In September of this year the fourth Victor Hugo International Music festival will take place in Guernsey. This years lineup of musicians includes classical acts such as the Southbank Sinfonia and Psophos Quartet, as well as traditional folk music and dancing from Portugal and Latvia.

You can get full details on all the acts performing as well as how book tickets on their website which we’ve recently updated.

The pair, a man and a woman, have been sitting almost motionless amongst the crowds at a variety of A-list events, including Wimbledon, Henley Regatta and Elton John’s White Tie and Diamonds Ball, with their facial features almost completely obscured by a thin, flesh-coloured membrane.  The masks apparantly have tiny perforations around the nose and mouth area, so that the wearers are able to breathe.

The Internet’s blogging community has revved up a gear following these sightings and speculation is rife as to what the purpose of these anonymous figures could be.  The most popular theory is performance art, closely followed by an elaborate PR stunt to advertise an as yet unnamed brand, but there is also a lot of conjecture as to whether the pair could be celebrities keen to avoid the glare of the camera lens and making a statement against the world’s paparazzi.

They seem to have access to some of the most sought after celebrity events, popping up in a rowing boat at Henley, watching the ladies quarter-final at Wimbledon (and later showing their British connection by being publicly photographed on Murray Mount), before appearing at the Harrod’s summer sale, opened by Kim Cattrall.

However, the favourite internet theories of the moment seems to be that it is all a publicity stunt for the new Dr Who series, or for luxury car brand Lotus, which promotes the theory that you are a ‘faceless droid until you purchase a Lotus’.  Of course, no internet-based mystery would be complete without the alien theories, government cover ups and Roswell fantasists, and there are plenty of those as well, ranging from the (satirical) sublime to the (borderline insanely) ridiculous but for now, we will have to wait in anticipation until the mysterious duo choose to reveal themselves and their purpose…

Poetry and Prose readings will be scheduled throughout the evening of Thursday 26th June between 5.30pm - 7.30pm. As well as the readings there will two short films (arranged by CinéGuernsey) designed to transport you through the power of film into a poetic world.

Exhibition runs until 17th July, exhibited poetry will change weekly.

Free Accompanying Events:

Saturday 5th July: Poetry Writing Workshop, led by local writer and poet Pippa McCathie.
2.30pm – 5.00pm in the greenhouse.
Booking is essential. Call 739747 or email louise@arts.gg to book your place.

Saturday 12th July: Lunchtime poetry and prose reading
12.00pm – 1.00pm in the greenhouse. All are welcome.

Tuesday 15th July: Talk given by UK film director, Peter Kershaw, on the challenges of merging poetry and film.
7.00pm – 8.15pm in the greenhouse.
Booking is essential. Call 739747 or email louise@arts.gg to book your place.

the greenhouse gallery

The new Guernsey Gas website design and developed by Betley Whitehorne has gone live. The site is packed with useful information and services for all gas uses whether residential or commercial, as well as those thinking about getting attached to the network. You can find the latest special offers and price tariffs or submit your metre reading via the site. The site also lets you help the environment with green tips on saving energy and information on the latest super efficient gas boilers and appliances. If you’re looking at updating your existing gas or electric appliances then browse through the The Energy Centre section and see Guernsey Gas’s wide selection on cookers, microwaves, televisions and lots more.

If you don’t know what Firefox is, or have never tried it you’re missing out. It’s a free web browser that you can use instead of Internet Explorer which is faster, safer and easier to use. What’s more, it’ll import your settings from your current browser making the transition seamless and there are hundreds of optional ‘add-ons’ that you can install to improve your browsing experience or add new features such as official Firefox eBay Companion that lets you keep track of your eBay activities. Download Firefox.

The biggest advertising spaces we have are at the airport and the harbour, attracting the attention of business travellers and those less familiar with the island, but these are indoors, could you imagine such displays around St Peter Port, or along the coastal road?

Currently there are very few displays, this is probably due to a combination of the IDC being very unlikely to grant permission for any and the fact that the island’s population is a captive audience who know the local businesses well. However in an increasingly competitive and global market where advertising and creating a strong brand are more important than ever do you think this should change?

Tell us what you think by leaving a comment below, and by voting in the poll to the right.

Discover the city that said no to advertising

Betley Whitehorne have recently launched new creative work for leading Channel Island law firm, Ozannes.

Having originally created the identity for the law firm almost ten years ago, Betley Whitehorne have now produced a new design language for the future. To support this reinvigoration of the brand the agency has utilised imagery with a circular theme, illustrating not only the complete service offered through integrated working across the firm, but also representing the ‘O’ of the brand itself.

