The Staufenberger Repository

BMW paper cars

We like this.

BMW Thailand have a site where you can download cutout paper models of various cars.

Above is my attempt at the iconic Isetta from the mid 1950s. It's a bit scrappy and a bit pixely but that's the point really, isn't it? The brand might be about super-efficient, super-engineered precision but that doesn't mean everything the brand does has to be super-efficient and super-engineered. This provides something tangible, something that you might like to stick on your desk or shelf, something other than an overproduced glossy brochure or gewgaw.

Of course, as a healthy brand that illicits strong reactions (both positive and negative), there is inevitably some fan mods knocking around, such as this one here, and this somewhat ironic take on it.

There's a lot of it about

What is it about miniatures? They seem to be everywhere these days.

We first started thinking about it when Cookie pointed to a number of them on his always excellent Made in England by Gentlemen.

There's Little People, "left in London to fend for themselves":

Adalberto Abbate's Microscultures:

Abbate's work reminds us of (and is possibly the inspiration for) the unifying narrative to last years' season of CSI, the Miniature Killer:

And Cookie also mentions Panique au Village, which we think must be the source of the current Cravendale milk campaign:

(And whilst on the subject of Cravendale, here's a lovely behind-the-scenes clip on YouTube.)

All this talk of little things reminded us of the popular fake tilt-shift pool on flickr, in which landscape shots are manipulated to look like miniatures. Here's a rather good example, courtesy of kosheahan:

Even home deco magazine Livingetc is at it with this styling suggestion:

Perhaps it all started with the Chapman Brothers, whose Disasters of War and Hell both use miniatures as a medium. Perhaps not.

Like many bigger, more significant news debates (is there more youth crime/lower moral standards/more political sleaze/[insert your pet topic here] than 50 years ago?), it's hard to gauge whether there really is more of this stuff or whether we're simply aware of more of it thanks to the media, in this case the internet.

Answers on a postcard, please, to Staufenberger Towers.

No business like show business

Staufenberger hangers-on Shuffle have just released their new single,
Listen Love.

It's brilliant. They should be huge. Go buy it.

A Taxonomy of Amsterdam Bicyclists

Given the amount of people who've delicious-ed this, I'm not sure how fresh it is. But it struck me as a lovely piece of content; so simple, yet really engaging. And it enables me to use the word taxonomy, so it has to be good.

Returning from a trip through Europe, Brian Wilson snapped 82 pictures of cyclists during 73 minutes sitting outside an Amsterdam cafe.

Then he classified them and posted the lot on his site. Simple as that.

The picture above is from my favourite group, number 4. Dogs on Bikes.

Genius.

Your successful enterprise is our sincerest aim!

Not a lot of people know this, but we have an office in Lagos, Nigeria.

In fairness, that's probably because Staufenberger (Lagos) exists only in our age-befuddled minds.

We put the website together during a quiet patch before Christmas for no particular reason; we just thought it would be fun in a "hey, look what we did" kind of way. It's got various bits of nonsense on it: a scam email generator, some great Nigerian commercials from the 80s and a pile of animated GIFs.

We started publicising it with this letter which we sent to a handful of blogging friends. Then we got busy in the new year and forgot all about it.

But before we forget to pay the hosting fees and it disappears forever, you can find it here.

As they say in Lagos: "Your successful enterprise is our sincerest aim!"

Staufenberger heart Polaroid

We've been getting back into Polaroid photography recently.

It had something to do with Russell's beautiful pinhole Polaroids.
It had something to do with Richard's lovely SX70.
It had something to do with Martin and Theo's excellent experiment, Postcard Polaroid.
And it had a lot to do with the fact that Polaroid combines the immediacy of digital photography with the tangible nature of film. And Polaroid's "lofi-ness" is really appealing, too.

Then we discovered unsaleable.com, which will sell you all manner of groovy Polaroid-related ephemera, from a reconditioned camera to branded film.

