So last night, a few of us ventured down to Nike‘s Make It Count exhibition launch in Shoreditch. As you’ve probably realised already, I’m pretty fond of this campaign. So much so that I wrote an essay of a post dissecting each of W+K‘s media channels used for the campaign. You can read it here, if I had the time; I’d have loved to dissect the sociological aspects for using such inspire and motivate methods to grab people’s attention. That would require a hell of a lot research as it’s something that I know very little about. Sigh, I’ve blabbed on. The event was a private viewing of the exhibition space with the photographer Adam Hinton showcasing the Nike athlete portraiture for the campaign. More on the reverse.

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As always with a campaign launch, half the speaking was industry talk between the agency and representatives that worked together to create this wonderful body of work from the marketing through to Adam Hinton’s photography. It’s so simple, black & white images captures of stern faced, determined individuals. No fancy photoshopping or colour grading involved.

We ended up staying there till 9pm. Got carried away catching up with the familyand meeting some new faces. Win. If you’re in the Shoreditch area, why don’t you go check out 1948 and make your own pledge?

Details on where and when below:

Arches 477 – 478 Bateman’s Row
Shoreditch
London
EC2A 3HH

Click here for opening times.

Check out my imagery from the night, nothing fancy. Desaturated them for obvious reasons and I like the grain.

Yang! @erniedoto

Word.

Eniola! @EniAlu

Tara! @Tarajane181 #dontkillme

Mr. Pure Primary. @Murry_PP

@EniAlu Miss.YOLO

The famous food instagrammer – @SuperNoodleRach

We’re a family. Not just a bunch of WordPress nerds who sit behind a mac all day blogging away – we actually do meet up once in a while. Honestly, the family is so diverse, we have developers, designers, writers, critics, music aficionados, marketing execs and more. What brings us together? Our love for London and it’s booming creative culture. It’s been a glorious year, bring on 2012 already – time to up the game with the relaunch. New content coming your way! Hope on after the cut to peep a few hilarious photographs of the family.

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Best part of meeting up with the family? The talks, seriously, the topics that arise up in our meetings need to be filmed. The discussions, mixed opinions and the debates sparked from them = amazing. Who knows, maybe I’ll start filming them in 2012…

P.S. Tis a shame I’m not any of the photographs. However it’s my fault for not letting anyone else hold my new camera.

Don’t kill me. Caught DJB off guard. Look at that rage!

Amon looks like he’s praying!

Sorry for the inconvenience, I know you missed our constant updates on the world of fashion, music and art. First of all, noticed any changes? If not clear your cache, voila. Welcome to Y&Y v 2.0. We started the site over 2 years ago and the journey from a blog started by 2 university kids about all things ‘cool’ to a website that offers daily inspiration for London’s flourishing creative scene. Although the old design was still loved by many for its simplicity and constantly complimented, we felt it was time for a change in order to grow. As always I’m sure a few readers will prefer the old design but change is good, give it a week and you’ll love this layout.

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So where to begin? Well start of by having a browse through all the pages. The site took me over 2 months to design – 2000+ layers, 15 psds, few hundred images and a few litres of caffeine. I can’t say how pleased I am to see it finally go live, much props have to be given to Kuba. The 18 year old developer from Poland who’s responsible for taking the site from a flat design state to what you see now. Skills.

Guess I should start off with the main page. The core of this page is still essentially the same, I didn’t want to compromise the simple navigation that many enjoy browsing. It’s the foundation of the site and that is still there. We’ve added a header which includes a features carousel, LDN.365, iPhone app (soon come!) and a what’s on guide. As a site all about London culture with a team full of eclectic minds living in the city – it was only right to create a weekly guide.

I’m not going to break down each and every page, most of them are pretty easy to guess what they’re on about. Some of the main new additions to the site  include the features section where we can showcase all the original content we produce, a lot of this was previously featured under ‘reviews‘ on the old site. We’ve got a whole bunch of content to release – starting with our christmas gift guide for men.

Another one of the main new features is the opportunities page where we’ll be listing across all the different internships and jobs that we come across. As a group of working individuals in the media industry – this is a daily occurrence, sharing is caring.

There’s also a few other sections that we’ll reveal in the next few days. Till then hold tight, enjoy the updates! Let us know if you spot any bugs and errors on the site but if you’re using IE7 or 8 then don’t bother. We won’t fix it. Upgrade your browser -> Firefox & Chrome. Thanks for all the support so far, greatly appreciated. Keep on reading folks! :)

On Monday November 21st Selfridges London will become home to a new concession in the form of Sandro Homme. This will be the first concession for the brand and is the first step to making their clothes accessible to more people. As you can see, the collection fits Y&Y current feel for refined, contemporary and tailored clothing. I’m sure Yin, Yang and myself will be venturing to Selfridges soon to give this collection a closer inspection but until then we’ll have to settle with this lookbook. Take a look and let me know what you think.

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Source

So last month, we were invited down to H&M‘s showroom for a style session. What does this entail you ask? Our task was pretty simple – to construct a look that we felt represented our personal style using H&M’s latest Divided collection. To be honest, when I got the email in my inbox about this opportunity, I actually thought it was a joke haha. So we went down, not sure what to expect as we haven’t done anything of the kind before. Sure we’ve done shoots but not a filmed interview/style session – I hate being on camera and hate hearing my own voice played back to me even more! However the results are pretty nice if I do say so myself – continues on the reverse.

