eBay’s give-a-toy stores

Starting last Friday and for the next month, shoppers in New York City and San Francisco can use their mobile phones to purchase toys for children in need at two new interactive storefronts presented by eBay and Toys for Tots. The initiative conceived and produced by advertising agency Venables Bell & Partners features interactive displays created by international production company and design studio Brand New School (BNS) and its School of Interactive Media.

As reported by TheInspirationRoom.com, all web-connected shoppers can experience the Give-A-Toy Store and make donations online by visiting www.eBay.com/GiveAToyStore and www.Facebook.com/eBay.

Business and brand strategy alignment

For his recent post on BNET entitled “The Death of Branding and the Scam of Storytelling,” ghostwriter and author Jeff Haden reached out to the illustrious David C. Baker, whom I have written about before. David is the head of ReCourses, which provides consulting services and educational events for marketing firms. In Jeff’s story, David says a lot about branding and storytelling, including this.

“Alignment is simply telling the truth: To your customers, to your employees, and to yourself. When you do that everything else falls into place. Then your brand makes sense and the stories you tell support your brand — because your brand is you.”

Personally, I have long admired the dedication of my clients at global creative agency ATTIK focusing in on these critical areas of business. I believe their work for Perkins+Will featured above is a solid example of David’s ideas at work. I hope he agrees with me.

To learn more, Read more

Killer reels: King and Country

Since its launch in 2006, Santa Monica-based design-driven production company King and Country (K&C) has earned international recognition for breakthrough projects spanning commercials, original promos for major networks, and much more. The innovative production foundry established by directors Rick Gledhill and Efrain Montanez and executive producer Jerry Torgerson elegantly unites A-list talents representing every facet of production and post, delivering impactful films that blend original live-action content, 2D and 3D animation and seamless visual effects into new artforms. Drawing upon its principals’ extraordinary creative capabilities, K&C takes deep pride in directing and producing spectacular projects from concept through completion, collaborating with others to add brilliant end-tags, visual effects and flawless finishing for any and all media platforms, and everything in-between. K&C is featured in the recent SourceEcreative Special Feature entitled “Going Hand-to-Hand with King and Country” and its extensive portfolio of work is viewable online at www.kingandcountry.tv. For further information call Jerry Torgerson at 310.586.0100.

Great to know: Ian Albinson

ArtoftheTitle.com founder and editor-in-chief Ian Albinson is a leading global authority on the art and craft of film and television title design. At this year’s South by Southwest (SXSW) Music and Media Conference and Festival in Austin, Texas, Ian produced and presented the fascinating video embedded here, which is entitled “A Brief History of Title Design.” Of the production, Stephanie Murq of Mediabistro’s UnBeige and LiquidTreat.com writes:

“In less than three minutes, he takes viewers from the title card for D.W. Griffith’s Intolerance (1916) to the Tokyo fever dream opening of Enter the Void (2009), pausing along the way to pay respects to the title sequences of everything from Singing in the Rain to Dexter.”

As regularly noted by Motionographer and many others, Ian’s dedication to this unique artform continues. His article presenting all of the 2011 Emmy nominations for “Outstanding Main Title Design” is available here.

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!

ATTIK’s hot summer

This summer’s shaping up nicely at global creative agency ATTIK, where co-founder and ECD Simon Needham and company have sprung forth Zeus himself for their Scion Release Series tC 7.0 cross-media campaign — while also adding a lot of impressive new talents in San Francisco. In June, they welcomed two new ACDs: internationally recognized creative and art director Rey Andrade, and renowned brand and experience design leader Paul Wang. Senior digital art director David Ziganay, and senior interactive producer Scott Howe came onboard in May. For their newest developments, please visit www.attik.com.

Fired up for FIFA World Cup

Team USA is getting a lot of attention so far in the FIFA Women’s World Cup 2011. We’re sincerely rooting for a great tournament for all… especially our national players, many of whom we have gotten to know much better through the brand films created and released by Under Armour. The playlist embedded above is a Vimeo Album from U.S. creative production company Shilo and creative think tank WMIG, showcasing their ongoing collaborations with Under Armour and an expanding list of world-class athletes. The newest among more than 20 stunning films currently in the Album feature Lauren Cheney and Heather Mitts of Team USA, which were directed by Nathan Caswell. I find them all to be very inspiring, and I hope you will, too.

Leviathan turns one

To commemorate the one-year anniversary of launching design-focused production studio Leviathan in Chicago, company principals Chad Hutson, Jason White and Matt Daly and their colleagues recently threw a very happy birthday block party. Celebrating great first-year project collaborations with major agencies, entertainment venues, entertainers and global luminaries, the studio has also just added Tim Sepulveda as its design director, and Nancy Jacobs and NYC-based Batya Communications as representatives on both U.S. coasts. There’s a lot more exciting news to come. More info: www.lvthn.com.

Killer Reels: Logan

Logan is a bicoastal U.S. hybrid production company combining the vision of its directorial talent with the multifaceted expertise of its in-house team of content creators, artists, and producers, to create new visual and storytelling experiences. Above, please enjoy my hand-picked selection of some of their work from YouTube. Below you can see their reel on Motionspire. Read more