Jonathan – Seite 13

Recent Reading: The Arrival

April 15, 2008 by Jonathan

I am still working myself through the comic book canon. Along the usual suspects like Moore, Miller, Ellis, Ross, Otomo, Sartrapi or Thompson every now and then I find (in this case by a friend’s recommendation) something new and amazing.

Shaun Tan’s The Arrival is one of the best graphic novels I read so far. Without any words Tan tells the story of a man moving to a foreign country to build up a new existence. He illustrates with dreamlike images the overwhelming experience to arrive in a country where everything is new, larger and no sign or writing makes sense. Shaun Tan incorporates stories of refugees, questions like ‚What makes a home?‘, friendship, loneliness to a beautiful story. All captured in simple, yet powerful pencil art.

Fantastic. Highly recommended. If you plan to grab just one comic book or graphic novel this year, make it this one.

Reaching the finish line.

April 14, 2008 by Jonathan

Finish line

Been a bit quiet the last weeks on the blog. That is because there have been major operations underneath the hood of this blog (update to WP 2.5, CSS-Sprites, several plugin-thingies like caching and customizing content), linking to a lot of services that will do great for connecting to the outside world and of course, my shiny new 100% personal and unique (it’s all my handwriting!) WordPress theme: Jonispace.

Sometimes I come to believe that I am not that bad with CSS and webdesign. There is still room for improvement, but for now this looks good.

On with the content!

Account Planning in Austria: I am Number one.

April 3, 2008 by Jonathan

I still can’t tell whether this is a good or a bad thing.

So I want to search for account planners in Austria, maybe find agencies that have planners and planning departments. What to do? Start up the Google engine and type in „account planning österreich“ and here is the result in unretouched screenshot glory:

And ranked at five: me. The link actually goes to a report I wrote for university about my exchange year at the University of Oklahoma (where I had my first real exposure to account planning).

So the first Google results for „Account Planning“ bring up an Account Planning Workshop in April (for which I have signed up already) and then me, some guy who tries to keep in touch with Account Planning in his free time. What does this say about the state of Planning in Austria?

I mean, face it, the largest non-network agency Demner, Merlicek & Bergmann calls Red Spider for planning duties when clients request it. And the general quality of advertising … oh well, let’s not get into this.

But there is a handful of planners in Austria. FCB, TBWA and other network agencies have planners. One sent in a reply to Heather LeFevre’s Account Planner Survey 2007, there is one Austrian in the Plannersphere (but he works in Hungary), none found at LinkedIn, one at Xing (German equivalent to LinkedIn). I haven’t checked StudiVZ yet, but it can’t get much better.

* The search results are bound to change: I will add some posts about planning things I did in the last half year or so in order to fortify my spot at the forefront of Austrian Planning.

APSotW Winning entry: Me. Yay!

März 26, 2008 by Jonathan

This week started with a pleasant surprise:
Rob Campbell posted Paul Colman’s reviews on the presentations for the assignment on Extra gum. After short disappointment because I wasn’t able to identify my presentation from the feedback (see whole story here) it turns out the winning presentation is my entry.



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To sum this up in short: Extra is the everything else gum of Wrigley’s. The brand is spread out to appeal to everybody, and also the vehicle for new products. My recommendation was to define Extra by leaving innovation to a new brand, and putting focus on Extra as functional gum that aids concentration, focus etc.

Personally, I knew that this would taken two more slides, but ten was the limit. I REALLY would love to see Assignment „I“: „Mental Hygiene“ is perfect, sums up my positioning thoughts much better. In fact, I would love to see all the other presentations. It was always great to see where all the other minds went.
BIG Thanks to Paul and Rob for taking the time to a look at the work.

But, alas, back to work. The new assignment is up already online.

Hm, I can’t help it, but I still have a suspicion that there has been an error and Paul Colman will ask me to return my price.

How to build a Chocolate Easter Bunny

März 25, 2008 by Jonathan

Here is a little something I made as an Easter Surprise for Heidi: a giant easter bunny-robot. It is not rocket science, really. Just a whole set of chocolates of all sorts and kinds. Pick a bigger piece for the body, something on top for the head, two long things for the ears, two round things for eyes, one ball for the nose. Assemble all with hot glue. Ta-Da. Joy.

Herr der Ringe Konzert

März 21, 2008 by Jonathan

Gestern waren wir beim Herr der Ringe Konzert in der Grazer Stadthalle. (Die Eintrittskarten waren Heidis Weihnachtsgeschenk für mich) Die Warschauer Sinfoniker spielten Howard Shores Soundtrack für die Filmtrilogie. Es gibt nur wenige Dinge, die besser und kraftvoller klingen als ein 200 Personen Orchester. Sehr schön.

New Maps Of The World

März 19, 2008 by Jonathan

Via the Creative Review Blog I found this interesting exhibition at the New York MoMA: „Design and the Elastic Mind“ running February 24–May 12, 2008.

This exhibition highlights many projects small and large where design made data legible, turning it into information. And sometimes into objects of breathtaking beauty. Like the image above: Barrett Lyon’s map of the internet from 2003, The Opte Project.

Too bad I will not be in New York anytime soon, but there is an excellent and extensive online exhibition available. If you are in any way interested in visualization of data you should absolutely positively check it out.

View the online exhibition here. (does not work with Safari, use Firefox if on a Mac)

There are so many awesome things to be found. I hope I will have some time later today to browse through the site.

Songs in Charts

Februar 26, 2008 by Jonathan

Songs as information design? Here is a wonderful new thing to do with piecharts, flowcharts or other diagrams: turn song lyrics into visualized information.

SONG CHART is a Flickr Group that has originated from preserving a Live Journal meme. Many of these musical infographics posted are just brilliant. I love this simple idea:

Friday Im In Love The Cure

They are pure genius when they not only catch the lyrics but also the character of the song, like this one:

Around the World Daft Punk

More here, check it out: Flickr Group: Song Chart

I figured this would be a could drill and I added a couple of charts myself. But I couldnt help wondering what Tufte or Maeda would do for this.

via Fontblog

Hello Elky. Hello Spreadshirt-Shop.

Februar 21, 2008 by Jonathan

I had planned this for longer and now got into do-mode. I just finished a T-Shirt Shop (via Spreadshirt) with the first motive (also the result of a little drawing session over the weekend). It was about time. There is a link on the left…

thenausner apparel

Hello Elky