Gosh IMAGINE if they did. Alcohol for babies – God forbid. I don’t think we humans will ever come THAT lost as a race to feed our babies with alcohol. Italian-based artist Anna Utopia Giordano has come up with a humorous yet shocking series that fuses iconic kid’s toy brands such as LEGO, Barbie and Disney with popular liquor bottles such as Jack Daniel’s, Absolut Vodka and Moet Chandon. Pretty creative and very well executed. I hope none of you think of putting a baby dummy on your alcohol bottles! :| More after the cut.

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HAHAHAHAHAHAHA – that is all. FouseyTube aka Yousef Erakat is a 22 year old college student and YouTube comedian. If you’ve ever come across his videos before then you’ll know he’s incredibly funny and this video is no exception. If you are/were a Drake fan then you should be cracking up each one of these, the handflapping technique had me in tears. Can’t even decide on which part is the funniest, it’s all funny! Watch it on the reverse.

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FouseyTube – Facebook | Twitter | Youtube

Why were there no posts from me over the weekend? Simple answer – lack of focus. I took on too much work and priorities wise, Y&Y fell down the shipping order. Sad but true – client work took priority :( blessed for the opportunity that I was given so had to dedicate time to that task to ensure the end result was on point. So expect a burst of posts in the next few days from me, hopefully. Tyler Perry‘s latest vlog inspired me to write this post; in the video he urges us to narrow our focus down to ONE AREA, work hard to make it work and everything else will fall into place. Bit of an extended Dope Quote here, hop on after the cut.

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I completely agree with what he has to say. I’ve been trying to do  a little too much as of late – photography, videos, collaborations – you name it. I need to focus on one project at a time even if they’re all linked to the growth and development of Y&Y. Watch the video below before you start your day, might just inspire you. His perseverance and never-give-up attitude is admirable.

‘Plant your seed in the ground, water it and believe’

Amen.

HAHAHA I am cracking up at the Shiznit‘s brutal honesty here with the Oscar nominated movies‘ posters. In the same vein as If Logos Were Honest, takes a tongue-in-cheek look at some of this year’s ludicrous nominations. They’ve photoshopped the titles and taglines so they’re a little bit more honest about the film’s content. Think my favourite has to be The Help one, you’ll have to hop on after the cut to see it!

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There are many points in life where you have to evaluate one’s self. We all are guilty of pointing out the flaws in other people and if we’re honest with ourselves it’s quite easy to spot the wrong doings and bad points of a fellow peer. However when posed the task of self assessment we suddenly have nothing to say. Ugliness is an unattractive quality but what is important to remember is that ugly begins with U so unless we check ourselves and make sure we are not portraying the same ugly traits we point out in other people we have no right to cast judgement on others.

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As some of you may or may not know, the Australian Open began last week. I’ve been keeping up to date with the tournament on twitter, and have to say that the #AusOpen is without question the most fan orientated slam. Wimbledon take note.

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In Adidas Tennis’ second “The Game Is The Game” challenge, Caroline Wozniacki, Jo Tsonga, Ana Ivanovic and Gilles Simon showed their skills in a Stické Tennis match ahead of the 2012 Australian Open. This British sport, invented in the late 19th century, is played in an enclosed court. This allows the ball to bounce on walls as well as the ground. However the location, one of Melbourne’s coolest graffiti laneways, did not look 19th century at all. Watch the video after the jump.

AMEN! I don’t really want to add any words to this post. I just want you ALL to watch and digest – this is dope quote (speech) for the week. With everything that’s going on around us – the corruption, hate, poor economic climate, wars and so on. That list could continue forever, depressing right? Charlie Chaplin was renowned for his B&W silent movie roles but he steps up and delivers one of the most poignant speeches I’ve ever heard in The Great Dictator. This film came out in 1940, scary that this is probably more relevant to current times. More on the reverse.

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UNITY. Let’s break free from all this greed, hate and fear. It’s all about love.

After showing Yang this video, he linked me to the following. Just wow.