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H&M – Website | Facebook | Twitter

I can’t remember the exact items that we’re wearing though :( can’t seem to find them on the online store. The 2 looks – we break down why we chose them in more detail in the video. To be honest, you’d rarely catch me in a hoody but that grey one just worked with the rest of my outfit. In fact I’m not going to blab on too much about what we did or the outfit. I’ll let the video, images and outfit do the talking for a change.

So what did ya’ll think? I smile way too much. Guess I’m just a happy person. Interesting experience being in front of the camera for a change and very comfortable one thanks to the good folk at H&M and Barracuda TV who filmed the video. Also major shout outs to Curtis Gibson who captured these fine photographs of the both us, I know Yang will be changing his profile pic for the next fortnight. Heck, I think I’m going to change mine soon. I’m going to leave you guys with a few photographs…

P.S. Big up Linda!

More images on the Facebook fan page. Click here.

Last month myself and Yang brought you two new lookbook’s from Zara and now I bring you another. This one entitled ‘The Mood’ showcases more of the 2011 Autumn/Winter offering. I already know that Yin is gonna be salivating all over these pics because Zara have catered so nicely to his desire for a tailored, refined, sophisticated yet age appropriate aesthetic. I’m loving whats on display, have a gander and let me know what you think.

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Yang has posted the lookbook for Zara‘s more youthful collection but it has always been their more grown up and sophisticated offering that has interested me. As one gets older so does his style and although I still like to rock a hoodie every now and then and am very partical to don the latest in streetwear fashion if i’m honest my idea look would be the grown and sexy look. However until i get my arse back into shape I refuse to part with my hard earned cash for ish that I expect to not fit me in a few months time, when i’m back to being slim lol. Peep the lookbook on the flipside.

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This post should have been up a month ago, I received the product around then but have seriously procrastinated and been incredibly busy. Mine and Yang‘s schedules clash, the only time we’d have time to do the shoot are evenings but usually we’re DEAD by that point. So today, we actually decided to meet at 6 on the dot outside my work and get not one but 2 shoots done. 6 hours later, the photographs have been edited and posts have been written + published. That’s how we do, if only we were able to do this everyday. Trust me, original content is getting a big push when the new site is up. This post features a pair of glasses, it would have been a review post but there is near to nothing information on the brand Freccione. Gosh such an elusive Italian brand, Google gives me nada. More on the reverse.

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FarFetch – Website | Facebook | Twitter

As you may know I’ve been experimenting with black and white photography this month. This time I gave portraiture a shot, as always Yang was modelling – he’s pretty photogenic but his vain ass head of his is overly inflated. I was initially going to shoot the glasses a month ago but they just didn’t suit me – my face is for wayfarers and aviators only. I should have known better.

However luckily for us, Yang seemed to pull it off effortlessly. I do adore the frame of the glasses, it’s a strong thick frame plastic build. The lenses aren’t like the cheap tacky ones you get for £10. It’s a quality build, just be careful when purchasing glasses online as not all will suit your look. Make sure the refund/returns policies are in check! Enjoy the imagery. The product was given to us by FarFetch.com, I suggest you head over there and check out their collections from various fashion boutiques.

P.S. If you have Yang on Facebook, watch how his profile pictures will rotate weekly with images from this shoot haha.

Photography: Niran Yin Vinod
Styling & On-Set Assistant: Daniel J Bailey
Model: Ernest Yang Opoku

Out take:

*cries* Welcome to adulthood. Hope you have an awesome blessed birthday! in fact I hope you’ve taken a day off to enjoy your birthday properly and I know you’re like me when it comes to birthdays ‘just another day’. This year I realised its much more than that. I’m not going to get emo and sentimental in this post, I’ll save that for another time. I actually tried to get in touch with Alexandra Burke‘s people but bleugh, I got aired nicely. Only you will know the photograph I used above, look closely haha. HAPPY 21st BIRTHDAY!

‘Maturity has more to do with what types of experiences you’ve had, and what you’ve learned from them, and less to do with how many birthdays you’ve celebrated.’ Click here

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This week has been so blessed, too blessed to be stressed by work. Started off hectic with 2 of my senior colleagues leaving to go on holiday so I’m doing a lot more work a very important account. Thursday marked the end of the best eras of my life yet – university. I was quite apprehensive about spending £250+ on the actual ceremony; tickets, suit and photograph. It was definitely worth it. More on the reverse.

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Time has flown by and the journey has been incredible. I’ve met some great people, some who will hopefully stay in my life till the very end. The best part of the day was seeing the joy in everyone’s eyes, all the proud parents and teacher and relieved students! I couldn’t stop smiling and I rarely smile in photographs because it makes my face look fat haha, shallow much?

Trust me, if you missed out on your ceremony because you ‘couldn’t be arsed’ to go then you’re a fool. I know for sure when I look back at university life in 20 years, I’ll be thinking of graduation day. The smiles, the joy, the people that shaped our futures, the people who joined me through the journey, the place.The commencement of our future begins here. The real education starts NOW.

It all felt like a scene out of Harry Potter. Most of these photographs have been taken by my Dad hence the lack of focus in the first few!