The Survival Capsule Hotel

First created for accommodation as an art project in 2004, owner Denis Oudendijk has different models ready for use and is currently working on additional locations in central Amsterdam and Nantes, France.



Moored in F.A.S.T. (Free Architecture Surf Terrain) – a unique and artistic surfers village at the boulevard of Scheveningen near The Hague, Netherlands, your room is a bright orange survival pod made from travelling oil rig survival capsules. Originally built in 1972 they are 4.25 metres in diameter and unaltered apart from the addition of a lock on the outside and an ‘emergency’ chemical toilet inside. While not everyone’s luxury choice, each pod provides cosy protection from the elements for up to three occupants.









































































Source: capsulehotel

May the vaccinations be with you. Always.

When I was a kid, and Star Wars was still shiny and new, Lucasfilm lent out the cheaper characters for TV Public Service Announcements against drunk driving and smoking.

This doctor's office poster, however, just seen on Reddit, is new to me:

It's obviously an old one, but with the anti-vaccination movement and the renaissance of measles, perhaps it's time for a sequel.

Focus with Light

Sometimes you may have too much light in an image, but you wish to focus on a particular part of the image. It can be easily done with a couple of Adjustment Layers. No particular expertise is required.

I have opened this free stock image. It is brilliantly lit all around.

The same  image with the focus on light solely on the girl. You will be able to do it too and the process will work with most images. The tutorial is here

Other photoshop tutorials are here

If you have a photoshop question or wish for a particular tutorial please email me at pradip.chowdhury@gmail.com

JC Penney prepares your daughters to be sugar babies

In a product failure reminiscent of the "Math class is tough!" talking Barbie fiasco of almost 20 years ago, JC Penney has discontinued this shirt from its back-to-school girls' line:

In the early '90s, however, outrage spread much more slowly.

Care2 reports that, in this case, consumer reaction was swift and effective:

Tuesday night, Melissa Wardy of Pigtail Pals – Redefine Girly, shared the link to the shirt on her facebook page. Since then, the shirt has been shared across Facebook and Twitter by parents expressing shock at that the department store would be selling a shirt like this. While some people think the shirt is meant to be funny and not taken seriously, others like parenting blogger and advertising industry professional Liz Gumbinner (known as Mom 101), don’t see the humor. On Twitter, Gumbinner wrote: “How is it funny to promote to young girls that what we value in them is their looks, not their brains?”

Sure, it was probably designed by someone with innocent intentions of being cutesy with the whole "princess" tween culture. But the gaffe is still a shot against gender equality.

If such statements were simply foolishness, I guess it would be easy to let this one go. But attractive people (of both genders) really do have an easier time achieving success. It's just human nature. But it hardly needs to be hammered home to girls 7-16, who have already learned that their society values their cuteness and/or sexiness above academic achievement and independent thought.

The other scary thing about this is that there are women, just a few years older than this shirt's target market, who are putting its worldview into practice. Sugar Daddy "dating" sites and apps encourage attractive young women 18+ (especially cash-strapped students) to accept payment and gifts from older men in exchange for "company".

I guess they won't have to do their homework either.

Raise your hand if you think schools are underfunded

Here's a cute ad that showed up on Reddit. Looks like someone's spec idea, however the supposed sponsor, A Day Made Better, is a very real teacher-supportive CSR effort by Office Max in the USA.


Here in Canada as well, classrooms are grossly underfunded and teachers (such as my better half) end up spending this much and more out-of-pocket just to make sure their students have what they need to learn in a positive and fun environment. Yet political pressures to reduce school budgets continue to reduce the quality and availability of classroom resources and insult the professionalism of teachers.

So the ad above may well be fake (since it is so tonally different from the "real" campaign) but it certainly expresses a real frustration faced by educators.

Brazilian Burger King ad keeps it weird

UFC Middleweight and Mixed Martial Arts World Champ Anderson Silva, lipsynching “Lovin’ You” by Minnie Riperton to a quadruple bypass on a plate.



North America may have given up bizarre BK ads, but they live on in the Latin south.

Via Illegal Advertising

Chipotle is killing them softly with this song

Don't get me wrong. I eat meat, and I prefer to eat ethical meat. I also love the aesthetics of this straight-to web video by Chipotle, who use a gentle Willie Nelson cover of Coldplay's "The Scientist" and a wonderful animation by London's Johnny Kelly to promote their move to more sustainable food systems.



I applaud them on the effort, although I remain skeptical that a large fast food chain can be as local and low-tech as that. They have, however donated more than $2 million over the past two years to philanthropic organizations including Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution, The Nature Conservancy, FamilyFarmed.org, The Lunch Box and the Niman Ranch Scholarship Fund. 

They've also been at this since last year:




Do you buy it?


(Thanks to @jayham for the tip.)

Aktual Magazine: Featuring Real People

Got to hand it to those mid-European chicks - no amount of jaw deficiency is going to keep them off the cover of a magazine!

Thanks Tomislav for scanning and sending this into us.