12 million views and sadly nothing has changed :(

Some Friday reading for y’all who commute to work like me. Collaboration, collaboration, collaboration – that’s all you see and hear nowadays between brands, bloggers, celebrities but how many of them are actually successful? Adidas x David Beckham, Jordan and Nike, Uniqlo and Jil Sander to name a few. Jeff Staple who is a man of many talents; product and apparel designer, entrepreneur, blogger, visionary and probably more. He speaks on the background of collaboration and more importantly explains when it is a collaboration isn’t actually one. He also gives us insight into his work with Nike, what the different types of collabs are and what makes a successful one. Read the full article from Antenna magazine after the cut, trust me it’s worth reading.

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So if you want to collaborate with us/me, feel free to hit me up on yin@yinnyang.co.uk

As soon as man could make things, man was collaborating.

When the first caveman discovered fire, one person found the wood, the other worked the flame. Centuries later, the blacksmith needed to work with the leathersmith in order to make that perfect belt. Long before the word “collaboration” or “colab” was invented, we were collaborating.

The reason is simple. As humans, we are adept at only a certain number of skill sets. Even so called “Renaissance people” are not masters at everything. Eventually we need help. There are two kinds of help: we can simply pay for the help, otherwise known as “work-for-hire,” or we can collaborate. When you collaborate, you’re basically saying, “Hey bro, I’m really good at X, but I suck at Y. You, on the other hand are really good at Y, but you’re miserable at X. If we come together, we might be able to do some amazing things!”

The result is an epiphany. A yin and a yang forming one. Taking the best of the negatives and turning them into positives. Fast forward a few more centuries and we now live in the digital/technological/informational age. Our outputs are no longer only physical objects, but they are experiences now too. People make a living by offering opinions, or by having a certain number of people “follow” and “like” them. It’s a new day where your thoughts are the commodity.

Even with all that, the basic premise of the collaboration is the same.
Nowadays a corporation will seek the services of a cool artist, influencer or designer to work with them on a product. Why?

The reasons are transparent. A limited edition production run of something will not make or break the publicly-traded behemoth of a corporation. Why would a mega-corp make 30 pieces of something, or make something that only sells in one boutique?
It’s so the corporation can gain some sort of credibility in a market it currently cannot access or reach. Meanwhile, the “cool-guy” probably lives and breathes the aforementioned unattainable subset. So what do they do? They collaborate.

Company X says, “Hey ‘cool-guy,’ we know you can’t make a car/shoe/sunglass/bottle of alcohol/denim jacket/snowboard, etc. And for the life of us, we can’t get your friends to try out our stuff. So maybe we can help each other out here…”
And thus you have the 21st century collaboration.

I may be sounding cynical about it, but in all honesty these colabs can offer up some amazing innovation, product design and in some rare cases, even change the world. Unfortunately, many many companies now see it as a requirement to do a collaboration. It’s now literally a line item in their annual marketing budget. If they DON’T do a collaboration, it’s viewed as a wasted opportunity. This to me is completely ludicrous.

It should be obvious to anyone that by nature of the definition of the word “collaboration,” it cannot happen this way. Collaborations—or at least GREAT ones—happen organically and naturally. They are not forced into a calendar and a PowerPoint presentation. Great collaborations don’t start in boardrooms. They start in restaurants. They start with conversation. They start with mutual respect. They start with a common goal that, together, they can work towards achieving.

Often times, what gets mistaken for a collaboration is actually a “work-for-hire” project. These are based around set budgets, set timelines and set expectations. At the end of the day creativity, passion and what’s truly best for both parties, must take a back seat to those parameters.

I also want to quickly address a new phenomenon that has recently occurred that often gets mistaken for a collaboration. It’s called a “licensing deal.” When you see a brand do a project with a cartoon character, or an artist that has been deceased for many decades—this is not a collaboration. The arrangement is this: brand says to cartoon intellectual property owner, “let us use your trademarks and art. We’ll create some cool shit with it. You can approve it. And then whatever we sell, you will receive a percentage of sales (e.g., royalties).” A legal document must be drafted and signed. And often times, the trademark owner will impose a minimum amount of sales or a minimum guarantee on royalties. Doesn’t sound very collaborative does it? It’s because it’s not. I just want to say that there is absolutely nothing wrong with doing a licensing deal. I’ve done them before in the past. I just don’t like when they are called colabs. It then degrades the things that go into an actual collaboration.

