Over the last few months I’ve been working with the Off Modern men on the identity for their new week long event in East London named, “South East In East” an event that plans on showcasing South London’s best in the lacking yet unknowing East.

The boys got a really good write up feature in the Evening Standard last week which you should read here.

The posters and banners seem to have come out pretty well and thanks to everyone involved are now up all over East London which I’m pretty chuffed with.

South East in East starts this Friday at Vibe Bar on Brick Lane, and at only £7 a night with a host of great bands and artists it’s pretty unmissable.

The South East in East Festival, 28 August-3 Sept at Vibe Bar, Old Truman Brewery, 91-95 Brick Lane, E1 (020 7247 3479, www.southeastineast.com).

My oh my I have been slacking on the blog front recently, been so busy my brain has turned to goo,

Last weekend I was down south (Brighton) to take some photos of English’s Seafood Restaurant. I’m not all that great at photography but really enjoyed going down there, and hopefully they’ll use some of the shots in print and on their updated website. English’s is famed for great food, oysters and an array of tasty fresh seafood – well worth a shout if your down in Brighton any time soon. Their website is here and all the images are over at my flick set here.

On another note I’m working on a very exciting project for a great up and coming band called The Winchell Riots – check em out over at their myspace here. I’m working on a full visual identity for the band that can be spread across print and online, so expect some good looking stuff pretty soon – there’s a selection of drafts to preview on my flickr here.

And last but not least the Crotch Chop site will soon be with you all – it’s looking lush as right now!

I’ll let you all know once everything’s launched!

Last week I took some time out to visit the Super Contemporary Show down at the London Design Museum. The show is dedicated to celebrating the fearlessly progressive spirit of London’s greatest creative minds, past and present.

“London thinks, designs and makes like no other city; it creates and the world follows. A magnet for mavericks and freethinkers, London has nurtured a creative community that continues to rival all other design capitals.”

At the heart of the exhibition are fifteen commissions from some of London’s most dynamic creatives, as a group they demonstrate the diverse approaches to design in London:

Bus Shelter by David Adjaye. Gone with the Wind by Ron Arad. Listening Station by BarberOsgerby. Freedom Space by Neville Brody. Batterseum by Nigel Coates. Rain It In by Paul Cocksedge. London Transport by Tom Dixon. Horatio’s Garden by El Ultimo Grito with Urban Salon. Thames Pin by Kit Grover. Vision for the city of London by Zaha Hadid. K9 Post Office Kiosk by Industrial Facility. Lamp Post Chandelier by Thomas Heatherwick. KiosKiosk by Wayne Hemingway. Head to Toe by Ross Phillips. New London Rubbish Bin by Paul Smith.

I’ve put up a little flickr set here. It’s on until the 4th of October so be sure to get down.

However, something happened this morning that really got me ticking. As I was flicking threw one of the worlds worst publications, that being London’s Metro newspaper I saw this add..

So admittedly I got a little excited.

After updating to the 3.0 software I kind of wanted some of the 3GS features, but only If (like the advert says) I could get one for free, with no charge. So after my sweat filled tube journey I jumped in to Carphone Warehouse on Tottenham Court Road, and asked about the advert I’d seen 5 minutes previous.

The member of staff rushed to get me a 3GS only to proceed his sale technique with a 20 minute phone call to what seemed to be thin air. Then to add to the morning breeze of bullshit Carphone Warehouse pride themselves in he told me I would have to pay £450 for the new iPhone and not receive the £170 the advert said I would be getting for my 8GB 3G phone.. huh?

There’s nothing about this charge even in the small print? And I’d read the small print before entering the store, so I was wised up ready for their voodoo phone linger backchat. Their voodoo advertising and bullshit copy writing tricked me into their store to only be let down once again – why oh why bother?

Luckily I don’t care too much about the phone. Fuck you Carphone Warehouse!

(Sorry for the excess of swearing in the post, blame Carphone Warehouse)

Related Posts: Carphone Warehouse suck

Earlier last week the lads from Spotify released this demo video from the Google I/O conference in San Fransico covering the basics of their new mobile application that is sure to shake up the online music industry in the coming months.

It’s been spoken about a lot in the last few weeks, so to see a working demo of the app on the android platform was really exciting. The best bit though is not just access to Spotify‘s music collection on your phone, but the ability to listen whilst offline & being able to drag tracks to your mobile from the desktop app, just like iTunes.

They haven’t yet confirmed wether or not only paying users will be able to access the app or when it will be released but I’m guessing it could co-inside with the iphone 3.0 update which should be landing sometime next month.

And to add to the mix there’s talk of even more mobile features yet to be announced, maybe that link in with Last.fm might pop up somewhere, or something with video..

I love having a good desktop wallpaper, so really enjoyed stumbling over Kitsune Noir’s Desktop wallpaper project they’ve been doing for some time. Every wednesday they release a new awesome desktop design in various sizes and downloadable for iPhone and PSP. Sweet.

There’s a great collection of wallpapers already available from a wide selection of artists and designers, something perfect for everyone.

Big respect Kitsune!

Whoa there, I almost forgot to go into severe detail about my troubles with National Express the other week.

Let me start of by saying how mega the coach is, it’s brilliant. I’ve found myself traveling up to Leeds every couple of weeks and if I book far enough in advance I can get a return journey to Leeds from London for about a tenner – quids in! However the journey truly sucks balls, I’m a pretty tall fella and there isn’t much room for me pins, along side the fact the lights always screw up so reading is a no no and there’s no power to help my laptop survive an episode of the wire.