Head of Business Development and Marketing, Pip Bowyer, stated “As the firm develops, it is important that we continue to present the brand as evolving in line with our growth and reflect our increasingly international presence. We are delighted to be in a position to refresh the look and feel of the brand presentation and hope that it will enable us to present integrated and interesting messaging as we reinforce our position within the offshore marketplace.”

Miss Bowyer continued: “We are fortunate to work with an established brand, which already has a strong presence in the offshore legal world. Consequently we can reinforce our brand messaging with a more intelligent approach to representing the firm. The great thing about the new creative concepts is that they can be interpreted to represent any area of our practice in isolation but also illustrate the integrated services of the firm.”

The refreshed work launched in early June.

View more examples of our work for Ozannes

Here in Guernsey there is very little outdoor advertising, no large scale billboards, few posters, in fact very little beyond store fronts is vying for your eyes attention. The only regularly seen advert I can remember is the annual drink-driving campaign around Christmas time. This is in total contrast to the world major cities, so imagine São Paulo, a bustling metropolis of 11 million people, with over 8000 billboards. Now imagine that city being stripped of advertising. No Posters. No flyers. No ads on buses. No ads on trains. No Adshels, no 48-sheets, no nothing.

It sounds like an Adbusters editorial: an activist’s dream. But in São Paulo, Brazil, the dream has become a reality.

In September last year, the city’s populist right-wing mayor, Gilberto Kassab, passed the so-called Clean City laws. Fed up with the “visual pollution” caused by the city’s 8,000 billboard sites, many of them erected illegally, Kassab proposed a law banning all outdoor advertising. The skyscraper-sized hoardings that lined the city’s streets would be wiped away at a stroke. And it was not just billboards that attracted his wrath: all forms of outdoor advertising were to be prohibited, including ads on taxis, on buses—even shopfronts were to be restricted, their signs limited to 1.5 metres for every 10 metres of frontage. “It is hard in a city of 11 million people to find enough equipment and personnel to determine what is and isn’t legal,” reasoned Kassab, “so we have decided to go all the way.”

The law was hailed by writer Roberto Pompeu de Toledo as “a rare victory of the public interest over private, of order over disorder, aesthetics over ugliness, of cleanliness over trash& For once, all that is accustomed to coming out on top in Brazil has lost.”

Border, the Brazilian Association of Advertisers, was up in arms over the move. In a statement released on 2 October, the date on which law PL 379/06 was formally approved by the city council, Border called the new laws “unreal, ineffective and fascist”. It pointed to the tens of thousands of small businesses that would have to bear the burden of altering their shopfronts under regulations “unknown in their virulence in any other city in the world”. A prediction of US$133 million in lost advertising revenue for the city surfaced in the press, while the São Paulo outdoor media owners’ association, Sepex, warned that 20,000 people would lose their jobs.

Others predicted that the city would look even worse with the ads removed, a bland concrete jungle replacing the chaos of the present. North Korea and communist Eastern Europe were cited as indicative of what was to come. “I think this city will become a sadder, duller place,” Dalton Silvano, the only city councillor to vote against the laws and (not entirely coincidentally) an ad executive, was quoted as saying in the International Herald Tribune. “Advertising is both an art form and, when you’re in your car, or alone on foot, a form of entertainment that helps relieve solitude and boredom,” he claimed.

There was also much questioning of whether there weren’t, in fact, far greater eyesores in the city—such as the thousands of homeless people, the poor condition of the roads and the notorious favelas: wouldn’t Kassab’s time be better spent removing these problems than persecuting taxi drivers and shop owners? Legal challenges followed while, in an almost comical scenario, advertising executives followed marches by the city’s students and its bin men by driving their cars up and down in front of city hall in protest.

Nevertheless, the council pressed ahead. “What we are aiming for is a complete change of culture,” its president Roberto Tripoli said. “Yes, some people are going to have to pay a price but things were out of hand and the population has made it clear that it wants this.”

Originally, the law was to be introduced last autumn with immediate effect but it was first delayed until December and then finally introduced in January 2007 with a 90-day compliance period, supposedly giving everyone time to take down any posters or signs that did not meet the new regulations or face a fine of up to US$4,500 per day. Throughout that period, the city’s workmen were busy dismantling around 100 sites per day, occasionally supervised personally by Kassab, a man with an obvious eye for a photo opportunity.

In theory, 1 April was the first day of São Paulo’s re-birth as a Clean City. So what does it feel like?

“I can’t tell you what it’s like to live in a city without ads yet,” says Gustavo Piqueira, who runs the studio Rex Design in São Paulo, “because in a lot of places they still haven’t been removed. In Brazil, every time that some new law comes in, everybody waits a little to see if it will really be applied and seriously controlled, or if it’s just something to fill the newspapers for a week or two.”

