Clare Townhill

This is how it feels to be lean

Week 1 of Fluxx Labs has just finished. One product is live and the other should be live this morning. Having 2 products taken from idea to being out in the wild by Friday was our target and therefore the measure of success, yet for me the real success of the week is encapsulated in this photo of Mark standing looking wistfully into the ceiling of Fluxx. He was contemplating how to get the bulb out to use to light our video shoot. It struck me that it's been a very long time in my work life since anyone I've worked with has cared enough about the thing they're doing to try to disassemble the building. It also leads me into a list of some of the other things we learned this week in Labs:

• The Labs environment makes people resourceful

• Labs doesn't feel like work but you get more done* in a week than you ever dreamed could be possible

• Labs is not for everyone - beyond the core skill sets people bring the most important thing people bring to Labs is themselves as personalities • Days in the Lab need to be structured by check-ins and reviews not by time-boxing the tasks you need to complete

• Ruthless focus and discipline about what you are doing and why you are doing it are essential at every step of the process

• A parking bay for the inevitable new ideas that crop up is a great way of stopping things from being lost and keeping focus I'm sure I'll add more to this as the products and proposition iterate. Snapshots of our week can be found here http://www.fluxxlabs.tumblr.com

*as in actually done not hypothetically done if the client signs everything off, the other agencies play nice, and several other planets align

Brand love beyond reason

Two examples of the triumph of brand over reason: Coke and Apple. Coke: despite the silliness of the over-zealous and now shamed coke-exec regarding the literal and cultural diet-coke-mentos explosion, Coke have always been honest about what they sell. They're not in the business of selling syrupy, fizzy soda; the thing they're selling is dreams. Beautifully iterated here by the latest Coke Happiness Machine on a London campus:

Apple, they may make tech (some would of course argue that they just make gorgeous remote controls for the rest of their eco-system) but what they really market is edible design.Happily reacquainted myself with just how funny and true this is:

One video from a brand: one UGC that generates a backlash of wrath from the Apple-lover. Both indicate the kind of money-can't-buy feeling that most companies would kill for yet fail to attain in their pursuit of the brand and product positioning rather than a generation of emotional feeling and brand belonging.

Mosquitos are Awful, Spooning is Super

I hate mosquitoes.

What with all that buzzing and itching, the hubbub they cause is disproportionate to the microdrop of blood they make away with. Besides, I am the world’s most formidable mosquito hunter. I have brought to justice every single mosquito that has ever attacked me (except when I spend nights in rooms with patterned wallpaper, which makes mosquito hunting impossible).

Just beautiful. The work of Chistoph Niemann.

The Language of Love

Interesting little study of the words women used in their online dating profile and how successful they were attracting/putting off potnetial dates. Okcupid say:

Our program looked at keywords and phrases, how they affected reply rates, and what trends were statistically significant. The result: a set of rules for what you should and shouldn’t say when introducing yourself online. This is the second post of our statistical investigation into the optimal online dating message.

Lots more graphs here.

Valley of the Dolls

David Levy was in conversation last night with Bill Thompson from the BBC at the ICA. The discussion: Love, Sex + Robots. It was weird but very, very, interesting. I also left feeling that maybe it wasn't an unfeasible proposal either, not least because of what is already occuring in Japan and South Korea in 'Doll Brothels'. No, I'm not joking:

Elegant, feminine, and lively at all times… High-quality robot is available at a reasonable price with varieties of costumes to choose from for more opportunities to make better use of it.

No, I haven't ever seen this much 'lively robot'.

"I'm Not Lonely or Horny but I am Incomplete"

On February the 14th this year in the NY Museum of Modern Art (MoMa) Jonathan Harris' latest piece of work 'I Want You To Want Me' opened to the public. This elegant and beautifully conceived piece  is an exploration of the effect of online and the internet on dating. Over 50 million people visit dating sites every month. En masse, people have condensed their identities into page or paragraph-long descriptions, sometimes complemented by a handful of photographs or peppered with responses to canned questions.  These personal profiles are modern messages in a bottle, short statements of self, telling not only who people are, but also what people want. In these advertisements for new human relationships people package and present their most loveable qualities to help complete their quest to be loved. Here are some of the sentences taken from forums and sites that make up one of the works' four movements: 'Who I am':   

I am ready for my prince.          
From a 22-year-old man looking for a man in Brooklyn, New York
I am a woman who will listen to your darkest demons and not fear them.          
From a 26-year-old woman looking for a man in Dallas, Texas       
I AM THE WORLD’S GREATEST LOVER AND A DANCING MACHINE!    
From a 21-year-old woman looking for a woman in Madison, Wisconsin       
I am who I am, and I am a helluva find.          
From a 54-year-old woman looking for a woman in Ocklawaha, Florida       
I am not one of those skinny muscular guys with a 14-inch woody.          
From a 22-year-old man looking for a woman in St. Louis, Missouri       
I am a single mom supporting kids; I don’t need to support no man.          
From a 36-year-old woman looking for a man in Seattle, Washington       
I am not an American citizen.          
From a 32-year-old man looking for a woman in Wilmington, Delaware       
I'm logical, too practical at times, and completely out of my element when it comes to dating.          
From a 26-year-old woman looking for a man in Chicago, Illinois       
I'm wild like that.          
From a 20-year-old woman looking for a man in Upland, California       
I'm more interested in your brain than your bra size 
From a 35-year-old man looking for a woman in Denver, Colorado       
I'm interested in meeting a lusty male who dreams deconstruction and dismantles stale ideologies  
From a 30-year-old woman looking for a man in Denver, Colorado       
I am an experienced Sub who likes to switch          
From a 38-year-old woman looking for a man in Raleigh, North Carolina       
I'm a single dad trying to make it in this crazy world 
From a 30-year-old man looking for a woman in Tampa, Florida       
I'm depressed but I'm thinking how it would be nice to be in a relationship again  
From a 19-year-old woman looking for a man in San Francisco, California       
I am trying to lose weight, but I want someone to like me for who I am now.          
From a 27-year-old woman looking for a woman in Wilmington, Delaware       
I am clean cut, discreet and a perfect gentleman, and promise to leave you totally relaxed after our session.          
From a 43-year-old man looking for a woman in Seattle, Washington       
I'm not lonely or horny, but I am incomplete.
From a 40-year-old man looking for a woman in Raleigh, North Carolina

MoMa: Design for the Elastic Mind