Shonzilla, a pattern-seeking animal

Logorama

This is the most awesome animated short movie I’ve seen recently and you will too. It’s called Logorama and all characters in it, buildings and additional props are entirely comprised out of company logos.

The movie uses logos as metaphors to succinctly communicate a number of obvious or subliminal messages (YMMV). I don’t know about you, but I’ve always looked behind Ronald McDonald’s fake smile (well, all clowns have those) and considered him evil as much as the company he’s representing. Further on you’ll see an earthquake (financial crisis) bringing down a number of buildings (financial institutions Ronald is calling “losers”, since McDonald’s wasn’t too affected by the crisis). My take on choosing Michelin men to represent cops (one good, one bad, of course) is that it reflects pretty nicely the common perception/prejudice of cops being donut-munching fatsos. After seeing many other interesting usages of logos, you may think that the movie foresaw some events like BP Oil Spill.

The authors are a French animation collective called H5 who have also created a number of animated music spots for the likes of Röyksopp, Super Fury Animals, Alex Gopher, Massive Attack, and many more. The movie also won a bunch of highly acclaimed awards including Academy award for Best Animated Short Film (at 82nd Academy Awards 2010, the Kodak Prix at Critics’ Week at Cannes Film Festival 2009 and many more.

Authors’ commentary on the message of the movie is also worth reading: ”Logorama presents us with an over-marketed world built only from logos and real trademarks that are destroyed by a series of natural disasters (beginning with a hurricane, cyclone, tidal wave…). logotypes are used to describe an alarming universe (similar to the one that we are living in) with all the graphic signs that accompany us everyday in our lives. this over-organized universe is violently transformed by the cataclysm becoming fantastic and absurd. it shows the victory of the creative against the rational, where nature and human fantasy triumph.”

Thanks to Christopher for the link!

It’s now obvious that social networking and social media are becoming an integral part of everyday life of more and more people and that the some basic rules of business are changing, namely how relevance and reputation and won and maintained.

The video above tackles the question whether “social media is a fad?”. It was created by Erik Qualman as a part of the campaign for his Socialnomics book on the business of social media.

I might add one correction to the video though. Facebook must be the 3rd most populated country on planet by now. :-) It had 300 million users 2 days ago and USA is estimated to have 307 million.

[video via Jackson Bond]