Hasta La Creative!

(TrendHunter.com) Interior designers are increasignly looking at stairs for a multi-function creative space saving design. Joining the “Library Staircase” we featured a while back is this eco-friendly stairs design that is made of slats of wood bolted together.

The stairs double as a bookcase that saves you space a…

We all want the perfect man or woman in our life. But according to the latest fun advertisement for GQ Magazine, the ideal man does not exist. However, you can take comfort in knowing that the ideal man’s magazine does exist.

The cool video advert is done by DDB Advertising Agency, USA with art di…

(TrendHunter.com) Children love cardboard boxes. It always happens without fail that a kid will play more with the sturdy box than the toy that came in it. Give them a washing machine or refrigerator box and watch out! Now, the inner child in all of us can play with cardboard boxes or even build our homes with them. …

I’m in Austin this week and so are 1500 bands, a great majority of whom hope to be discovered by fans and by industry insiders who can help further their musical careers. Given that preoccupation, I found it interesting that Ad Age is running a feature on music licensing opportunities.

According to 2006 Enders Analysis data, the market for commercial music licensing is in the neighborhood of $3 billion. So while artists in nearly every genre have opened their arms to corporate America, shifting from the polarizing world of “selling out” to the nuanced galaxy of “musical branding” is a challenge many still struggle with.

According to an executive familiar with music-licensing deals, for U.S. rights, marketers typically pay $150,000 for the master recording of a song and another $150,000 for synchronization — the right to put the composition in a TV ad.

The Ad Age article points out that Apple tends to cut those numbers in half, a fact that probably doesn’t bother to many artists or their management teams, since the association with Apple works to significntly elevate an artist’s visibility. For instance, when Apple picked Yael Naim’s song “New Soul” for its MacBook Air spot earlier this year, the Israeli singer-songwriter didn’t even have a record out in the U.S. But thanks to a single in the iTunes Store, the song made its debut on the Billboard Hot 100 at No. 9 with 135,000 downloads

LONDON – Tom Moloney, the former chief executive of Emap, has taken up a new role as chief executive of healthcare information provider Dr Foster Intelligence.

LONDON – IPC is launching its modern homes magazine Livingetc in Cyprus – its latest international magazine launch.

LONDON – Online market research company Lightspeed Research has launched a new weekly omnibus survey called LightBus.

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — Drink bottled water. Make a difference. That's the theme behind a campaign for the widespread launch of Ethos, the brand that up until now has been available only in 7,000 Starbucks locations. In a partnership with Pepsi-Cola North America, the brand is being rolled out to 40,000 mass merchandisers as well as convenience, supermarkets and drugstores in a push that will benefit water-stressed countries.

Based on the French Parlor game of the same name, this series of short films known as “Exquisite Corpse” was created by the commercial production company Little Minx, a division of RSA Films to allow their talented lineup of new directors to strut their stuff.

Assembling a roster of unique directors that work in film, television and commercial production, Little Minx chose four directors – Chris Nelson, Josh Miller, Malik Hassan Sayeed and Phillip Van to write and direct their own short films, all following two golden rules: they must respond to the last line of text from the previous director’s script and they must feature the Little Minx brand in some unique way. Every played the game blogstop? Well, it’s like that but with film.

What resulted is anything but ordinary. You can see the results of this hybrid of filmmaking and advertising at www.littleminx.tv and you can rate the films here in the archive as well giving the guys props as you see fit.

read more

(TrendHunter.com) You are the 80-90s Nintendo-generation and are entering adult life. Read at least two newspapers a day, work harder, stress more, eat a full-grain diet, sit ergonomically on your scandinavian designed furniture. No more slacking, no more goofing around, game over!

So what if you won on a lottery? …