An ancient sacrificial ritual.
A butt-hole in the ground.
A shallow bath of mineral oils.
A rocket of many moods.
A feature called Features.
What is the ungodly & irresistible collision of creativity, craft & madness?
Why– The Colour Bar, of course.
I like how things stray into this space, sometimes unbidden, sometimes sought out. I love when they come together in weird ways that make you go “huh?”, before a thread appears in the chaos.
This is one of those weeks, and I give thanks for having me in your feed, or your inbox, or both.
Hope you enjoy it,
Shakey
Crafty Apple: love & care for the brand
Curated/Cuts: tiramisu horror
Prime 360: cut-scene sports
Insta Features: IG goes longform
➕ · Thank you, Rest Of World · Elon in Skydance · Daft Punk blocks ·
1. Crafty Apple
Apple’s gone and done it again.
Apple Music has got a new logo. From the pink on white note, to a black & white one. As with everything Apple, the change itself will not feel overly dramatic. They have also added music to it, working with the artist ‘Fred Again…’. That audio mnemonic feels just so… Apple.*
But that’s just the start of it. It’s the logo animation that has caused ripples– quite literally. Specifically, how it’s been made.
Based on the idea “made by sound”, they did the music first– before the visual– then found a way of turning sound waves into motion in liquid- in a shallow bath of mineral oils, to be precise. The brand music plays, the liquid ripples, the logo shapes.
The music was broken down and played through a transducer (a device which turns audio into vibrations). The resulting ripples and waves were filmed to form the new look. “The process took months of experimentation to get right. Fast Company reports that they had to tune the sound and image together because too many notes or notes pitched too high made the oil move so much that the image became unreadable.” ^
Like their Apple TV logo work last year, the teams at Apple and TBWA are keen to showcase the manual process, the handmade creative, the physical craft.
The perfect sound wave? Or a mere ripple in the ether? Take your pick.
- · -
Naysayers might scoff– is it effective, is it just creative fluff, is it pretentious. But in our times, it’s not just the product , or the end result… the story around it adds a halo, carries its own message and branding.
This is a recurring theme with brands and their creative work these days, but for Apple it feels par for course. In fact, their recent efforts have been striking, enjoyable, and proudly hand made.
There was the great piece for the Mac Mini, muscle man energy with claymation, and the BTS video was as entertaining. Again, part of the message.
Last month , we saw the Apple Games spot from Blinkink, using physical hand-built rocket models, mechanical rigs, real stop-motion captured in-camera, then integrated with 3D backgrounds. The rocket shape shifts across different handcrafted textures and themed worlds– fantasy, pixelated,neon-lit and erm, Uno cards.
The Apple TV logo refreshed last year, with audio composed by Finneas, was cut from the same cloth. Done practically, intentionally, lovingly, expensively. As I said back then, its all part of the brand ethos, and part of the marketing schtick, to do it with humans and then gently show-off about it. The official line from back then rings through across these projects, “ a nod to Apple’s belief that craft should be felt, not faked.”
And a recurring theme in all of these from all collaborators? “No AI”.
Make of that what you will.
This is some way off from the brand’s 2024 misstep, in which a whole garage of creative instruments and tools were crushed to suggest the iPad held all their collective power.
I was also reminded of ‘Start Up’, a track made from 45 years of Mac/Apple startup sounds.
Both the recent spots come from TBWA\Media Arts Lab and a whole lot of talented people.
The Apple Music piece: Sabine Dowek · Lara Juriansz (TBWA) · Optical Arts · Time Based Arts · Plau · TRAFIK · Epilogue Inc ·
The Apple Games spot from Blinkink and Bart Yates · Directed by Stevie Gee & Essy May · DOP: Toby Howell ·
* The first ellipse is how his name is written- yes, ‘Fred Again…’. The second ellipse is mine.
2. Curated/Cuts : Tiramisu vomit
Un. Hinged.
Here’s a spot from- well just watch it, because there’s little point introducing it.
