Killer reels: Thornberg & Forester

The principals of award-winning design and production company Thornberg & Forester (T&F, www.thornbergandforester.com) recently announced that many of their 2010 collaborations with leading business luminaries received top honors at the annual PromaxBDA Conference in New York City. A playlist featuring all the award-winners is here.

Among its four 2011 North America Design Award winners is T&F’s own “Brand Video” which scored Gold in the Self Promotion category. Other Golds were presented for its collaboration with advertising agency BBDO for GE’s Advanced Imaging sponsorship of the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics in the Long Form category, and the firm’s 2010 GEL Conference graphics package, which won for Best Collaborative Effort. T&F’s original Green is Universal campaign for NBC won Bronze in the category for Art Direction and Design, Network/Channel Image Campaigns. Congratulations everyone!

Sharing secrets: Kinect hacking

The fascinating video featured with this story was just released in May, and it’s already aging. It ran with the Wired story “Six Months Later, Kinect Hacks Flourish” to coincide with a presentation by computer scientist Johnny Chung Lee at Wired’s Disruptive by Design business conference, and since then, the phenomenon has literally taken the tech and creative worlds by storm. The author of that article is Dave Mosher, who also interviewed Mr. Lee at Disruptive by Design — and has a new feature in this month’s Wired entitled “Kinect Hackers Are Changing the Future of Robotics.” This subject is quickly making headway in many industries. For example, at the recent Creativity and Technology (CaT) business conference, Sam Travis Ewen pointed to it as one of three areas of technology that are impacting the art of engagement. Don’t miss Alexandra Bruell’s detailed Ad Age story on Mr. Ewen here: “How Kinect Hacking, Augmented Reality Is Changing Marketing.” In case you’re wondering, the two other developments he put the spotlight on were augmented reality and projection mapping.

Pause Fest 2011 call for creative submissions

Melbourne Australia’s pioneer digital festival Pause Fest is set to showcase the future of technology, art and ideas from 7 through 13 November, 2011. Since the event is being designed to foster sharing, networking and education, creative companies and agencies worldwide are being invited to submit projects for possible display. Read more

Forces for Good: Mike Corso

If I have my facts straight, publisher, writer and marketing consultant Mike Corso has personally been operating Cool Site of the Day for well over 13 years, and last year, he decided to take-up a very important initiative: On Fridays, the daily email he sends out showcasing a unique, innovative website is themed as the “Do Good, Feel Good” E-mail. For example, back in October, he used his Friday edition to report on General Electric’s Ecomagination initiative detailed in the video above, reminding us that for every photo readers uploaded, Ecomagination would donate 480 gallons of clean, safe drinking water to communities in need. For more information on Cool Site of the Day and to subscribe to Mike’s newsletters and social media outposts, please visit http://www.coolsiteoftheday.com.

And to Mr. Corso, thank you very much for the thought leadership and the daily inspiration!

Scion ATTIK North Kingdom FWA!

Scion and ATTIK have combined to score their fourth FWA Site of the Day award, this time for their Take On the Machine Augmented Reality game honored today. ATTIK’s news release and artwork galleries are available here.

Simon Needham: “Our goal was to engage people with the bold and aggressive new Scion tC, and earning an FWA Award is a great measure of our success.”

Spinifex Group and GPJ for Nissan

Working in close collaboration with creatives from experience marketing agency George P. Johnson (GPJ), Spinifex Group has built an extensive track record in creating quality branded content for Nissan which has been distributed worldwide and used in countless ways. In October, 2008, the release of the new Nissan 370Z coincided with the launch of “Need for Speed” from EA Games. Building the release campaign around “Need for Speed,” Spinifex joined efforts with executives from EA Games in Canada to create a reveal video, which Nissan later distributed as a sensational cinema trailer. For more information, please visit Nissan 370Z Brand Film from Spinifex Group.

Experience Spinifex in China

The principals of Spinifex Group, worldwide leaders in creating and delivering cutting-edge experience media projects, are very proud to continue their collaborations with Director Han Lixun, famous for the print-block segment of the Beijing Olympics Opening Ceremony, and Yvonne Ho, producer on the Beijing Olympic Games, in creating the cinematic multimedia feature attraction at the heart of Yan City, which just opened in China’s Chun Zhu Province. This latest spectacular high-tech storytelling achievement, uniting the talents of Director Han with those of Spinifex Group creative director Richard Lindsay and his colleagues, builds upon their joint efforts during the historic Opening Ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, wherein Spinifex was distinguished as one of the only non-Chinese production company involved. The case study is online at SpinifexGroup.com.

Covert affairs from Ralph

In support of the new USA Network original series COVERT AFFAIRS, digital creative agency Ralph recently developed The Farm (http://thefarm.usanetwork.com), which allows fans to work alongside Annie Walker (series star Piper Perabo) to hone active spy skills, including closed-course driving, video surveillance, lock-picking and more. For completing tasks, fans can win prizes such as iPods, Bose products and more. New challenges continue to appear, allowing fans to use Facebook Connect to pull in information, share scores and gain extra points by recruiting their friends to help answer questions. Check out The Farm anytime, and COVERT AFFAIRS on Tuesday nights 10/9c on USA Network. You can also become a fan of the series on Facebook http://www.facebook.com/CovertAffairs and follow it on Twitter: http://twitter.com/covertaffairs.

Experience media from Spinifex Group

I’m very proud to be working with the phenomenal Sydney-based creative communications company Spinifex Group, which is made up of authentic leaders in creating and delivering experience media.

With recent projects ranging from immersive interactive experiences to global broadcast events and epic big screen corporate communications extravaganzas, they have resolved some of the most ambitious and complex storytelling challenges of our times, with historical results. Below, I’ve organized summary notes on some of their latest projects, which as you’ll see, include numerous mesmerizing ceremonies and pavilions at the Shanghai World Expo, the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics Ceremonies, the Beijing 2008 Summer Olympics Ceremonies, and many others. Read more