Countdown of Awesome: Dragons, 3D pens and a water-producing billboard

27 February 2013

Wrapping up the last week of Feb: incredible product design, innovative outdoor and print ads, plus imaginative AR.

Number 5) Chargecard Prepares to Ship
Kicking off in Number 5 this week is the news that the ingenious Chargecard Project’s first credit card-sized USB device is available for shipping. The Kickstarter project achieved over 3 times its goal of $50k funding back in August. Their unique device is 3 times the thickness of a credit card and fits snugly in your wallet ready to whip out whenever your iPhone’s battery needs a top-up. According to the original Kickstarter pledge, the retail value should be just $25 too. Just a shame Apple had to bring out a different connection for iPhone 5 in between concept and launch…

http://www.chargecardproject.com/

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Referred by @y0z2a

Number 4) Cloudy with a chance of Dragons
To promote the new season of Game of Thrones, HBO have developed an arresting ad in the New York Times showing the shadow cast by one of Khaleesi’s dragons over the newspaper. It’s a wonderfully original way of capturing attention about the film as Co.Create point out “Less stable readers might even do a double-take above to make sure some sort of dragon apocalypse isn’t actually underway.”

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Via Co.Create
Referred by @RobertBellamy


Number 3) 3Doodler
The wonderfully named WobbleWorks has developed the ‘world’s first’ 3D printing pen which enables you to draw objectives in the air by using ABS plastic (used by many 3D printers) to bring your doodles to life. The compact pen doesn’t require any software or computers, and simply plugs into a power socket to let you start drawing within minutes.
3Doodler is currently featured on Kickstarter but has smashed its funding target of $30k, achieving nearly $2m and has a further 26 days to go.  A modest pledge of $75 gets you a 3Doodler pen and two bags of mixed color plastic. Snap one up!

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Via Zoe Scaman


Number 2) Sony AR headphone music festival
In an interesting stunt, Sony launched the Headphone Music Festival in Tokyo last year. Fly posters of gigs were stuck around the city and using SmartAR, their proprietary augmented technology, people could watch the gigs on their phones. Each virtual gig was put on by one of four best-selling local rock groups. In case you didn’t have any, Sony also set up stations with headphones so people could join in whilst of course trailing their headphones.

You need Flash player 8+ and JavaScript enabled to view this video.

Via Digital Buzz Blog

Number 1) Potable water producing billboard
Number 1 spot this week goes to the amazing Potable Water Generator billboard for The University of Engineering & Technology in Lima, Peru. What better way to attract the smartest engineers to solve real-life problems than to demonstrate an ingenious real-life example through your advertising?
The billboard contains five generators that churn out purified water through a reverse osmosis system. In three months of operation, the billboard has produced thousands of litres of water which people are using for their needs. Brilliant.

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Via Co Create
Referred by Mike Gunadi

That’s it for this week. As ever, if anything screamingly awesome has been missed out, let us know in the comments below. Or feel free to ping any recommendations for next week to @jamescfilmer.

James Filmer
Chief Innovation Officer
UM

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