Which all adds up to yet more work-avoidance. Although, to look on the bright side, it means that procrastination at least has a tangible, positive-ish output.

Stories make things sticky

We like stories here at Staufenberger Towers. Not just because we like reading and watching films, but because - from a communications point of view - they're a great way to get people involved with what your brand is doing.

You've probably seen this bit of video that's been doing the rounds. It's a great illustration of the power of narrative, even one so slight that it's more of an anecdote than a story.

You're also probably aware that the story - that it's a music machine made of agricultural equipment (check the YouTube description here for the full spiel) - is completely untrue.

But it's clearly the story that has given the footage - created by Animusic - its infectiousness.

And the fact that people are hooked by the story, despite its obvious CGness, is further proof that a good narrative - however brief - is a great way to engage an audience.

Interactive directions on Zooomr and Flickr

Back last summer we posted a photo tour of a trip across London. It used Zooomr's portal function that enables you to embed one photo in another. 

As suggested at the time, it was interesting but, you know, a bit pointless. And it was not immediately obvious what the portals themselves would be good for. Well, we've just stumbled upon a use for them: interactive directions to our new office.

Tucked away in the backstreets of an old part of London, the all new Studio Staufenberger can be a little hard to locate. Solution? A visual guide.

Most of us find our way better if we can picture where we are and use landmarks, however mundane, to place ourselves on our route. So we've snapped a few shots that guide you from the tube - via the traffic lights, the pub, the alley - to the office and stitched them together using Zooomr's portals.

If you saw the previous portal post, you might remember that the functionality wasn't working in Internet Explorer. You would have thought they'd fixed it by now, wouldn't you? A new service with a wizzy new gizmo, it would make sense if it worked in the most popular browser, right? Wrong. I might be doing them a huge disservice, but it isn't working on Yusuf's Dell/IE7 set up.

So in the interest of opening our drinks promotion to as many as possible, we've done one in Flickr too.

Barbican Tube to Studio Staufenberger (Zooomr/Firefox etc)
Barbican Tube to Studio Staufenberger (Flickr/IE)

See you soon, perhaps.

Dance with meme

French groovers Nouvelle Vague have stepped up the meme count with the video for their cover of Dance With Me (I know it's a while old but it's new to us):

Film buffs and francophiles might recognise the source material: Anna Karina, Sami Frey and Claude Brasseur dancing in Jean-Luc Godard's Bande a Part:

I guess the lesson here (though I don't think you need to understand memetics to get it) is that for a thing like a song - call it a meme if you must - to spread or replicate itself, you have to allow it to do so in the first place.

Obviously, in this instance licensing fees (for both the tune and the film) help free up the replication process. But in allowing mash-ups like the one below to live, the respective copyright holders are showing they get it: 

So there we have it: a collision of of the post-punk/new wave meme, the (erroneously translated) bossa nova/new wave meme and the Godard et al/new wave meme. Not to mention the fact that Tarantino showed this dance scene to Travolta and Thurman before they shot the dance contest in Pulp Fiction (that's another meme, isn't it?). And - although I may be imagining this - Tarantino based Thurman's Mia Wallace black bob hairdo on Anna Karina's look in an earlier Godard film. That makes meme number five. Oh, and Tarantino named his production company A Band Apart. Is that six? My head is beginning to hurt.

OK, no more memes. Promise.

Vinyl Video

Not sure what it means - beyond questioning our need for continual technological progress, perhaps - but this art project made us smile. (It's a few years old so apologies if you've seen this elsewhere).

What is Vinyl Video? Exactly what it says: willfully lo-fi video pictures from vinyl records, of course.

Invited artists, including video art heavyweight Nam June Paik, have contributed pieces to showcase the patented Trashpeg technology. You can find a bit more background here.

Because it's a few years old, the web-based video of artist's contributions is not brilliant. But this infomercial is a good place to start:

Sehr gut, ja?

Via Schulze & Webb's Pulse Laser.