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Umbrella

Het is heerlijk weer en wie wil er nu niet lekker genieten van de zon op het strand? Toch kost het altijd veel tijd om vanaf Amsterdam op en neer te gaan naar Zandvoort of Bloemendaal. Daarom worden er steeds meer alternatieven geboden in de stad waardoor je het strandgevoel dichterbij huis hebt. Blijburg is één van de succesvolste stadsstranden van Amsterdam.  Inmiddels bestaan ze alweer 10 jaar en is Blijburg voor veel Amsterdammers niet meer weg te denken uit de stad.

Ontstaan Blijburg

Blijburg is in 2003 ontstaan op IJburg, waar naast de vele strakke nieuwbouw behoefte was aan … Lees verder

Retailer selling analog design equipment.

Because there isn't already enough Angry Birds-themed merchandise in the world, Hasbro and Rovio's Angry Birds have signed a new expanded licensing agreement that will find new Birds gear hitting the market before year’s end.

Since the original Angry Birds mobile game launched in 2009, more than 12 million copies have been sold through Apple’s app store alone. That has led to Angry Birds-branded T-shirts, pillowcases, cake toppers, pet toys, skateboards, and, of course, Duck tape.

Rovio, the creator of the brand, began distributing a weekly animated cartoon series, Angry Birds Toons, in March and a full-length animated Angry Birds movie is expected to hit screens in the summer of 2016, according to a release.[more]

Does this mean that G.I. Joe or Mr. Potato Head will soon be battling Angry Birds? It all remains to be seen. The news comes as Rovio is in the middle of promoting a new iteration of the Angry Birds game that is set to be released soon: Angry Birds Go!

"Angry Birds’ is one of the most recognizable entertainment franchises in the world and we’re thrilled Rovio has chosen Hasbro as its premier toy and game licensee," John Frascotti, Hasbro’s chief marketing officer, said in the statement. “With the new ‘Angry Birds Go!’ property and additional upcoming collaborations between the companies, Hasbro looks forward to delivering more innovative ‘Angry Birds’ toys and games to kids and families across the globe.”

According to mobile-ent.biz, Hasbro isn’t the only company that has recently signed a licensing deal with Angry Birds. Power A is set to develop mobile and video game accessories while Thermos “will develop a line of hydration and storage containers." Pez will sell collectible Angry Birds candy dispensers and soon Angry Birds will have its own multivitamins from Natrol along with inflatables from Gemmy Industries.

Every wednesday, we share a few freebies that’ll make your designer toolbox a bit more useful.

City icons

Fourteen gorgeous icons or ideograms of famous cities from around the world.

MixItUp

A CSS3 and jQuery filtering plugin, a great tool for portfolio sorting.

Retinize It

These Photoshop actions let you prepare your designs for iOS devices with Retina display.

Modus Versus

Modus Versus is a free multi-purpose PSD template, designed on the 1170 grid system.

Fontello

Fontello is an online font icon generator.

Flat icons Brownie theme

A beautiful set of brownish flat icons.

Interesting way to pack and consume parmesan cheese, a concept by the Deli Garage. These Parmesan pencils lead is pesto, chilli or truffles. You sharpen your Parmesan pencil over salad or pasta plate and voila.

Amazon pounced on the opportunity to add Viacom programming to its Prime streaming lineup last month after the broadcast giant couldn’t work out an extension deal with Netflix. That loss is likely costing Netflix big-time as it saw the exit of popular kids shows like Dora the Explorer, SpongeBob SquarePants and Blue's Clues, the very type of content that parents desire when they need to use the electronic babysitter. 

However, Netflix battled back this week by signing a deal with DreamWorks Animation, in turn setting itself up to stream a whole host of new kid-friendly content based off of the studio's popular big-screen hits. In another move that seems orchestrated to remind folks, particularly parents, that Netflix still has scads of family programming, it has launched a new site, Netflix Families, that highlights “information on the best ways to stream and videos on how families use Netflix,” as well as feeds of curated content perfect for kids, the company said in a new release.[more]

“We see about a 30 percent increase in family and kids content viewing hours during summer so we know Netflix is a great solution for entertaining families this time of year,” said Ted Sarandos, chief content officer, according to the release. “With the Netflix Families page, we’ve used our proprietary algorithm to create lists we think families will love. In the ‘Are We There Yet’ list we’ve picked TV shows and movies ideal for watching on your tablet in the airport and the ‘TV for Curious Kids’ lists have shows that will help keep kids’ minds active during the summer months.”

