Beautiful things made by beautiful people for you to buy for beautiful friends.

Our friends at S.V.T visited us before Christmas for a catch up, as you do. They bought us some rather special gold leaf wishbone greetings cards which are truly lovely:

However, having a rather strong vegetarian contingent in the office Rob plucked up the courage to say something along the lines of: "It's not very vegetarian is it? Maybe you could make a sprout version?"

Lo and behold a couple of months later we get a couple of these beauties in the post:

Here at FW Towers we pride ourselves in providing a good old fashioned responsive service and if this doesn't set the benchmark we don't know what does...

We're particularly fond of the aorta-like qualities this humble sprout displays, presumably in an attempt to prevent any hungry vegetarians from eating it...

THANKYOU team S.V.T.

S.V.T stands for Sciences de la Vie et de la terre (Sciences of Life and Earth). They're a tiny (boutique even) outfit that only produce sustainable locally produced goods, with an emphasis on loveliness.

Here's their stuff: sciencesvieterre.com

FW HQ 2.0 WIP December Update

The leaves have fallen and the mercury has dropped and we're FINALLY progressing the fit out of the brand new FW offices apace. This is thanks entirely to the awesome design and construction team who laugh in the face of exhaustion and start work at 5am in order to get a good crack of the whip. The Cornish contingent of Ross and Jon have been pushing hard through the last week and as a result we have the makings of a kitchen and bathroom. At the same time the London team of Jen, Liam and Viking are pushing ahead with everything from plastering to covering the ceiling with Mega Boner Bona Mega.

Here's a view of the downstairs space. In the middle will be the bathroom whilst the kitchen will be to the right.

Bona Mega applied to the ceiling brings out the colour of the wood used for the shuttering to cast the concrete.

We're pleased with the way the first floor is shaping up. The stark concrete pillars contrast with the complex organic tones of the ceiling, don't you know. The hole in the floor is filled although this will be partly removed again when the glass floor arrives.

Now that the Tornado drop tank hanging in reception idea has been shelved. We've started thinking about a jet engine cowling as a reception desk. We'd cut away around 1/4 of it giving space to walk inside. What do you think?

Cornish contingent of the build team - Job's a good'un.

FW HQ 2.0 20.11.14 WIP update

Work has finally begun on the FW 2.0 HQ. It's been a long time coming and we've got a long road to travel, but nonetheless, ground has been broken and the site bog has been installed.

This is the very first cup of coffee ever to be drunk at the new FW HQ. Yes, it's perched on a floor tile on top of an industrial hoover, but boy did it taste good. Apparently, according to Ross.

Arty shot showing a work light in front of the entrance doors. That's all we've got for you for the moment....... oh ...... apart from this ......

..... this is a drop tank from a Tornado fighter jet, and it came awfully close to being installed on the ceiling of the reception area of the new offices. Infact it was only Robs refrain of 'don't you think it might be just a little bit overpowering ....' that put the dampers on the idea and prevented the 'buy now' button on ebay from being pressed. Ross, Dave and Nat were certain that Rob was being a stick in the mud and couldn't see the artistic merit of such an awesome aerodynamic object flying across the ceiling of FW towers and so measurements were taken to show how it couldn't possibly be too overpowering. Unfortunately these measurements confirmed that one end would stick out the front door whilst the other end would span the reception area and continue into the kitchen. You'd also have to duck as you walked under it.

To get an idea of the size consider that it's 6.7m long when a large family car is around 4.5m in length. Also see how it dwarfs the pallette that it sits on. We're now looking for an Exocet for the ceiling - let us know if you have one kicking around.

8 Photo Apps in 8 Days

Before my trip to Washington DC, I came across a list of cool (and free) photography apps for the old Iphone. I thought that eight days was a bit too long to be away from the office, so in my absence I took some photos to see how cool these apps really are. One app for every day. Here goes...