“Overnight oats, without the sacrifice. We spent all our money making this so the least you can do is give it a watch and pretend to love it.“
I mean, a breakfast cereal brand just showed us a deranged story from Roman times, with tiramisu flavoured stuff spewing out of a “butt hole in the ground”.
So yeah, Oat Cult. It makes overnight oats. I don’t like oats. I might be less hatey about the overnight variety. But all of that is irrelevant in the face of this inexplicable and inexplicably bonkers spot… that still entertains.
Black comedy? Art film? Horror?
I don’t know if any of brand, agency or production team care, or even know. I don’t know what to make of it, but it feels bloody brilliant.
Oh, but it might well keep me off tiramisu for a while.
Aside: someone in Korea watched it and said “They should be in front of a parliamentary hearing doing the full kneeling apology.”
3. Prime 360
“Think of it like a video game camera.”
Prime Video in the US has introduced a new bells & whistle in their basketball coverage. ‘Prime 360’ is a proprietary, AI-powered technology working off an array of cameras around the court to stitch cinematic highlights, the kind that you can’t really get using only existing camera angles.
The cameras are calibrated and synchronized, and their footage is sent to the AWS cloud, where each play is reconstructed as a 3D scene — opening up possibilities beyond a normal replay.
“You could actually fly the camera through the play,” said Wade Wakashige, a director of product.
Its all quite video-gamey and pretty cool.
4. IG Features
Instagram now has long form videos (up to 90min, yes 1.5 hours). This new feature, which might feature feature-length videos, is called Features.
Inevitably, Adam Mosseri (Instagram’s chief) created a long form video about this– a chat with a VP of product who apparently has championed long form for some time… while Adam had resisted.
This here is a short form or preview video aka REEL ; the linking to the full piece is pretty seamless, whether at the end of the reel or the ability to click through at any point during.
Early quibbles include not picking up where you left off when you come back to a video, no chapters or ways to navigate, etc… And I’m sure there are many more which will be worked on (the ability to have PiP and scroll IG while watching a longform seems inevitable but also a widely fragmented experience), but!
Easily the biggest question around this is monetisation. Creators don’t get paid on IG the way Youtube has a rev-share, and that certainly is going to form a challenge in coaxing long form creators to come to the platform in droves and provide content besides the likes of “a dog bit my butt”.
Of course, this is also about the TV. Long videos are the best way for IG to meaningfully compete on connected TVs, and lure/retain users who are habituated with Youtube. That habituation is key, because there is a general sense that Youtube has far more loyalty wired into it and its creators, while IG is more widely entertaining and serendipitous.
“Connecting friends is an adjacent thing to short form video.
Short form video is an adjacent thing to long form video.
But long form video and connecting friends is not adjacent.
The reason I am not interested in pursuing long form video in a meaningful way is because I don’t want to erode our core reason to exist.” (emphasis mine).
This was, in fact, Mosseri himself speaking last year on the Colin & Samir show. In their new chat a couple of days ago, they challenged him on it, curious as to what had transformed in the landscape enough for IG to now roll out the feature. He stands by that thinking, but says much has changed. It’s a decent listen on the show, they do touch upon monetisation too… though don’t expect any revelations.
Relatedly- a new analysis of short form video shows that Tiktok- the great leader of the short form revolution- now rewards longer clips (>3min), more than Instagram which rewards 90sec and under the best.
(Features might change that, especially in the short term where we can expect the platform to boost longform considerably).
➕Quick Hits
Daft Punk are back! They’re going to “reunite in LEGO form” as part of an official collab in 2027. So yes, back…. kinda.
Disappointing news about Rest Of World shutting down in Jan 2027. This is the news publication that consistently gave us quality reporting in tech & digital from around the non-Western world (you know, where that vast majority of internet users live.
THR has a less than rosy view on Elon Musk’s $1B investment into Skydance.
“The implication for brands and employers is simple:
don’t prioritise memes and brainrot content
when a generation is demanding jobs, affordable rent and a decent future.
The current discontent is an opportunity for brands to
view young people as humans, not consumers.”
_The People’s take on Gen Z protests sweeping across countries.
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Till next week, go find some breakfast cereal.