The release goes on to say that 84 percent of American families have three or more Netflix-ready devices in their homes, but 59 percent of them are not using them to do so. With the new, dedicated family section, Netflix hopes to change that. 

Chrysler was looking for a fig leaf, and the federal government just gave it one. The company ended a dispute with US car-safety officials by agreeing to inspect older-model Jeeps and install a piece of equipment that would help them fare better in low-speed crashes.

The company stunned the industry recently when Chrysler defied a call by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to recall 2.7 million remaining 1993-2004 Jeep Grand Cherokees and 2002-2007 Jeep Libertys that the agency said faced a heightened risk of fire from rear-end collisions because the vehicles' fuel tank lies behind the rear axle.

Chrysler insisted the vehicles weren't unsafe and had a performance record in crashes comparable to competing vehicles. A recall of all of the units in question would have cost Chrysler several hundred million dollars.[more]

But pundits quickly warned Chrysler that it was courting PR disaster not only for its rare display of defiance of a fairly widely trusted government agency but also because of the chances that a bad accident, or handful of them, involving one of the vehicles in questio—after Chrysler had refused to address a potentially major safety issue—could be a brand-killer.

"Chrysler obviously calculated the risks and benefits and concluded that the cost to repair these vehicles isn't as expensive as the potential long-term harm that could come from bad PR," Michelle Krebs, senior analyst for Edmunds.com, told Forbes. "This was probably a right decision by Chrysler."

Last year, there were 659 auto-safety recalls issued by the government, "and none of them appear to have had a lasting negative impact on any brand," Krebs noted. "Once the smoke settles, I suspect this will be just a minor blip in Jeep's history."

Chrysler didn't concede that the vehicles were defective but said that it recognizes "this matter has raised concerns for its customers." So the company will conduct a voluntary campaign to inspect the vehicles and, if necessary provide an upgrade to the rear structure in the form of a trailer hitch to better manage crash forces in low-speed impacts.

When Utrecht’s Centraal Museum commissioned a new installation from Amsterdam-based design and research office Rietveld Landscape, they gave the studio two directives. First, they asked Rietveld to create something that referred back to Vacant NL, an expansive model city they created for the Venice Architecture Biennale in 2010. The monochromatic cityscape proposed re-purposing unoccupied government-owned buildings into multi-use hotbeds of creative and scientific experimentation.

The second directive was to do something interesting with one of the site’s own empty areas. Pretty Vacant is the soaring result. (They claim it has got no Sex Pistols connection.) The team ended up using the Biennale piece’s same Styrofoam XPS hard foam material--in the same bright blue shade and cut with a hot wire--to represent the precise negative mirror image of the original exhibition.

The effect is impressive--a kind of modern-Medieval mashup or geometric stained glass (sans-glass). It complements the shape of the adjacent windows and breaks up the expanse in a way that encourages a closer look while still allowing for a peek through to the other side.

All images by Rob 't Hart

(h/t Dezeen)

In the wake of the PRISM scandal, brands are continuing to jockey for their place among the most transparent as the government slowly concedes to releasing more surveillance data collected through the top-secret NSA program, which was made public by whistle blower Edward Snowden. 

Requests by Facebook, Microsoft, Google and the like to release data requested by the government have been answered this week. While the initial accusations that the internet companies allowed the NSA to troll data through a wide-open back door was ruled false, the companies still wished to clear their names in conjunction with the thousands of written data requests with which they are charged to comply with per federal laws. 

To date, Apple, Facebook, Yahoo, and Microsoft have disclosed the number of requests received over certain blocks of time. Facebook published its first transparency report, where it said it received up to 10,000 requests between July and December 2012. Meanwhile, Apple said it faced up to 5,000 federal, state and local requests between December 2012 and May 2013, Microsoft reported 7,000 requests from July through December 2012, and Yahoo reported the most, with 13,000 requests for data in the past 18 months, the BBC reports.[more]

While most of the requests concerned "fraud, homicides, kidnappings and other criminal investigations," Yahoo, and all others involved, "cannot lawfully break out Fisa [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] request numbers at this time because those numbers are classified," Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer said in a blog post. Similarly, Google said "lumping police requests with national security requests was 'a step back for users.'"

Still, court records published by The New York Times show that Yahoo has resisted broad NSA requests since 2008 when a judgment forced them to hand over digitally stored email and photos on request. Twitter has been more successful standing its ground, due in part to less content to mine, as well as their top lawyer, Alex Macgillivray, consistently fighting for free expression.