Day 1. Glitche

Glitche - Gaza Conflict Protester

Glitche is a little limited in its functions unless you spend all of your time at gigs, surrounded by matrix graphics and drinking yourself towards oblivion. Essentially it distorts your picture, adds visual glitches, gives you the option to add effects and take the pixels into an almost-3D-space. So, it’s never going to create beautiful pictures. It’s useful if you want to create that edgy look but I doubt I’ll find a use for it again. The best I came up with is this…a relatively minor glitche.

If you're interested in my reasoning, I thought it might reflect the somewhat skewed vision we all have of various world conflicts, as we can only ever really receive part of the full story. Or at least, that's the best reason I can come up with.

Day 2. Dubble

Cats & The White House

Dubble is a clever and fascinating concept. The app allows you to share your picture with the world instantly but even better that, it pairs it with another photo from across the globe. This is a little gem if you like surprises. Granted, the results don’t always work, for example my photo of the White House was ‘Dubbled’ first with a picture of cats (see right). But what’s great about the app is when a ‘Dubble’ DOES work. It’s quite cool to think a masterpiece could be created with someone you’ve never met. Try it out – it’s free! Here are a few of my favourites.

Abe Lincoln in the sky

I saw this homeless man every day.
I like this Dubble, as it suggests that there is someone out there who thinks about him.

The faces of the Vietnam Memorial & the Berlin wall
I like this not only because of its political resonance, but it implies transcendence.

Day 3. EyeEm

EyeEm - Capitol Building

EyeEm is very similar to Instagram, only it has something a little special on the side. It works in the same way, in that you scroll through filters until you find one you like, you then chose a frame. But what EyeEm does which is great, is allow you to map your location, or what it is a picture of, which will then mean you are able to see all other EyeEm user photos of the same thing. It’s clever as it encourages you to think about your smart phone photography in a way that perhaps we don’t normally. It also allows you to compare your photos with other photographers which is a great way of creating an online community like Flickr but at your fingertips. Here’s my photo of the Capitol Building using EyeEm!

Day 4. Seene

Seene is a really cool concept. The idea is that you capture slight movement of the image you wish to create, moving your camera up, down, left and right until the sensor markers go green. The picture is then automatically created for you, with a 3D look to it, that allows the image to move upon changing the angle of your device. Great, right?

Well it would be if it worked. Firstly, your subject has to sit completely still with the same expression or pose exactly. Secondly, you have to have the steadiest pair of hands in the world, so attempting these pictures from the seat above the wheel arch of Abe’s transportation was not the best idea I’ve ever had.

So, I failed at this one. I kept losing my patience with trying to capture all four movements with the camera, as the sensors are overly sensitive. I hate failing, so here’s an attempt at a Seene of the pint I enjoyed and 'captured' before my trip instead…

Day 5. Repix

Repix - Virgin, LHR to Washington DC

So Repix is again, another photo app with yet another list of filters. It allows you to play with saturation, brightness, temperature, contrast and intensity. It allows you to choose a frame. There are two things that Repix has that other apps don’t however, and although they aren’t particularly useful in every photo, some lend themselves well. For example, light flare worked well when I attempted to take a photo of my Virgin plane’s wing midflight. Repix’ function to add raindrops also worked well for me, when taking a picture of the US Marine Memorial. It adds a sense of struggle to the scene. I know I wouldn’t use the app often but if a need ever appears again for rain and flare, then I’ll know where to go.

Repix - US Marine Memorial

Day 6. Melodigram

Melodigram has a bit of a rubbish interface but it’s a good one if you’re all for capturing single moments as memories. It allows you to take a picture, add music AND capture ambient sound. Whilst walking around Georgetown, Washington, my ears were filled with the sound of crickets, but not those week-willed British crickets..ohh no, these bad boys sang to me in a gospel choir of cricket crescendo. Unfortunately I don’t think the recording did the sound justice at all, but I do like the idea. I think the software could just use a bit of help in development to make it user friendly, and my Iphone needs a better mic.

Click the links to decide for yourself!