I hope that in the future, the idea of collaboration will go back to its pure form. That is: two people/companies/entities sitting down, sharing a great meal and bouncing ideas off of each other. The objective is not to finish dinner with a “plan of attack.” The idea is to share. You see how this is very different than having a “creative” meeting in a conference room that starts at 9:15am and must have a hard-stop at 10:10am. THAT’S NOT A COLAB!

Great colabs are the stuff of MAGIC. It’s alchemy in a bottle. It’s creating something from nothing. And I’m not talking about a physical product; I’m talking about an entirely new way of thinking—for both parties. That is some special shit that doesn’t happen very often. At my companies, Staple Design (www.stapledesign.com) and Reed Space (www.thereedspace.com), we’ve had the pleasure of creating many collaborations. But we’ve done “work-for-hire” projects as well as a few licensing projects. Maybe because I’ve had experiences with all of these, it is very important to me that they are properly delineated.

If I start talking about all the different projects we have done in the past, it would fill this entire magazine, so I’ll just highlight one and that is—The Pigeon. Our Pigeon trademarked logo was born out of a collaborative project with Nike to create a pair of Nike SB Dunks that was dedicated to the city of New York. The brief from Nike was that simple–create a shoe for NYC. This project took over two years to come to light. I wasn’t pissed. Nike wasn’t pissed. It was just going to happen when the planets aligned. This allowed for our design process to be very fluid and organic. It might sound really cheesy, but I believe that the story and concept for your product needs time for it to marinate into your product.
Because we were given this flexibility, and because the powers that be at Nike allowed for this to happen, conditions were prime. When the Pigeons were released to the public—history was made.
You couldn’t have drawn up a better plan even if you had the world’s smartest and most strategic people working on this campaign. Why? Because it wasn’t a campaign. It was a collaboration, in the purest sense of the word.

I can confidently say that if Nike never approached us to do that shoe, to this day, there would not be a Pigeon on a sneaker…or any of the other things we’ve applied the Pigeon mark to. And I can also confidently say that if Nike didn’t approach us to make that shoe, that to this day, Staple Design would not have been able to make a shoe as good as the Dunk. So in essence we needed each other. It’s been a dream of mine to make a shoe. I needed Nike’s expertise to create this sneaker to my specifications. And Nike needed Staple to create this shoe in a way that could not have happened within their corporate walls in Beaverton, Oregon. Hell, even if this was created at Nike, in exactly the same way, but instead of releasing at Reed Space, it was given to a sales manager and shown to national accounts like Foot Locker and Modell’s…it would have been totally different. I’m telling you, the planets aligned. But they aligned because we ALLOWED them to align. It’s part luck. But it’s also about creating the conditions for luck to happen—which is not luck. It’s preparation.

If there’s anything I can pass on from my experiences in this arena, it’s this: let the ideas come to you. Whether you’re a new jack just starting out or a billion dollar corporation trying to invigorate the product line with some energy—give yourself the time to get it right. Let the marination process happen naturally. The more you rush it, the shittier your steak is gonna taste. Your job though, is to create the conditions to allow for optimal marination to occur. Lay the foundation properly. And for chrissakes—TALK. IN PERSON. Meet. Break bread. Drink. Laugh. Poke fun. Have a good time. After all, you’re not trying to change the world—but hell, you just might.

Also peep this documentary on Jeff Staple:

I’m sorry for being so late with this post again, tough few days with work, being ill and such have kept me occupied. One thing I’ve noticed in the past few months is that each and every person who I’ve met or become friends with is driven, motivated and have some kind of passion that makes me want to work harder and better my craft . I lost a lot of friends in 2011; not so much them giving me the thumbs down like in Primary School but just naturally growing apart. My friend’s circle is small, the people in that circle are a blessing to my life. I’m grateful for that, it’s important to surround yourself with people that influence you to do greater things. Steer clear of bad company! Apologies, I will fix up the typography and photography game for next week. This isn’t my best work. I admit.

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I’ve lost count of how many times that I’ve tweeted this quote, don’t even think I read it anywhere – it was something I keep trying to tell myself. There isn’t any point constantly talking about what you’re going to do and deliver, just go and get it done. With it being the start of the year, I thought this was apt for many. Too many pretenders or like we’d like to call them in London: ‘gassers’ who love to talk but don’t actually deliver any results. Talk less, do more. If the results are exceptional, it’ll talk for itself. Good work will always earns praise. If you want to see the bigger version of the photograph above – click here.

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