In a statment on customer privacy, Apple maintains that, "Only if appropriate, we retrieve and deliver the narrowest possible set of information to the authorities," noting that the “most common form of request comes from police investigating robberies and other crimes, searching for missing children, trying to locate a patient with Alzheimer’s disease, or hoping to prevent a suicide.” The company was quick to clarify that its legal team evaluates each request and doesn't approve them if "inconsistencies or inaccuracies" occur. 

In a follow-up to his public note denying any knowledge of PRISM, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that, "Facebook is not and has never been part of any program to give the US or any other government direct access to our servers. We have never received a blanket request or court order from any government agency asking for information or metadata in bulk, like the one Verizon reportedly received. And if we did, we would fight it aggressively.” 

General privacy concerns across the internet and social networks has always existed, so most of the public's ire has been directed towards the US as Snowden threatens to reveal more classified information. As for the country's reputation? President Obama has ensured Americans that they aren't getting the complete story, saying in a PBS interview that just because there is a "tradeoff doesn't mean somehow that we've abandoned freedom," The Next Web reports. In a bid to preserve its own interests and quell concerns of citizens, Obama said he has asked the intelligence community to "see how much of this we can declassify without further compromising the program."

While most billboards are just meant to be aesthetically pleasing, IBM decided to create ads that actually serve a purpose.

As a part of its Smart Ideas for Smarter Cities campaign, IBM and Ogilvy Paris made three billboards with different functions: One is a bench, the other is a ramp for stairs, and the last serves as a rain shelter.

And considering that it just won Cannes Grand Prix for Outdoor advertising, it's safe to say the ad world likes it, too.

Here are the ads:

This is Ogilvy's second big win at the advertising festival. Ogilvy Brazil, which also made Dove's "Real Beauty Sketches," won a Grand Prix in the Promo & Activations Lions category for an organ-donor campaign called "Immortal Fans."

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Starbucks customers will still be able to order all of their favorite high-fat, sugary concoctions at their favorite coffee house. It's just that they won't be able to plead ignorance anymore to just how many calories are in that Venti Caramel Macchiato or luscious chocolate brownie.

The company said it will become the latest restaurant chain to put up calorie boards at its locations across the United States, jumping ahead of a US-government mandate under Obamacare that's expected to require bigger chains to make similar disclosures nationwide by the end of the year. New York and California already require nutrition boards.

Starbucks also will post calorie counts on the goodies in the pastry case. "Menu labeling is yet another step to extend our commitment to wellness, ensuring our current customers and partners (employees) have the information they need to make informed decisions and understand all the ways that they can customize their Starbucks beverages to be within their desired calorie range," stated Mary Wagner, SVP of global research and development for Starbucks.[more]

McDonald's began posting calorie counts on menu boards in the US in September in the midst of unrelenting criticism of its menu as unhealthy, even though McDonald's has introduced plenty of "better-for-you" options over the last several years and is constantly fine-tuning its menu.

Though many Starbucks concoctions are very calorie-rich, the brand has flown under the radar in terms of public criticism of the nutritional value of its largely liquid menu. Starbucks also has added lower-calorie options like soy milk and oatmeal over the years.

Now, each Starbucks beverage will be listed as a standard recipe in the calorie counts, though Starbucks noted that each is fully customizable, such as ordering without whipped cream, choosing a different milk or sugar-free syrup. The boards will debut by June 25 across America, so US customers can enjoy a last guilt-constrained frappucino before then.

Its "Commitment to Wellness" infographic released today also hints at more to come, with the fine print reading: "More announcements coming soon!"

Branding and Menu Design for Nueve Nueve, a Mexican Bistro in Mexico City's iconic Casa Lamm.

Clenched teeth and curse words usually accompany the act of holding an overstuffed cardboard box together with one hand while futzing around with a roll of packing tape with the other. The folks at Black + Blum--a brand that has, since 1998, brought a playful perspective to households basics--want to help make packing less of a hassle.

On a Roll makes the one-handed tape maneuver far less tricky, thanks to a cleverly cantilevered design that tips to the side just so. The other key element is in the sheer weight of the damn thing, a whopping 2.3 pounds of cast iron that won’t budge no matter how many times you fumble the tear-away. With it, you can secure parcels with ease. Not inconsequential: Your arm will get a nifty little workout.