Crickets: http://melodigram.com/g/zRFg898aP62ZbFdFQKwt75 

Jazz Club, Bohemian Caverns: http://melodigram.com/g/FvfBCMDPaCtATzn9a3SDYg

Day 7. Tadaa

Tadaa - Route 66 - Washington DC

Tadaa, just like all of the others has filters, frames and editing abilities… although I could not for the life of me figure out how to crop without skewing the image. Maybe you can advise me? I rather like the final edit of the image of the Route 66 sign but there’s far too much sky and space to the right hand side. Route 66 always gives off a dusty, dirty windscreen vibe to me with it stretching through Texas and Nevada desert country, hence why I went for an aged and dirty effect. Tadaa allows you to share images via social media but does not host its own community which maybe is a good thing. It’s not competing with Instagram but merely allows you to share the cool images you create with the Instagram community. I rather like this app, I’d use it again, if I could work out the crop tool.

Day 8. Instagram

Finally I returned to my old buddy Instagram. It’s just so easy to use, its filters work to help bring out the light in areas that aren’t quite visible within your picture at the click of a button. It allows you to manipulate brightness if you need to, add frames but without an endless list of choices and allows direct upload to all the favourite social channels, including its very own. You can even use hashtags and if that's not innovation, then I don't know what is! 

Instagram - Washington Memorial #twilight

Martin Luther King Memorial

Stereotypical Yellow Taxi - Georgetown M St.

As cool as some of the features on these apps are, I don’t have time to sift through so many options to edit my photo, by that time I’ve missed another (possibly better) photo opportunity. I don’t like it on such a small screen, or editing my on-the-go photos so intently, that’s what my laptop’s for. I still prefer Instagram over all these others, with EyeEm and Dubble coming in at a close second, just because I rather like surprises and the idea of sharing photos with other photographers.

And if you think all these apps are for amateurs, then think again! Take a look at Mashable's suggestion to follow these 8 professional photographers on Instagram!!!
http://mashable.com/2014/08/17/instagram-famous-photographers/?utm_cid=mash-com-Tw-socmed-link 

Twitter Usage - US & the UK

We live in a world obsessed with connectivity and socializing, whether that be at live events, at a bar or through social media, namely, on twitter. I've been looking into the twitter demographic in the UK and US and it seems that there are some trends to consider when tweeting on behalf of our UK businesses amidst a diverse online community that sends out (are you sitting down?) over 500 million tweets a day!

Quick Tips

• There are over 50 million active UK Twitter users and a similar number in the US
• The US and UK markets are very different
• US users like to express opinion and be bold, therefore businesses are more prone to appeals to emotion and personal incredulity to connect with their users and drive debate.
• UK users like to speak positively about experiences, engage and connect with others and post links that they feel are relevant to their followers. Businesses should aim to continue this trend of positivity in their brand, and with their partners and followers. Acknowledging user opinion (particularly where positive) is a great way to increase user activity and brand awareness.

So How Do We Know?

www.360i.co.uk/reports/twitter-usage-u-s-u-k/

According to research, US users are more emotive in their tweets, and tend to express more outward anger and personal opinion. Brits prefer to speak about joy and excitement to bring others into the conversation. So it's good to be positive about your brand. It’s very hard to comment on someone’s tweet about an argument with their spouse, not so hard to engage in a conversation about drinking beer. 

UK twitter users are 21% more likely to engage in conversations on Twitter. In the US however, tweets are more likely to be opinion-based original content or a retweet of a celebrity.

www.360i.co.uk/reports/twitter-usage-u-s-u-k/

Prime time for tweeting is different between the nations too. In the UK, we are more likely to delve into the twitter universe during tea breaks or lunch time, merging work and free-time together, whereas US users tend to tweet most in the evening, during their leisure time. Perhaps this explains the tweet content, with UK users tweeting about things they've discovered during their working day and US users tweeting their opinions about that lady’s dress on American Idol or the frustration at burning the *insert stereotypical American food here.

www.360i.co.uk/reports/twitter-usage-u-s-u-k/

Finally; engagement in brands. US users like to share their opinions of the brand, whereas UK users are more likely to tweet a review of a brand - how reliable it is, how snazzy it looks (yes, I used the word snazzy) and how well it serves its purpose. Over 50% of US brand tweets consist of entertainment references whereas in the UK, we tend to talk about a wide range of brand related topics from services and retail to food and technology. So again, that's worth thinking about when targeting your audience.