So she ain’t near perfect but it get’s me up north for the weekend for next to nothing which is the main thing. However last week when I was going up late friday evening I decided to make the not so wise decision of sitting at the front of the coach for leg room related purposes. What a mistake this turned out to be though as I caught the driver not only texting his beloved but playing the death trap of all mind games, tetris, whilst driving in the wet! What the douche.. this guy was mixing some pretty wobbly driving, whilst trying to rack up a top score. I thought I was going to die.

I tried to capture the exact moment on me camera and I’m waiting on National Express for a good bit of compensation.. until next time Death Coach!

Broken iPhone

The other Friday I managed to smash my iPhone against the floor. Me and my iPhone, like most, shared a loving relationship. We were without a doubt best friends.. a best friend I never got to say goodbye to properly – a seperation tarnished with bullshit due to the lack of respect a certain mobile phone retailer in the UK shares with it’s customers.

I’d purchased my iPhone through the means of Carphone Warehouse (CW), a shop where if you don’t already, you should stay well clear of. The majority of their employee’s care for hot discussion on such epic topics like who adorns the latest issue of nuts, or what flavour pot noodle they’ll be devouring on their next fag break. Their lifeless ambissions within their company appear to revolve around making their customers feel as stupid as themselves in order to cement people into foolish mobile phone contracts that evolve into living nightmares.

Fortunatly upon purchase of my iPhone I had take out insurance through the ‘lads’ at CW, so presuming this insurance will cover me for the damage and releave me of my heartbreak, I managed to get a few hours rest until awaking early with iPhone related nightmares. Uncovering the insurance documentation, charmingly named my ‘Lifeline’ pamphlet I’m hoping this is going to be stress free and I’ll be back with my good friend soon.

Despite my believes I was insured that I would have my iPhone replaces that day, which was superb – what a great service I thought to myself, oh how I was wrong. An hour or so later I was going have been taken through a mobile joyride through the midst of CW’s hellish customer service routine.

The first issue I occured was that my iPhone had all my personal information on it (contacts, emails, events, passwords, photos) – everything. I already don’t trust CW so for them not to offer for the phone to be wiped before my eyes, I got a little worried. But the feeling was cut short by the proposition of having a new iPhone given to me that same day.

Then stage 2 struck. I was told the computer was saying no to the request of a new phone and that they needed to double check the phone was beyond repairable before I could receive a new one. According to them no one within CW stores can approve this decision due to apple not graunting them access to tamper with broken handsets.

So I’m asked to wait until tuesday for a new iPhone due to the bank holiday. I can manage that, 3 days thats fine, I’ll be bored senseless but I can do it.

So now I’ll need a phone in the meantime which my ‘Lifeline’ pamphlet assures me I will receive however my assistant had walked off, it’s over for him, I’m not making him money so why should he bother. He offered me nothing until I asked to which I recieved “just stick the sim in a spair phone”, well no-brains that would be simple if I had this spair phone you presume that I own. I finally receive a handset for the meantime which will do for a couple of days.. It’s certainly not as cool as my best friend though.

I went back into the store on tuesday all prepared to pick up my new phone, but another slap in the face awaits me as a new member of staff enters the fray to disenbow me of the end to my iPhone/best friend turmoil. He tells me theres “no way man” I can get a new phone any time soon, infact It might be up to 28 days, or more. Why couldn’t CW just of said that in the first place in their lame ‘Lifeline’ pamphlet. I’ve now wasted a ton of time in something they could of told me straight up, plus I now really hate them.

So I’m now in the 28 day limbo, stuck with no best friend and a shitty nokia that’s best features include snake pro and a torch.

To be continued…

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The creation of a swearing bad ass robot named ‘Cunt Robot’ is now alive on everyone’s favorite social network Facebook. Swearing and bad mouthing his way into your notifications.

Just make a quick search for ‘C##T Robot’ on Facebook and become a fan to witness the future of a little invention of ours.

Over the last few weeks I’ve been using Spotify loads, and found myself only opening up iTunes to sync my iPhone with new music every now and then. Something that really bugged me though when I first started using Spotify was that every time I synced my iPhone I then had two music applications running at the same time.

On top of this I’m a big Last.fm user, I’ve had an account for a few years now and I find it really interesting to see what I actually listen to but the desktop app really sucks and the recommendation service doesn’t work all that well.

All this got me thinking..

Wouldn’t it be great if Last.fm worked really well like Spotify on your desktop? Wouldn’t it be great if Last.fm scrobbled what you watch, as well as what your listen to? Last.fm could recommend you TV or film based on what you watch the most or what you’ve stopped watching half way threw just like music.

What if all of these applications combined and created the ultimate-killer desktop music application…

• All the features of Spotify, subscription based price plans, shareable playlists
• All the features of Last.fm but with tv & film scrobbling added along with a better events engine
• All the features of iTunes Store + the ability to sync your ipod/iphone with your purchased content

I’ve got some other insane features for this ‘ultimate-killer desktop music application’ brewing in my brain like Myspace intergration with a platform on which all artists could make money and Twitter updates – all I need now is a name.

Anyone got any thoughts?

Add me on Last.fm here

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Feeback so far..

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Related Links:

Spotify vs Last.fm @ BBC

Will Spotify change the music business? @ BBC

Spotify spells out expansion plan @ BBC