Fran About Town

Foffa Bikes

Foffa Bikes are a new find for me… and luckily I’ve found them just as there’s a competition on!

Get on their bike designer, take a screenshot of your dream bike, and send it into them to win that design. http://foffabikes.com

The bike parts are gorgeous, and there’s a range of styles and brands you can put together. As a growing bike obsessive, I have literally just spent an hour on this site. Bicycles are definitely the way forward: they’re green, help you stay lean, can be something of a talking-point accessory (bike lovers always find each other), and they beat any form of public transport in the city. London Olympic travel nightmare, no thank you TFL!

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I love this! I think I’m getting a bit obsessed with these sorts of moving photographs. I really want to learn to make them now. This could definitely work as large scale advertising as more and more ad boards become digital, and within iPad editions of magazines. OOO the excitement!
fromme-toyou:

Tonight I will be covering the red carpet of the Met Gala as the world arrives to the exhibition of Schiaparelli and Prada: Impossible Conversations.
For the first time, the Costume Institute Gala at the Met will be live streaming the red carpet so you can watch along as fashion’s elite, celebrities, models and artists ascend their way up to this magnificent exhibition.
Please join along with @voguemagazine, #MetGala, and @_FromMeToYou this evening!
PS: For a taste of what’s to come, check out this!
Above: Caroline in Katie Ermilio

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Books, Books, Books

I’ve recently been recommended goodreads.com by a couple of good friends. It’s basically a way to record (and show off) what you’re reading, what you’ve read, and what you’d like to read, and share that information with others. I like it - as someone who always forgets what I have and haven’t read!

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Campaigns: French Connection, Spring 2012

The new campaign for French Connection has really caught my eye. As someone who doesn’t often venture into the store, thinking it’s not really ‘for me’, these ads have gone a little way in changing my mind.

The bold, block coloured backgrounds and simple and sentimental text gives a sense of modern fun, whilst really letting the clothes do the talking. Yes, the styling is very contrived, but the the gorgeous fabrics are simply given a platform to show off, whether it’s the intricate brocade or floaty skirts.

Perhaps the best thing about the ads is their deviation from the techniques of other high-street and indeed designer clothiers. Yea, okay, the models are still super skinny, but they’re not bronzed and oiled to within an inch of their lives, nor is the focus drawn to their khol-rimmed eyes and symmetrical faces.

I hope other high-street retailers will take a leaf from the humourous-yet-edgy-and-still-hi-fashun book.

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I went to see the David Shrigley exhibition at the Hayward Gallery recently, and it was lots of fun: everyone had a silly grin going around the rooms (especially when crouching through a human sized mousehole between spaces, with ‘is this allowed’ written all over their faces!).
Okay, maybe his work’s a bit faux-naif… but sometimes some simple, honest philosophy is the best remedy, and the font is cutesy, yet mischievous: the epitome of true child-like fun.
huhmagazine http://www.huhmagazine.co.uk/3589/david-shrigley-font:

The (unofficial) David Shrigley Font - Free Download

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Campaigns: Ma’amite

A proper British icon paying homage to another proper British icon. Oh, to have been in that room when that brainwave happened!

The shape of the jar, the yellow lid with the blackest of black, light-absorbing, contents, and the classic proud-verging-on-brash-in-the-most-British-of-ways typography, reminiscent of war effort propaganda. I LOVE it.

http://www.facebook.com/Marmite

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Campaigns: Canal Plus

The best adverts are always those which take you by surprise… and these are a work of genius.

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mcmore:

(via Custom Sand Imprint Flip Flops Your Design No by FlipSideFlipFlops ($20-50) - Svpply)

These are just brilliant. And customisable. £20 for flip flops… I’m tempted.

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michaelhandrick:

Watch the hands move. They’re constantly ticking, moving, ticking. Wishing, hoping for the next day, the next year, the next kiss. We’re wishing for death. The hand moves, one less heartbeat. The hour moves, one less breath. The clock strikes twelve. “You’re a long time dead.”
Move.
The human mind takes refuge in motionless periods, being still, finding a home. Each day in the same place is another place unexplored, another person that hasn’t been found. Connections are severed, trains are missed. We’re becoming stagnant, I’m becoming cold.
Tick, tick, tick.
Looking for train times, plane prices, which is the quickest route out?
Cheating.
Sever the connections.
Tick, tick, tick.
The train is arriving, platform 5. Jump on. Jump off.
The doors close 30 seconds before departure.
You decide.
You Choose, 2012

A name to watch in that cut throat publishing world <3

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