Your good health

Welcome to Idealog Weekly, the free email newsletter for New Zealand commercial creatives, entrepreneurs and anyone rich with ideas.

Your good health

Beer made with kawakawa instead of hops could only have happened here, or more specifically, in Rewa, Manawatu, where Simon Burney and Bruce Smith got together to produce a brand of wholesome brew that even the Dutch are raving about.

Read about Burney and Smith’s discovery of bottled and brewed macropiper excelsum and the story of the TaaKawa brand developing on our website.

Muppets, designed by you

This is a nice idea for the Muppet lovers out there. For 90 American dollars, you get to design your own one and have it mailed to you. (Via Daring Fireball)

Sour seas

We hear a great deal about carbon-neutrality, and that we should plant trees to absorb carbon dioxide greenhouse gas caused by human activities. Be that as it may, there’s a more serious side to CO₂ and that’s the oceans absorbing it. That’s good, isn’t it? Not if the CO₂ sunk into the oceans makes them acidic, as KQED QUEST points out.

The FASTest Pitches

Congrats to Todd Wackrow of the PocketVouchers mobile marketing company, who picked up the FAST Pitch The ICEHOUSE award on Thursday. Nicki Sturrock won the both People’s Choice and Best Intellectual Property Idea prize for her concept that’ll revolutionise the lives of amputees with artificial limbs and Sam Ng’s Optimal Workshop was named Best Funding Opportunity for Investors; Fraser Hurrell of Click the Clam (software that helps autistic children improve social connections) hauled home the award for Best Presentation Skills.

Enviroheresy

These things are actually fine for the planet:

• Living in cities
• Using air conditioning
• Non-organic farming
• Farming forests—old forests generate greenhouse gasses
• China
• Genetic engineering
• Dumping carbon trading
• Nuclear power
• Used cars, and not hybrids—making a Prius is harder on the planet than slapping together a Hummer

Good old Wired: it never shies away from controversy, but will it get burnt on the stake for the above apostasies? Actually, it probably wouldn’t get burnt, as that’d release too many greenhouse gasses. Wired doesn’t actually doubt that climate change is underway, but argues that we should adapt to it instead of trying to fight it in vain.

Too crafty

There are some things you shouldn’t make out of dead squirrel’s paws, no matter how into arts and craft you happen to be.

Job of the Week

Interactive Producer (P0476)

This is an agency with an excellent international reputation—their Auckland office is well established and their interactive arm is all set up and in demand. You will be working with a seriously good team.

In this role you will be working across a variety of projects and you will work from concept through to delivery of the projects—along with client service skills you will have an excellent understanding of the interactive processes and timelines involved.

This is an outstanding opportunity for a suit that has worked across interactive/web projects but would like to make the full time switch to this thriving side of the industry. Or an Interactive Producer who would like to have more client contact.

Email louise@portfoliorecruit.co.nz or visit our website portfoliorecruit.co.nz

Obama dingbatted

If you’re a fan of the newly-elected US soon-to-be-president, you’ll want your 24 free ObamaBats.

The bigger criticism of Gladwell

A rock star, a spiritual leader, a stud. Or, a geek pop star? Writer and journalist Malcolm Gladwell’s rising star charted by New York Magazine.

Widget mania

Here are an insane amount of web-widgets. (Warning: page is really, really slow to load because of the amount of widgets on it.)

Why can’t Telecom do something like this? (Via Kottke)

In the Gunn

If you really want to get a handle on what’s deemed effective advertising, check out the Gunn Report, which tallies up the most awarded campaigns around the world. Fallon London seems to be the creative hotshop du jour.

Our own James Hurman wrote about advertising effectiveness, using the Gunn Report, earlier this year in Idealog.

Green crude

There’s oil in them thar algae, New Zealand’s Aquaflow Bionomic Corporation believes. As we wrote back in 2006, algae is cheap and easy to grow and turn into biodiesel.

Now Aquaflow is moving into the next step, and requires $20 million of investor money to do so. Check out the prospectus on their website.

Sustainable design practices

Ethical decision-making in graphic design is one of the concepts being explored at the CheckOut 08 exhibition at The Edge, Level 5, Aotea Centre. CheckOut 08 starts November 20 and runs for four days.

It features projects by AUT graduate students such as Julian Nicol’s “What is Good Design Anyway?”, Teresa Luckman’s 100% post-consumer-waste recycled stock TMRW magazine, and Emily Williamson’s exhibition “Unintentional Interaction”, based on her filming strangers rummaging through inorganic rubbish outside her house.

CheckOut 08 is about students discovering the potential transferability of design communication forms and vehicles. The outcomes are tailored to suit audiences, distribution methods and content, reinforcing notions of sustainability.

Quote of the week

TaaKawa promptly sent 6,000 cases to the Netherlands, only to run into trouble with local bureaucrats. “They said kawakawa might not be a safe herb, which is a bit weird coming from the Dutch.”

— Simon Burney of Waituna Brewing Company on kavalactone-induced issues getting in the way of selling his beer in Europe

More at Idealog online

Read more on our website: web exclusives, opinion, creative directory, Idealog TV, the Idealog blogs and the Idealog podcast. See you at idealog.co.nz.

  Juha Saarinen
  Ideologue, Weekly