After much deliberation and amusement, we have a winner of the Matter Christmas competition:
Roz Tabberer, with her photo captioned: ‘The thing I love most about Christmas is………..waving goodbye to the relatives!!!’
Congratulations Roz. We laughed out loud!
Your iPod is on its way
Just a quick last-minute reminder to anyone thinking of entering our Christmas competition and the chance to win a iPod Touch.
It’s pretty simple. Download the pointy-finger from the Matter site, print it and cut it out and take a picture of it pointing to The Thing You Love Most About Christmas.
Then go, to the Matterbox Fan Page on Facebook, join us as a fan and upload your picture along with a comment that includes the phrase “The Thing I Love Most About Christmas”
You can enter as many times as you like. The winner is the one that makes us laugh the most.
I was just about to ask Jim to send me a picture of another friend’s wooden business cards–to carry on the nepotistic theme–when someone handed me this.
I was part of a panel discussion at the iDesign 09 conference in London about what a Post-digital world might look like and, of course, I spoke about the role of real things in a digital world. Immediately afterwards someone gave me this–part of a recruitment drive to get people to take part in the largest community arts project in the world–painting the Heygate Estate in Hackney.
What better illustration of how real things can be used to convey the real essence of a project and engage and entertain people into further (digital) interaction.
Now, I know this is getting silly–given that his business card was OOTD#1, but Jim sent me his new box he’s doing to promote his creative retail print service. I know I was supposed to get excited about the sumptuous piece of fabric inside, but I was really blown away by the richness of the ink on the outside of the box and how he’s used the hit-and-miss nature of the actual print as his identity.
It might not look like it, but this is using printing process as a creative process–in as much as each one is different depending on how the ink flowed through the screen–rather than reproductive–where this pattern of misprinting would be an artwork and every one would be the same–and as an logo. Fantastic.
Still with the nepotistic theme, but spreading my connections as far afield as San Francisco and my good friend, Philip Wood, owner and curator of objects-as-artform store, Citizen-Citizen. Philip gets this whole language-of-objects completely and has made quite a name for himself with this stuff in the US.
This splendid item is called Brush #1 by FredriksonStallard and is an irreverent take on Christian morality that “may ward off evil and dirt in the same stroke”. It sells through Citizen-Citizen’s on-line store.
Another one of my good friends (I might well start with nepotism and work upwards) sent me details of this nice little item…
David runs auto-journals–a digital alternative car magazine written by owners–and went to the Frankfurt Motor Show where he got this cool leather-bound memory stick from Ferrari as part of the press kit given out to all journos for the launch of the new 458 Italia. 5,000 were given away in a few minutes, apparently.
What Ferrari (and every other car manufacturer) know is the value of cool objects to make journalists say nice things about their cars. We don’t think journalists should have a monopoly on this kind of communication and believe that Matterbox subscribers will be just as enthusiastic about brands if they were given nice items too.
If you have anything you think would make it as OOTD, please send me a picture / description to: tim[at]artomatic[dot]co[dot]uk
Please tell us what you think
As you know, Matter is all about real things. More specifically, it’s about how we value real things more in a digital world. Most of these things are printed, since the upshot of all this technology is that we’re moving from a printed media world to a digital media world. So, I thought it might be a good idea to illustrate this with what I think are interesting (printed) physical objects.
First up is my friend Jim’s business card for his printing business Wonder. Printed on a dayglo polycarbonate with a silver foil-effect ink, it’s super lustrous and makes you want to just keep turning it over to see how the light changes it.
If you have anything you think would make it as OOTD, please send me a picture / description to: tim[at]artomatic[dot]co[dot]uk
And, please tell us what you think
Tim
Hello.
Obviously, it’s been a bit quiet around here and maybe you’re wondering whether we’ll ever do another box. Well, we will and we are.
We’re putting one together now for delivery in a few month’s time. It’s taken a while, we know, but we’ve been beavering away at getting in front of brands and advertisers to show them why giving people something is better than telling them something.
We’re making progress and will have the next box out as soon as we can gather enough brands together to make some nice things to go in it.
We’ll post more news when we have it.
Tim
The best picture I could find of a Tumbleweed: DBR62
Celebrity
Monster
Someone sent me this picture of Wossy, and I couldn’t help noticing the remarkable resemblance between the small figure attached to JR’s “man bag” and the Sony Ericsson Music Monster from the original pilot edition of Matter.
I wonder how that got there?
Photos: Stuart Gray ; Times Newspapers
Quite a few Matter subscribers are on Twitter - as well as us too (@matterbox) - so it seemed natural to get involved somehow.
The London (there were similar events all around the world) Twestival was last held Thursday, 12th Feb at Shoreditch Studios. 500 eager Twitterers queued up for an hour or so in the snow to witness on odd array of entertainment, but mainly to meet each other in person.
This most innovative cultural phenomenon featured some very traditional entertainment in the form of auctions–both silent and, er, vocal–and a raffle, for which the star prize was a special one-off Matterbox, which we put together specially.
@technokitten was the lucky winner and is now the proud owner of the following:
• Pico Hand-held projector
• DIY Morph doll + DVD
• Blank Munny figure (Kid Robot)
• LED (lots of small ones) digital watch
• Lego heart (Year Zero) keyring
• Kozik Smokin’ bunny soft toy
• 4GB Lego USB stick
• Big Brand Defector T shirt (Howies)
• Head Porter Coin Purse
• Cut-out London Icons
• Postable wooden jewellry
• Supreme notebook
Hope you enjoy it!
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