In a lot of places, Piqueira says, this has led to the removal of posters but not the structures on which they were displayed. “It’s a kind of ‘billboard cemetery’. I guess they’re waiting to see if the law will really last. If the mayor keeps the law for a year or so, people will start to remove them and the city will, finally, start to look better.”

Photographer and typographer Tony de Marco has been out documenting this strange hiatus in a sequence of images published on Flickr and used to illustrate this piece. The city, he says, is starting to feel more “serene”.

Already the law has led to some strange discoveries. Because the site-ing of billboards was unregulated, many poor people readily accepted cash to have a poster site in their gardens or even in front of their homes. With their removal, a new city is emerging: “Last week, on my way to work, I ‘discovered’ a house,” says Piqueira. “It had been covered by a big billboard for years so I never even knew what it looked like.” The removal of the posters has “revealed an architecture that we must learn to be proud of, instead of hiding,” says de Marco.

But there are downsides—Piqueira worries that much of the “vernacular” lettering and signage from small businesses—”an important part of the city’s history and culture”—will be lost. The organisers of the São Paulo carnival have also expressed concerns about the long-term future of their event now that sponsors will not be allowed to advertise along the route. The city authorities for their part have made it clear that certain public information and cultural works will be exempted from the rules.

After a period of zero tolerance, Piqueira believes that advertising, albeit in a far more regulated form, will start to creep back into the city, either as a result of legal challenges, a change in administration, or compromises between media owners and the city. Already, the council has stated that it would like to see the introduction of approved street furniture such as bus stops, which may well carry ads. As these will no doubt be for the major brands that can afford such lucrative positions, a more sterile, bland visual environment may replace the vibrant, if chaotic streets of the past. Flyposters, hand-lettered signs and club flyers will remain banned while international ad campaigns for global brands on city-approved poster sites will return.

For de Marco, though, “the low quality of the letters and the images on those immense pieces of propaganda” were always a concern, as was “the misuse and occupation of public space. In the weeks before my birthday,” he says, “my visual enemies begin to disappear like the happy end of a motion picture. To see my city clean was my best birthday present and my photos were the record of the feast.”

Meanwhile, according to Augusto Moya, creative director of ad agency DDB Brasil, the ban is forcing agencies to be more inventive. “As a creative, I think that there is one good thing the ban has brought: we must now use more traditional outdoor media (like bus stops and all kinds of urban fittings) in a more creative way,” he says. “People at all the agencies are thinking about how to develop outdoor media that do not interfere so much in the physical structure of the city.”

Moya takes an enlightened view of the law. “As a citizen, I think that future generations will thank the current city administration for this ban,” he says. “There’s still a lot to be done in terms of pollution—air pollution, river pollution, street pollution and so on. São Paulo is still one of the most polluted cities in the world. But I believe this law is the first step for a better future.”

And even if some Paulistanos remain unconvinced, there is at least one group who are certainly not complaining—the city’s scrap dealers, who are set to make a killing from recovering all the old signs and structures.

Article provided by Creative Review

“Just one year after launching the iPhone, we’re launching the new iPhone 3G that is twice as fast at half the price,”

said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO.

“iPhone 3G supports Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync right out of the box, runs the incredible third party apps created with the iPhone SDK, and will be available in more than 70 countries around the world this year.”

Unfortunately it’s not available just yet but is set for release on July 11th in 22 countries and will be available in more than 70 countries by the end of the year. Fingers crossed Guernsey will be on the list. If it is then they’ll only have to shift a further 9,999,999 to meet there yearly target!

The Curry Cup (named because of the post match meal) is a mini league in which the top two teams play in the final. The tournament was played in high spirits and good humour. Sublime goals, saves, passes and blocks were made in some great games. The players all wanting the coverted marble and plastic trophy. After a grueling five games each the league had its two finalists. In a surprise repeat of the opening game it was The Stretfoot End vs Diavolo Spinners.

Would this be a re-run of the close game that opened the tournament? Could Paul end Adams unbeaten run? Would Paul be lifting the curry scented trophy? Unfortunately the answer to all these questions was, no. In the end the Spinners didn’t have the legs to compete with Adam’s players. A good effort was made but the 8 - 2 score line showed that they came across a team who had been unstoppable in the competition. Well Done Stretfoot.

The night gave us some fantastic moments, Chris’ first competitive game, Ric’s first points, an unbeaten streak, own goals, Dodgy Knee looking dodgy and the first ever draw. Although after all this there could only be one victor, it was table football that was the true winner.

Group Stage

Final

Stretfoot End 8 - 2 Diavolo Spinners