We moved!

Hi there, we have moved our wonderful wonderful blog to http://www.wearelateral.com/

Hope to see you there!

Science Inspired Design

Turning Dunes Into Buildings

Tutorial Tattoos

Who discovered DNA?

Who sang 'Living La Vida Loca'?

The man who discovered DNA is Frederick Miescher.

We don't have to tell you who did the vida loca song.

Years ago some of us at Lateral were pitching on Intel's advertising. (We were working at DDB Chicago at the time).

We had acces to Intel's intranet and found profiles of their employees.

All the people we saw had at least registered 5 patents and some of them were even nominated for the Nobel prize.

These people were brilliant and we had never heard of them before.

We felt these people were not getting enough recognition for their work.

And we felt that other people - rock stars, movie stars, professional athletes- might be getting a little bit too much recognition for their talent and efforts.

We came up with a campaign which starred these Intel employees 'Living La Vida Loca' together with celebrities. (showing their 'cribs' visiting the Oscars etc)

The campaign was meant to give them the recognition they diserve, in a funny way.

Intel did not buy it and maybe they were right.

But we are pleased to see Philips understands that pop culture reaches more people than science.

And they have found a cool way to solve this attention problem.

Their LED implants are meant to help discover diseases and monitor the effectiveness of drugs.

Few people are really interested in diseases (unless it is THEIR disease of course).

A lot of people are interested in tattoos.

Which is why Philips is telling a story about moving tattoos instead of a story about diseases.

Science will probably never become part of pop culture.

But Philips' scientists have invented a way to deal that.

What You Will Be Doing Next Year: Foursquare.com

At Lateral, we think we know what will be the next big thing after Twitter: Foursquare.com

Why?

Because the people who were on Twitter first are now on Foursquare.

Because the people who invested in Twitter first have now invested in Foursquare.

Because the founders of Twitter have now invested in Foursquare.

But most of all because it's simple, relevant and fun.

Find out for yourself on http://www.foursquare.com/

94wines.com Is On To Something But Gets It Only 94% Right

Sure there are people who like to know that a certain wine was made from a certain grape growing on a certain soil which gives the wine certain tones added by the barrel which was made of…


Others just want to know: “Will I like it?”

The ‘others’ have now got their very own brand, and we are a little proud it’s Dutch like us.

94wines.com doesn’t fool around with unpronounceable French names, maisons, barrels and other complicated stuff, they just ask you a few questions and send you a wine that will suit your personal taste.

The only thing we find a little bit disappointing is that when you click on a wine number (a wine number, we love it: so true to the essence of their story!) you still get descriptions using terms like “full body” and “a combination of Chardonnay and Viognier”

But hey, maybe we are just being brand purists.

If you like wines that you will like, visit 94wines.com


(Update: we were contact by the ppeople at 94wines.com  Turns out they only mention names like Chardonnay because they are required to by law)

And You Think You've Got Problems?

People working in the idea business know coming up with ideas is not the hardest part of the job.


There are two things much more difficult than coming up with new ideas.

The first is recognizing a great idea.

The second is realizing it.

At Lateral we put a lot of energy in realizing new ideas.

But we know we have never worked as hard at making an idea come true as William Kamkwamba.

William was born in Africa. And after seeing a windmill which generated electric power one day, he wanted to build one.

He did not know anyone who could teach him.

He had no Internet to look for tips & instructions .

In fact, when he first saw a computer and the internet years after he built his wind turbine, he went nuts because it could have saved him years of trying.

Not only did he not have any help, people in his African village made fun of him.

But William did not give up. He built his wind turbine and taught others in Africa to build one as well.

He also taught people to teach other people so the knowledge would spread faster.

Next time you have a great idea and find it hard to realize it because of your busy schedule, a skeptic boss or a tight budget, compare the obstacles in your way to those of William Kamkwamba.

He didn’t give up, and neither should you.




(If you want to read William Kamkwamba's fulll story order his book at http://www.amazon.com/Boy-Who-Harnessed-Wind-Electricity/dp/0061730327 )