Last night I went to Dialogue, the LCC (London College of Communications) Graphic and Media Design degree show. The work of two graduates particularly caught my eye.

Look What You’ve Got, is described by designers Shaz Madani and Billy Woods as “a celebration of everyday objects we have falled out of love with”. The project featured a collection of household items which had seen better days, and a series of beautifully made posters encouraging the viewer to take a second look at these items in a new light. Unlike many of the show’s exhibits the project was accompanied by a helpful booklet allowing outsiders such as myself with no knowledge of the brief to understand what was actually going on.

I also saw some excellent typographic posters by Niccy Kemp. Unfortunately Niccy’s site is all Flash so I can’t deep link to the posters (or extract a decent image to post here), so you’ll have to visit her site and click on My Work > Monsoon Trust to check out the goods.

Berlin based Morr Music have always had great art direction. Now in an interesting creative collaboration, they’ve launched an online shop with two other small German labels, Karaoke Kalk and City Centre Offices. At A Number of Small Things you can shop for all three labels’ releases alongside Human Empire’s clothing, bags and posters. This is a great example of how like minded labels and creative types can club together to create a better shopping destination for their online fans. The site is currently in beta and they aren’t yet selling music downloads, but I’ll be watching how it develops with interest.

The Ministry of Type spotted this great Zune ad in Wired magazine and kindly scanned the pages for all of us to see. Nice use of typography. Original article here.

Keith Richards is a legend. He may be less than coherent as a result of years of “recreation” but what he says is still pretty interesting to anyone into music and rock ’n’ roll culture. Louis Vuitton have realised this and included a piece about him in their “Journeys” project, a series of travel themed films and photo essays featuring icons such as Richards, Mikhail Gorbechev and Catherine Deneuve.

The piece is a good watch with film-maker Annie Lebowitz making the most of her less than “focussed” interviewee through good edits and handycam style footage of Richards’ London. The real reason I’m talking about this here, though, is that this is a great example of branded content. Many of the musicians in our industry are interesting people with great tales to tell. With physical music sales declining and digital yet to catch up, artists are having to look at other ways to make money. Brands like Louis Vuitton benefit immeasurably from “aligning” themselves with characters such as Keith Richards. Pieces like this don’t tend to ram the brand down the user’s throat but instead focus on the content, so the deal’s not too bad for the punter either. I reckon we can expect to see more of this type of brand “enabled” music content in the future.

Here’s something a bit different – MiniGods speakers combine a vinyl toy aesthetic with a functioning pair of desktop speakers. They’re currently available in “Brazil” and “Mexico” (pictured above) incarnations with a “Japan” version coming soon. Dvice has a review and more pics.

At a time when music packaging is on a downward spiral, French electro / folk / pop act ALB have generated a surprising amount of publicity for themselves on the back of the outrageously extravagant (and unashamedly retro) packaging for their debut album Magne-Disque. The album even comes with a mini-cover for each song. Catch the full low-down and lots more pics at Sleeveage.

If you haven't seen this by now you’ve obviously discovered the Lost City Of Atlantis, snapped up a bargain two bed flat and are still waiting for the underwater telco to hook up your broadband.

I’m posting it anyway because it’s brilliant. The ten years of internet “memes” featured in this three and a bit minute vid, such as Daft Hands, Chocolate Rain, Diet Coke & Mentos etc. represent a notoriously difficult thing to harness for the purposes of marketing. The brilliant thing about this video is that it does just that, and ruins it for everyone else in the process. The very fact that the video’s director (Mathew Cullen of Motion Theory) managed to get all these crazies to take part is a herculean feat in itself. Nearly 5 million views in a week says it all – hats off and wish I’d thought of it myself.