Crane deployment photo album

Cranevasion

Cranes and the City

Crane perched by the subway escalator























Cranes at the Eaton's Centre during the Christmas rush

Porn crane at the entrance of a porn store

Free Advertising!

This mini-article appeared yesterday evening, and was posted to Facebook a bunch of times. Although it gets quite a few facts wrong, it is free advertising for us and Sin-Dex. We did get a few referrals from it right away.

Cranerific

Even though each member in our group has been disseminating cranes for over a week, we decided that we needed a big crane push right before the deadline. We created a group on facebook called Crane on the Brain, and also created an event to accompany the group. The event,"The Epic Paper Crane Hunt of 2007" was scheduled for Tuesday, November 27 @9:00am. People were encouraged to find cranes all around campus. For our part, we continuously distributed the cranes for several hours to keep up.

When we arrived at the SLC, we found the remains of the Gory Survey demonstration already subverted by the sin-dex group. Even though we had not received permission from the professor to sabotage any other group's work (as if you need permission to subvert an ad...isn't that kind of the point?), we had already been replacing posters from other groups and adding our own special additions to the work we found scattered around. The large display was very visible, and it looked really cool with all the cranes on it! Photos coming soon!

The Cranes are Coming!

Thursday, November 22 was the official start of Crane Dropping. We decided to start out slowly and just place cranes and posters here and there. We will be making a big crane drop and having a big crane event around the same time to make sure it is fresh in everyone's mind. Wherever we dropped cranes, we took a picture to document the different places. Keep checking here often, more pictures to come!

Oragami 101

Before we started this project, Kevin was the only one who knew how to make paper cranes. But before long, we all knew how to do it! We even recruited others to the process, trying to make as many cranes as humanly possible!

We made cranes for almost two weeks before we started distributing them, and we made them out of a bunch of different materials so that we would have a variety of cranes.

We took the materials everywhere we went and folded at all times of the day. During car/bus trips, birthday parties, class time....we were on a mission. The result: a lot of paper cranes. An official count will be coming soon...once we make the final tally.

Comment Thread to discuss Banner Project

We are currently reformatting our blog to make way for the Banner Project. We will be updating the look and style of the blog to better suit Dane Watkin's vision for Moral Meter. Come back soon!

Asha and Marcia: Moral Metre Logo

We realize that the font isn't perfect yet....something to work on. It is meant to convey the instability of morality through its shaky structure.

Updates and Ads

I was doing some homework and reading for this week, when I realized that I had forgotten to post my final subverted advertisement. Here it is. After the suggestions in class, I made the Pepsi logo look more like someone had used a stencil to paint over the cereal box, and I changed the black font. I also changed the position of the billboard, making the corn field more prominent and the idea of a billboard more recognizable.

On another note, I played tour-guide to some friends from France this past week, and on Friday we went to Toronto. They loved seeing the CN tower and all that good touristy stuff, but we actually spent a surprising amount of time looking at billboards and advertisements. After discussing the assignment, we took a few pictures to add to the blog. This whole process has got me thinking totally differently now!

Pepto-Bismol Subvertisement - Desiree

Subvertising-inspired Sharpie ad (Desiree)

Several classes later, and Sharpie still haunts my dreams. How's that for "stickiness"? Pun on the Post-it note intended if you liked it, totally accidental if you didn't.

Marcia's First Shot at Subvertising...

The idea here is getting back to the real world as opposed the the consumer driven world. Quaker cereal is owned by Pepsico, so that gave me a way to attack the corporate, consumer industry. I'm still working on ironing out some details, I think there is still something wrong with the billboard being presented the way it is. It's a work in progress.

Kevin's Ads: Guitar Hero!!

Yep. These are them. I'll have you know that I am very at almost any type of computer skills, so these are a huge accomplishment for me.

Marcia's Ads: Quaker Corn Bran Squares

I'll be honest, I'm not very happy with my ads, but there they are.

Desiree's ads

Thus it began.

Here is the opening sentence for my Kickstart Explicatoin. Behold the 'gloriousness' that is this:

When thinking about what product I could choose to make two ads for my mind immediately came up with a number of ads for the Prius, a brand of hybrid car. But all those ideas were lame so I decided to work with Guitar Hero instead.

Condom Ad.

This has nothing to do with in class assignments or the Kickstart thing. It's just something that popped into my head through a convoluted train of thought while I was brushing my teeth.

Kevin's Second Sharpie Ad

This one didn't actually take that much longer than the first one, but I feel that it is far superior. This ad uses (obviously) personification, and I guess that this also qualifies for repetition as well.
Kevin is pleased.

Kevin's lazy Sharpie Ad.

Yes. I am aware that this particular single word ad is lame. I just wipped it off in five minutes because I was lazy. I made a better one though.

Marcia's Sharpie Ad

I wanted to erase certain lines to make the word and the shark look like one image, but the program wouldn't let me, and then the batteries died!

