Each month, we’ll be posting a short profile on our most recent placements. You can find out a bit about them, and see some of their work…

Hello, my name is…
Tristan Dunbar
In three words I would say I am…
75 Percent Squash
And in my spare time I like to…
Play a lot of Blues.
I have just finished studying at…
Norwich University College of the Arts
You can see a portfolio of my work by…
visiting www.behance.net/tristandunbar or you can email me at me@tristandaviddunbar.com
And my piece of work that best represents me is…
Foyles the bookshop 

Because…
You can run with the idea until you’re out of breath – then keep going.
You would never guess that I…
Really (really) like dragons.
After The Partners, I’m going to…
Someone.

Hello, my name is…
Lucy Hutchinson
In three words I would say I am…
Determined, inquisitive, unconventional
And in my spare time I like to…
Put itunes on loud and paint, watch great films and explore new places
I have just finished studying at…
University of Leeds
You can see a portfolio of my work by…
Visiting my website at http://lucyhutchinson.weebly.com/
Or send me an e-mail at lucyehutchinson@gmail.com
And my piece of work that best represents me is…
My Final University Project, Lost In Digital

Because…
It expressed an important social message in an unconventional way
You would never guess that I…
Am a fully qualified open water scuba diver
After The Partners, I’m going to…
Work with Jack Renwick (the partners old creative director) and get some experience of a small start up studio

Hello, my name is…
Laura Evans
In three words I would say I am…
confident, excitable, playful
And in my spare time I like to…
See friends. They’re really important to me.
I have just finished studying at…
Kingston University
You can see a portfolio of my work by…
Emailing me at evanslaura1989@gmail.com
And my piece of work that best represents me is…
Self portrait

Because…
It was an idea I had always wondered about – and when I finally did it – the results were amazing. It’s a playful idea that has been moulded into a piece of design without loosing its charm.
You would never guess that I…
Am an avid list writer. I write lists to keep on top of my lists.
After The Partners, I’m going to…
Magpie Studio

Each month, we’ll be posting a short profile on our most recent placements. You can find out a bit about them, and see some of their work…

Hello, my name is…
Laura Evans
In three words I would say I am…
confident, excitable, playful
And in my spare time I like to…
See friends. They’re really important to me.
I have just finished studying at…
Kingston University
You can see a portfolio of my work by…
Emailing me at evanslaura1989@gmail.com
And my piece of work that best represents me is…
Self portrait

Because…
It was an idea I had always wondered about – and when I finally did it – the results were amazing. It’s a playful idea that has been moulded into a piece of design without loosing its charm.
You would never guess that I…
Am an avid list writer. I write lists to keep on top of my lists.
After The Partners, I’m going to…
Magpie Studio

The installation was part of our ongoing work for Deloitte, with a brief to brand the security check-in area of the main event. Considering the profile of Davos and the incredible, if not slightly random list of attendees (David Cameron, Bill Gates and Robert De Niro to name a few) we were keen to do something pretty spectacular with the space.

Our final idea was to construct an enormous 440m² anamorphic installation, transforming the boring, functional corridors of the security check-in into an immersive, typographic experience. Titled ‘A new perspective can change everything’ a Deloitte message ‘Stay a step ahead’ was woven into a broader story, encapsulating the forward thinking ambition of Davos and the World Economic Forum as an organisation.

So, what was it like creating a 440m² anamorphic installation your client and prime minister would be walking through? Alas to say it was pretty interesting. With absolutely no means of testing before the event went live and no plan B my nerves were running pretty high on route to see the space for the first time – the mountboard mock ups I had stuck together before Xmas were suddenly feeling quite inadequate.

Thankfully the installation came together and looked superb on launch, quickly becoming the visual talking point of the event. From day one the Deloitte installation was featured on a number of international news sites as stories from Davos unfolded. I’m pleased to say that after some pretty extensive searching the Deloitte installation was the only company space to achieve this recognition.

A huge thanks to everyone involved in the project, some superb work from Eskimosquare and their 3D visualising skills and some incredibly accurate production from our friends in Switzerland Messerli.