At $43.50, it’s not, um, cheap. Still, it’s guaranteed to last longer than one of the flimsy plastic dispensers you get at the hardware store. (Admittedly, those are much easier to toss around.) And if you’re forever that pal who helps others move, you’re constantly on shipping duty at the office, or you just send a lot of packages, it’s a solid investment. Purchase your own here.

A recent Associated Press story revealed how companies are fighting to make their foods appear more natural. 

"Food companies are responding to the adage that people eat with their eyes," writes Candice Choi at the AP. "Americans still love their fast food and packaged snacks, but they're increasingly turning their noses up at foods that look overly processed."

Companies have responded by developing technology and preparation methods designed to make packaged food seem natural. 

From lunch meat to burgers, see what they're doing. 

Domino's asks workers not to make the rectangles on its "artisan" pizzas too perfect.

The pizzas are supposed seem "rustic," even though the dough is the same Domino's uses for normal pies, according to the AP.

McDonald's makes the Egg White Delight sandwich's egg look jagged and irregular.

This is supposed to make the sandwich seem more wholesome than the regular Egg McMuffin, the AP reports.

Taco Bell's refried beans allegedly arrive on location in powder form.

"They're not beans, it's literally oatmeal oats that inflate when you add hot water. Some beans are thrown in, but the entire thing is like clay. I can sculpt things with it," an employee told Reddit. 

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

Project GTA Verlag — Forms of Practice

Design Cartlidge Levene

Link cartlidgelevene.co.uk

Brazilian soccer fans are some of the most dedicated in the world, but an ad campaign from Ogilvy Mather let them know there was one more thing they could do if they wanted to be sure that their heart beat for their team forever: be an organ donor. 

The “Immortal Fans” campaign, which just took top honors in the Promo & Activations category at Cannes Lions, focused on the Sport Club Recife team. In the spot, actual patients that were waiting for organs spoke to fans directly, saying things like, "I promise that your eyes will keep on watching Sport Club Recife" or "I promise that your lungs will keep on breathing for Sport Club Recife."[more]

Part of the reason it won, surely was because of its effectiveness. Organ donations went up 54 percent in the country and around 51,000 fans of the club said they would hand over their organs when they died. Those kinds of numbers helped reduce the waiting list for heart and corneal transplants in the country, Creativity-online.com reports. "It's something 60 years from now people will say, 'That was really timely, and yet really timeless,'” said Rob Schwartz, TBWA Worldwide’s creative president, who headed up the jury awarding the prize, AdWeek reports. 

The unique public health ad touches on a growing trend to garner more attention to sensative and personal health subjects like donation through new mediums like social media. After all, when Facebook allowed users to indicate their donor status on their profiles, the US saw a 20-fold spike in registrations in the first day alone. Since its debut last May, the numbers have fallen back to normal levels, Time reports, however the spike in interest and activity showed researchers that there is a certain 'viral' aspect to public health. 

Another big winner out of Cannes was Heineken, which took home the Grand Prix for Creative Effectiveness for its Legendary Journey global campaign. Charged with uniting its brand across 170 markets, Heineken chose to embrace its global nature and turn the drinker into a legend. While the campaign is still young, it has proven to have a positive impact on volume, share value and price premium across global markets. 

At advertising's biggest festival, the Cannes Lions, Facebook exec Carolyn Everson went all out singing advertisers' praises.

“We wouldn't have a company without brands; they are essential,” the VP of global marketing solutions said at a Starcom MediaVest Group session. “Not only to the business side — of course that’s where the revenue comes from — but we also deeply believe that brands offer a tremendous amount of value to consumers, and always have.”

That's putting quite the premium on advertisers.

And Facebook has been trying to cozy up to Madison Avenue more and more.

This was the second year of the Facebook Studio Awards, in which the social media platform selects the brands that are using its resources best.

Facebook is also holding its first-ever gathering of the Facebook Creative Council this week while everyone is at Cannes. The group will act like a "sounding board for identifying top priorities for agency creatives in areas like product, measurement, and programs."

Everson noted Facebook's very intentional evolution to become a more open and attractive space for brands. Campaign reports that she noted a, “fundamental shift from talk of ‘pages and fans’” to “speaking business language for brands and agencies.” Although, “we have a lot to learn ... we're only nine years old. Many of these brands have been around for 100-plus years.”

And Facebook wasn't always a brand-favorite.

In September 2012, Campbell Soup Co. global director of digital marketing and social media, Adam Kmiec, said that Twitter's ad sales people completely trumped those at Facebook.

“[I've] never seen anything as ADD as Facebook,” he said at Business Insider's Social Media ROI conference. “Before they were public, you couldn't get Facebook on the phone ... It's interesting what happens when you actually have to show your numbers.”