Ritter One-Word Ad (Created by Asha and Desiree)

Notes about ads - Marcia's Post

Provincial Election 2007 Advertising Campaign

(http://www.elections.on.ca/NR/rdonlyres/4CC55239-EA12-4C7C-B7CD-B82F7B07D864/0/HouseholderA1.pdf)

This ad really caught my attention, and I thought it was a great way to urge people in Ontario (particularly the younger demographic) to vote. In terms of the ad itself, there are a lot of things going on here that I think work really well.

· The word “VOTE” is simple and concise. Even without looking at the surrounding text, it is easy to recognize what this ad is asking of you.

· Metonym: The mouth that is standing in for the “O” stands not only for a whole person, but for all the people of Ontario.

· Exaggeration: Obviously, when we vote we don’t shout about it, as the photograph portrays. It is an exaggeration of having our say or voice in the election.

· Omission and Suggestion: by leaving out the “O” and replacing it with a photo of a mouth yelling, the ad suggests that voting will actually let you get your voice/opinion out there.

With these print ads (which are everywhere), there are also commercials that follow the same idea. I recently saw one where a woman goes into a hair salon to get her hair cut. She is telling the hair dresser that she just wants a trim, when a man sitting in the next chair interrupts and says she would like it cut very short, spiky and with orange and black tiger stripes. The woman looks horrified, and the hair dresser says: “Ok! Let’s do it!” followed immediately by the “VOTE” picture above. It’s fantastic.

--Marcia

Gu Energy Gel: Kevin and Marcia's Ad

Ok...
We really struggled with figuring out the software we were working with, and a lot of the 30 minutes we had was eaten up by our learning and our struggling to work with the computers... but you should be able to get the idea when you look at the ad in general.--Kevin and Marcia

Goodlife Fitness Survey Questions

Save Your Relationship With Fitness!

Goodlife has the right program to keep your lover from straying! Take this quiz to find out how to take your love life from flat-lined to fantastic!

1. Describe a typical day for you:

a) working 9-5, looking through flyers for grocery discounts and reheating leftovers for dinner

b) waking up at noon, grabbing fast food on the way to class and relaxing with friends at the library before heading to the pub

c) waking up at 5:00am and heading to the post office, eating the “Early-bird” special at Denny’s and watching “Golden Girls” before bed

d) waking up early to take the kids to school, soccer, ballet, tutoring, etc. and forgetting to eat all day long

e) waking up early to check the Blackberry, getting an espresso macchiato on the way to the office before planning a power lunch of sushi and martinis

2. Your love interest or significant other’s most common complaint about you is:

a) “You never buy two-ply toilet paper!”

b) “You always eat the last slice of pizza!”

c) “You broke your hip again?”

d) “You have a headache every night!”

e) “You’re cheating on me with your PDA!”

3. Which description matches your perception of your body?

a) “As long as I can walk to ‘Discount-Mart,’ it’s doing its job.”

b) “I’m H-O-T…except for that pesky freshman fifteen (…ish)”

c) “Back when I was a spring-chicken…”

d) “I haven’t paid attention to my body in 6 years!”

e) “Who cares, my tailored suit makes me look great!”

4. What best describes your attitude towards exercise?

a) “Stairs are cheap and plentiful”

b) “I get plenty of exercise…when I realize I’m late for class”

c) “Isn’t breathing exercise?”

d) “I’ve got six kids…I get all the exercise I need”

e) “Sweating is so unprofessional”

5. Your love interest or significant other is in the mood. What does he/she bring you to get you in the mood?

a) A book of coupons

b) Nothing, he/she just shows up

c) Ben-gay

d) In the mood for what?

e) Inside trader information

Survey Observations

Our group visited a variety of sites from two opposite ends of the survey spectrum. We looked at “serious” academically certified surveys that promised detailed descriptions based on the answers to the questions. On the flip side, we looked at surveys of a more inane nature (ie. what colour crayon are you?)

Some websites we visited:

www.blogthings.com

www.personality100.com

http://ca.yourdestinyrevealed.com

www.pimpsurveys.com

www.quizilla.com

Observations:

· many surveys ask for your cell phone number to text you the results. What about security/privacy, esp. in regard to 14 year old girls who love to take "love-life" surveys?

· do-it-yourself questionnaire: anyone can make a survey!

· just because it's a survey, it is automatically meaningful and believable

ð what fruit are you?

ð what colour crayon are you?

· pop up surveys - NO GOOD!

· career surveys seem more "serious" - longer and more complex questions

· PhD personality test - 4 pages (=too many!) I gave up after 1 page, Kevin completed all 4 pages only to find out that the 100 page report cost $29.95

ð does that mean this survey is more legitimate or serious?

ð because it's "PhD Certified" would people pay the money?

ð who would pay for that?

ð Later on, Kevin received emails with reduced prices for his results. Currently, they’ve brought the price down to the low low price of $9.95

· look at: sponsor links, question types (select 1 of 2 to ???; compare/contrast, etc.)

· what about magazine surveys?

· love life surveys targeted to a very young crowd ("bf/gf")

· quizzes/surveys you can paste to your blog and forward to all your friends

· feedback is always at the end

· group vs. individual surveys

· what is the goal? (figure out the process of the survey? Fun/entertainment/humour, make yourself feel better/worse)