Here’s a video of the main anamorphic in all it’s deconstructional glory. I shot this film at 5am on a hotel porters trolley so please excuse any wobbles.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Here is a rather interesting approach to the promotion of the Nokia N8 and it’s microscope lens attachment. The lens was developed for use by Doctors in remote locations to take photographs of blood samples. These can then be sent off for analysis, according to Nokia this is already proving to be successful in the detection of Malaria.

Aardman created the world’s smallest stop motion character Dot, who is just 9mm tall and used the N8 and microscope lens to film it. Dot is in fact so small that she has been entered in to the Book of Guinness World Records. Due to her minuscule stature the team had to create 50 versions of her in various poses (rather than working with a malleable model) and worked at a painfully slow production rate of 4 seconds of footage per day.

If you haven’t already seen it you can watch it below.

Click here to view the embedded video.

So taking our urge to watch cats, Ikea has teamed up with ad agency Mother to shoot this remarkable ad, using their Wembley showroom and a 100 cats. It seems to have paid off though – at the time of writing the video has already had 173,586 hits in just two days, the making of (below), attracting 1,318,505 hits! I’m wondering if there’s an opportunity here? Has Quicksilver ever thought about dog surfing videos?

PS. If your thinking of going to Ikea, you might want to take some antihistamine tablets before you go…

For those of you that don’t know, WEF is an opportunity for those who are at the head of the (board)table to thrash out their views about the state of the World and what they are hoping for in the upcoming year — a big, big deal. I overheard someone in the corridor saying; “If you’re in to politics, this is the place to be.” So no pressure then? Previous years have seen such heavy hitters as Richard Branson, Tony Blair, and even ex-president Bill Clinton attending the event hosted in the small Swiss skiing resort — such is the importance of the WEF conference. With the World economy recovering from crisis, this years WEF focused on the topics of Rethink, Redesign and Rebuild.

We were asked by our client to set up some digital brand communications within their corporate sponsored area. This took the form of a series of branded animations (two animations for each day of the conference) playing across large screens mounted along the walls so that the guests could watch, and follow, the animations as they moved through the space.

Without going into lots of information about the animations themselves, I thought I’d treat you to a video of my non-scripted ramblings via a Flip video camera that I recorded whilst I was there.

(Expect some mild expletives and some general poo-pooing of every other branding scheme…)

Click here to view the embedded video.

So yesterday via Twitter I received two identical tweets from the same ‘company’. Being a little more specific, one form the ‘official’ Twitter feed of that company, the other from the ‘personal’ Twitter account of the MD of that company. I say personal, however in the profile he states that he is MD of X…. so in my book, that counts as a representation of that company is a ‘pseudo corporate’ feed. So, two identical tweets, sent from the same ‘company’, to the same individual, me, in the space of a few seconds.

Now if that happened with email, to which I had subscribed, i.e. which is permission based, as is Twitter… I’d be annoyed and think ‘what a stupid company’. Well the same thing happened with those tweets, I thought ‘what a stupid company’. Just because they are short, possibly less intrusive than email, it’s still really dumb to send identical messages over different accounts when you have the same person subscribing to both accounts on the other end! We wouldn’t do that with email would we? And as the business that did this was, surprise surprise, a social media agency (ROFLMAO)… that makes it, as we say on the Internets, an EPIC FAIL.

So, to an extent you have to say ‘bless’, let’s face it a lot of people working in social media, on the face of it, aren’t that experienced in the grand scheme of things, email is for old people right? But more seriously it points to the fact that platforms such as Twitter, even when combined with some of the 3rd party corporate tools, are still massively lacking in maturity and functionality to run at the same level of ‘permission’ and accuracy as email or more traditional direct communications. To my knowledge, (I did say this was ill-informed) no tool exists to manage Twitter subscribes across a companies multiple accounts in the same way as email (i.e. with really thorough, get prosecuted if you mess up, list and subscriber management… yes I get that Twitter is a little less complex in that if you unsubscribe that’s that, to an extent). If it does I get the impression many companies aren’t using it. As far as legislation goes, again I’d welcome an update on this… however, if the law doesn’t hover channels such as Twitter in b2c communications, isn’t it about time it did?

So hats off to Canadian paint firm Rona for spotting an opportunity and taking it (whether it is all above board is another matter entirely!). In this video you can see that they’ve cheekily piggy-backed on the recent Apple iPod Nano adverts – adapting it for their own gains. Very clever.

Click here to view the embedded video.