SEE ALSO: A Quirky Ad Listing 'Dumb Ways To Die' Is On Its Way To Being Crowned Best Ad Of The Year

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CANNES, France—The Philippines, which before this year had won just one Gold Lion and a handful of silvers and bronzes, nabbed the Grand Prix in Mobile here tonight for an inspired campaign by DDB-owned DM9 Jayme Syfu that turned old cellphones into school textbooks.

The Philippines lacks the resources to migrate heavy physical textbooks over to tablets and e-readers, as more developed countries are doing. But the country does have plenty of old mobile phones. Over a six-month period, DM9 and Smart—the country's largest telecom—worked with textbook authors and publishers to translate schoolbooks into 160-character text messages, programmed them into thousands of surplus SIM cards, inserted the cards into old handsets and branded them as TXTBKS.

Thus, even the oldest analog phones became a new kind of e-reader, and old SIM cards became a new kind of textbook.

The most honored U.S. campaign was The Martin Agency's immersive "Clouds Over Cuba" effort documenting the Cuban Missile Crisis for the JFK Presidential Library and Museum. That campaign picked up a gold Lion, a silver Lion and a bronze Lion.

The U.S. received four other silvers and four other bronzes.

AKQA in Washington, D.C., won a silver and two bronzes for its "WWF Together" campaign for the World Wildlife Fund.

The other silvers went to AKQA in New York for its "Mobile Orchestra" holiday card; R/GA in New York for MasterCard's "Miyamo"; and Mirada in Los Angeles for its iPad app bringing to life the MirrorWorld series of young-adult novels by Cornelia Funke.

The other bronzes went to Brooklyn, N.Y., creative collective Raul X Mihai X Mihnea for its "Instagram Menu" for New York restaurant Comodo, and AKQA in New York for its "Fly Delta" app for Delta Airlines.

See a gallery of some of the winning U.S. work below.

(Reuters) - Facebook Inc said on Tuesday it now has 1 million active advertisers globally who used the platform in the last 28 days, a milestone for the company that is seeking to revive its revenue growth.

A vast majority of those advertisers are small business owners who have flocked to the world's No. 1 social network.

Facebook executives are hoping to net even more small advertisers since 16 million local businesses, ranging from jewelry sellers to clothing stores, set up free pages on the network.

While pinpointing how much money small advertisers spend only online is difficult, in total they spent approximately $32 billion during 2012 in the United States, according to market research firm eMarketer.

"Most small business owners start off as Facebook users, then migrate to become page owners, and from there migrate to become advertisers," said Dan Levy, Facebook director of small business.

He said that Facebook does not plan to start charging businesses to set up pages.

Advertising accounts for 85 percent of Facebook's revenue - which also includes dollars from the world's largest brands and advertising agencies. But the company is trying to spark its ad growth following a sharp slowdown last year.

Last quarter, Facebook reported first-quarter revenue of $1.46 billion. Advertising revenue rose 43 percent, the fastest growth rate since the end of 2011.

Facebook declined to break out how much ad revenue comes from small businesses and did not indicate how long it took to reach the 1 million milestone.

It has introduced several initiatives to help boost growth, including an overhaul of its newsfeed and changes to how advertisers buy ads on the network in order to simplify the process.

Small business owners are "critical" to Facebook's success, said Brian Wieser, an analyst with Pivotal Research Group.

"Once they launched new ad products targeted to small businesses in the middle of last year, they were able to significantly accelerate their revenue growth," he said.

Kim Caulfield, a small business owner in Orange County, California who sells custom jewelry made from horse tail hair, started using Facebook advertising to reach more customers for her company Tail Spin.

"You only can invite so many of your friends over and most of them don't own horses," she said.

She now spends approximately $25 a day with Facebook on advertisements directed to horse enthusiasts with the potential of reaching over 5 million people.

Facebook also reaches out to local businesses order to help them through the process. Dallas-area clothing boutique owner Lucy Huang said she was part of a Facebook incubator program to mentor businesses and walk them through the ad buying process.

Huang said she spends roughly $50 a month advertising Accents retail stores with Facebook, saying it is cheaper and more effective than print or online rivals like Yelp.

More than 50 percent of small business owners use Facebook pages to promote their products, but only 16 percent use Facebook ads, according to BIA Kelsey, a research firm specializing in local advertising.

(Reporting by Jennifer Saba in New York; Editing by Nick Zieminski)

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