Reader Captions: 

Noncorporeal Mandibular Syndrome is a serious problem. How dare you make fun of this brave, challenged woman! Unsubscribering. By Rick

The wax figure looks less Schwarzenegger and more Phil Hartman (SNL). By CrankyCatholic

Motorcycle Made From Lobster Shells

This motorcycle made from lobster shells was created by Taiwanese chef and food carving artist Huang Mingbo at a seminar on cooking art in Fuzhou, southeast China’s Fujian province. We’ve seen motorcycle sculptures made from some unusual materials, but we can honestly say this is the first time we’ve seen one made from a crustacean.

































Sources: [1] [2] [3]

Skyping in 1968

What will those crazy scientists think of next: Talking maps? Personal tracking devices? Computerized books?

Via BoingBoing

Bieberpocalypse shows epic failure of user-based moderation

I've written plenty about the idiocy of Facebook's policy of acting instantly on any complaint about inappropriate content, whether justified or not, and leaving the victimized user to prove they were wronged. It has been used by prudes to complain about non-sexual nudity, by political movements to ban social ad campaigns they disagree with, and who knows what else?

Well, YouTube has a similar policy of "yank first, ask questions later." And this policy was used today by a troublemaker called iLCreation who made an unsubstantiated copyright claim on every single Justin Beiber video on his official Vevo channel — leading to their wholesale removal — according to TMZ.



That's right. Even that awful video with over 600 million views got removed because an anonymous user made a claim against it. And boy, were his fans mad.

Relax, Beliebers. He's back online now.

But considering the unbelievable power that Facebook and YouTube have put into the hands of every single internet loser with a chip on his or her shoulder to stifle argument and destroy multi-million dollar marketing campaigns, maybe it's time to put smarter moderation in place?

I'm just saying.

Lazy Photoshop at La-Z-Boy

While browsing furniture on the weekend, I happened upon this in-store ad at La-Z-Boy in Ottawa:

From enjoying countless Photoshop Disasters, I could tell immediately that something wasn't right. So I looked closer:

De agony of de-feet.

Feet crudely chopped off. Bum flattened. And a chair that is apparently stuffed with concrete.

Why do major brands continue to find such shoddy work acceptable?

Australian reality show invites admen to solve impossible briefs

Why don't we have a show this cool in North America?

Australia's The Gruen Transfer has a segment called "The Pitch" in which it asks viewers to suggest objectives for "impossible" creative briefs via social media, which real admen and adwomen then have to pitch spec creative on.

This episode, in which Australians were asked to support a ban on vulgar language, was pretty fucking hilarious. (Wear headphones if you don't work in an unashamedly vulgar ad agency office.)



You can just leave the playlist going to see other briefs. I just love how this show not only entertains, but educates viewers on how ads are conceived, and how different two good solutions to one problem can be.

CBC, I hope you are reading this.

"Smartmouth" QR pinup ads: ironic or lame?

Rebecca, a designer colleague, sent me a link to this out-of-home campaign from Honest Agency:

40s-style pinup girls with QR codes over their mouths?

Unfortunately, the agency didn't give enough screen resolution to actually read their lips in the portfolio page. But through the magic of the interwebs, I was able to get the link below. It goes with the woman in red:



The acting is pretty appalling, and considering this is for an ad over a urinal, I can't imagine:

1. Whipping out my camera phone while standing with other men who are peeing. That in itself is an ass-kicking offence. You're not even supposed to talk or make eye contact,

2.  Holding it over an ad with my one free hand.

3. Not being embarrassed by having the poster talk about my junk.

If you don't even want to watch the video, these transit (?) ads tell you all you need to know about the trashy copy style:

You see, guys, compliant women of your grandmother's generation won't have sex with you unless you have hair. Because they like their sex the way they like their hair. Or something. Hair.

Enriching Tones

You can improve tones of bland looking photographs and make them more warm with just a couple of Adjustment Layers in Photoshop.

This is a free stock image.

The same image with the tones changed with Adjustment Layers.

The tutorial is here

Other photoshop tutorials are here

If you have a photoshop question or wish for a tutorial please email me at pradip.chowdhury@gmail.com

Ryan Homes: Flimsy Façade

The real estate crisis and cheaper homes have led to some lazy construction practices of late. Dubbed the 'thin client' technique by real estate agents, and an 'outright swindle' by would-be buyers, the controversy continues.

Thanks Mike. The original can be found in the latest Ryan Homes newsletter. If you can't see the PSD, please see our red circled image.

Focus correction in Photoshop with common tools

Sometimes the background in an image may distract from the main figure or figures in an image. You can correct this easily in Photoshop. No special expertise is necessary, nor much time required. 

This is a free stock image.

The image is now in better focus.

The tutorial is here

Other photoshop tutorials are here

If you have a photoshop related question or wish for a particular tutorial please email me at pradip.chowdhury@gmail.com

Paste Into in Photoshop

The Paste Into command allows you to paste images inside Custom Shapes that are found in Photoshop. It is not difficult to do. 

I have taken these three free stock images

Used a free stock Texture

And pasted them into a Custom Shape. You can use most shapes.

The tutorial is here

Other tutorials are here

F'd Ad Fridays: The world's most epic and confusing bank ad

Russian ads rarely disappoint. They often shock, occasionally disgust, but at least you can't say their ad agencies are phoning it in.

Case in point:



Apparently, it's a bank ad or something similar.

Via Copyranter