“Good business is the best art”, Andy Warhol once said. It’s a sentiment that may well have formed an ill-advised strap line to Tate Modern’s much lauded Pop Life: Art in a Material World.

I was reading the blog of a famous new media “pundit” the other day, when I stumbled across the statement everyone in the communications business has repeatedly heard since time immemorial… “No one reads ad copy.” I will give the “pundit” a certain license to suggest that might be true when applied to some of the newer forms of digi-baloney floating around the ether, and yes, I am talking about Twitter, ‘cos with a limit of 140 characters, to paraphrase dear old Gertrude Stein, there’s not much there there… Although, by the time the dedicated “Twitterati” have pounded out thousands [...]

Here are PSFK’s top five articles from Mar. 23 – Mar. 29, 2009.  Results are based on Google Analytics and in order of overall page views.
Stella McCartney Boot-Tights – Orli Sharaby
Nokia Almighty Headsets – Piers Fawkes
Swedish Magazine is Published as a Tattoo – Dan Gould
IKEA to Reveal Concept Car – Dave Pinter
Wieden Kennedy’s Nokia Competition Shows That Crowdsourcing can Suck For the Crowd – Piers Fawkes

There is so much serious, snooty editorial about fashion, we always appreciate when Vice comes out with its Fashion issue. Their most recent is no different. From the interview which hails Kai Kühne as a renegade fashion star before getting him to admit that he doesn’t understand fashion, to the article which claims in all seriousness that epaulettes (those ornament-like shoulder accessories on army uniforms) are the future of fashion, to the amazing cover featuring a wild pig (see above), the whole thing is a breath of fresh air.
Vice Magazine: The Fashion Issue 2009

Michael Surtees shares some interesting thoughts about the bizarre situation of media shape-shifting that is happening these days. He explains how after he stopped subscribing to the bulky print version of the New York Times, he discovered via micro-blogging site Twitter that the Economist magazine has a word-for-word audio recording of it’s issues available for download. After all this jumping around in different media worlds, Surtees discovers the usefulness of the audio version of the magazine, and sees a future in this kind of media-hybrid.
He explains:
As weird as it is for all the different types of media to be converging [...]

HSBC recently surprised travelers at Heathrow Airport with a temporary, build-your-own magazine shop, where patrons were given the opportunity to pick and mix articles they liked from various mags to create their own ‘perfect travel companion’. Over the two week event created by Cunning, 2,030 customized magazines were created, and more than 7,000 travelers visited the stand. Watch the video for some happy traveler reactions:

The Media Entertainment Market starts today in London which will “bring together over 90 of the key players from across the value chain of mobile entertainment.” The conference will revolve around these areas: Mobile Music; Mobile Games; Moving Pictures, Mobile Video & TV; Direct to Consumer & Innovative Business Models; Mobile DRM & Regulation; Mobile Entertainment.
15th – 16th June
Earls Court, London SW5 9TA – +44 (0)20 7385 1200
www.mem05.com