plain perfect. Go Go Goldfrapp. xo.
-jmd
"The researchers studied 13,426 wines from 1,495 California wineries. Vintages ranged from 1998 to 2005, and more than 30 varietals and 25 appellations were represented.Oddly, marketing wine as eco or organic on the label severely devalues the bottle (leftover associations from the 70s and 80s when organic varieties used lower quality grapes -- and also the false assumption that they lack important preservatives).
First, Delmas and Grant tracked down each wine's rating from Wine Spectator, a prominent wine publication. Then they tabulated the number of wines made with grapes that had been certified by a third party as organically grown, a grueling and expensive process that obligates the vineyard to devote considerably more time and effort to cultivating grapes than conventional agricultural methods, which rely on chemical herbicides, pesticides and fertilizers."
[via ScienceDaily.com]
"While the higher Wine Spectator scores still prevailed when producers slapped eco-labels on their bottles, the financial rewards for going to the trouble of making certified wine evaporated. The "made from organically grown grapes" label not only wiped out the price premium for using certified grapes but actually drove prices 7 percent below those for conventionally produced wines, the researchers found.Point is, if you want the best bang for your buck in the premium wine department, you might want to try out a bottle of the organic stuff.
The average price for a wine with an eco-label was $37.65. By contrast, a certified wine without an eco-label commanded an average price of $40.54."
[via ScienceDaily.com]
• ChatRoulette represents an example of a probabilistic community: a community shaped by a platform which mediates the encounters between its users by eliminating lasting connections between them.
• After ChatRoulette users become more acquainted with the system (ie., do not browse solely to explore), we predict a decrease in explicit content, an increase in the consolidation of content genres, and an increase in the formation of celebrity figures.
[via Web Ecology Project (download the whole report (PDF) here]
"Studies that accuse social networks of reducing productivity assume that time spent microblogging is time strictly wasted. But that betrays an ignorance of the creative process. Humans weren’t designed to maintain a constant focus on assigned tasks. We need periodic breaks to relieve our conscious minds of the pressure to perform — pressure that can lock us into a single mode of thinking. Musing about something else for a while can clear away the mental detritus, letting us see an issue through fresh eyes, a process that creativity researchers call incubation. “People are more successful if we force them to move away from a problem or distract them temporarily,” observe the authors of Creativity and the Mind, a landmark text in the psychology and neuroscience of creativity. They found that regular breaks enhance problem-solving skills significantly, in part by making it easier for workers to sift through their memories in search of relevant clues."4. Creativity Counts
[via Wired.com]
"According to Don Ambrose, a Rider University professor who studies creative intelligence, incubation is most effective when it involves exposing the mind to entirely novel information rather than just relieving mental pressure. This encourages creative association, the mashing together of seemingly unrelated concepts — a key step in the creative process.5. Generation Y Are Entrepreneurial & Write Their Own Rules
History is full of tales of revelations that were helped along by such conceptual collisions...George de Mestral had the initial brainstorm for Velcro during a 1941 hunting trip, when he noticed how difficult it was to pick Alpine burrs off of his clothes.
This means that tweets about Lady Gaga’s lingerie can help someone debugging Perl code. (Or a tweet about Perl code may help Lady Gaga’s underwear stylist.) A random scrap of information can trigger just the right conceptual collision. It’s hard to know which scrap might do the trick, but that’s the beauty of social networks — they constantly produce potential sparks, for free."
[via Wired.com]