It is worth bearing in mind that the study I refer to, may not be accurately representative of the entire twitter community, as it is based upon just 400 tweets from the US and the UK. However, the findings are all trends that are quite visible online if you take the time to explore and I found it fascinating when thinking about FW's social output - I thought you might do too!

What is even more interesting, is to know how many users there are on ALL of our most popular social media tools and apps. How many people are we ACTUALLY reaching out to across various platforms?
This link takes you to a list of stats for over 600 of these tools and is really quite useful.  http://expandedramblings.com/index.php/resource-how-many-people-use-the-top-social-media/#.U8Zr8vldV8E

SOURCES

http://www.businessinsider.com/twitter-has-a-surprisingly-small-number-of-us-users-2013-10

http://techcrunch.com/2012/07/30/analyst-twitter-passed-500m-users-in-june-2012-140m-of-them-in-us-jakarta-biggest-tweeting-city/

http://www.360i.co.uk/reports/twitter-usage-u-s-u-k/
https://about.twitter.com/company

1.21 gigawatts?!

Many of our friends will know that FLETCHERWILSON had the brainwave of purchasing new premises for the company a number of months back. We'd have a studio to film in, more space, funky desks, cool lighting, client meeting space, it would be awesome. We've now purchased an office and it's lovely, it's 2500 square foot across two floors, it's got an amazing view of Bow Roundabout and we're really excited about moving in there.

The only catch is that it doesn't have a toilet, or running water, or lights, or heading, or power. Yup, it's a dusty concrete shell that looks like this:

We'll I say it doesn't have water, it does have a pigmy shower that we recently had the water company install ...... wooop!

.... and wait for it.... within the next week it might even have ..... a socket!

Yes, we're going to hook up to the grid and get ourselves some POWER, and to do that we're about to have one of these fitted:

- and that friends, is a 100amp per phase 3 phase breaker. (wow this blog is engaging!). It's basically the switch that you throw if things go really bad. You might recognise this bit of kit from Ghostbusters - can you see it on the wall in the background:

We kind of hope we never have to throw this switch and on the basis that they never really get used (well more than once anyway), we bought a second hand one - after all, what's the worst that can happen? In Ghostbusters when this switch was thrown all of New York descended into chaos, cats and dogs living together, total anarchy basically, but that was a film and it was in America not the UK, so we're going to be fine.

Especially as it's being fitted by our super awesome electrician, Martin, who totally knows his stuff and wouldn't have allowed the switch to be thrown had he been in Ghostbusters.

When that bad boy finally gets on the wall, it'll go in this utility cupboard, which is where the Distribution Board will go too ....

So there you have it, we'll soon have enough power to run a studio full of 2.5K HMIs (or roughly 5 trillion of the modern LED equivalents). Of course we won't have an internet connection, or a desk to sit at, or a floor, but these things take time.

In the next installment we'll look at installing a toilet .... awesome!

Tour De France Passes FW HQ!

Yesterday the Tour De France rocketed past FW HQ. As we eagerly awaited the cyclists’ arrival, having followed their position online, we got our running shoes on to leg it to the end of the road to get a peek.

A peek was all we got though - blinked and you would have missed it. It’s a good job we had our fingers on the shutter so we could have a look through the photos after they’d rocketed past. We’re not kidding, they were here for all of about 10seconds!

The sponsor's bike leads the way

The crowds lining Stratford High Street

My favourite photo of the bunch, has to be this one. Never mind the leaders at the front, these guys in the background were far too busy taking a selfie!

Returning to the office for a slice of birthday cake topped and two projects out of the door, what more could you want from a Monday afternoon? Happy Birthday to Joe Rosen!