Stand-up comedian Russell Howard has announced a new world tour, Wonderbox, which will include four dates at the Royal Albert Hall and a whole host of national dates. We have been toiling away behind the scenes here at Fluid HQ to create the visual identity of the over all campaign for the Wonderbox tour. Being a comedy tour it was only natural for the approach in the art direction to have a quirky element of fun. We enlisted the Talents of celebrity photographer David Venni to photograph the shoot on the day. With the campaign wanted to keep a quirky fun element but at the same time give the campaign some of the arena tour bright lights and epicness it deserved.

The final printed and digital campaign will be popping up on billboards, newspapers and on websites nationally this week so keep an eye out for Russell Howard funny business.

When the tsunami and earthquake hit Namie, Japan in 2011, residents had to abandon the town which was home to a nuclear power plant as it became a radiation exclusion zone. Two years on, and after requests from the displaced residents to see the current state of their hometown, the town’s mayor has invited the Street View cars in to document worldwide the effect of this nuclear incident.

The results, images of abandoned and even disintegrated buildings in what is now a ghost town can be seen on Google Street View or at a dedicated site, Memories for the Future. A moving project indeed…

Fancy a Bioshock Blitzer with your Mario Kart? Or how about an Earthworm Gin with your Portal 2 co-op?

We’ve been made aware of a pretty exciting development: the imminent opening of a second café from the people of Loading. It’s a pop-up bar at the moment, but will be arriving permanently in London as of April this year.

What’s so special about a café you ask? Modeled on the gaming cafés of Tokyo, this bar, like its sister café in Cornwall, lets guests play games with their drinks. Just a glance at the lovingly created menu with its themed, character-based concoctions and it becomes clearly evident that these people really, genuinely love games.

Its always great to see someone’s idea become reality and it’s a worthy one, a project that will hopefully spread the number of people positive about the culture of gaming and for those who already are, a community space to hold events. Thanks to a successful Kickstarter project with loads of big name backing from people like Ubisoft, BioWare and Codemasters, gamers in Soho will soon have their very own space to indulge in a spot of community spirit. Find out more at their website.

Wonder if they have their sights set on the second city?

The children have spoken! Last night was the date of the Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Awards, which for those not in the know is an awards show voted for entirely by kids and featuring concepts not yet familiar to other awards ceremonies like the Oscars and BAFTAs (though we think they should be) such as dunking winners in slime and categories like “Favourite Villian” and “Favourite Buttkicker”. As part of our continuing relationship with Nickelodeon, Fluid created the UK Press Kit to publicise the event.

Included in the press kits, which arrived in a slime-coloured green mailer bag were 3 sticker sheets and nominee details presented on signature Nickelodeon blimp shaped cards, all playing on Nickelodeon’s signature sense of irreverent fun.

There’s double reason to celebrate too as another of our clients went on to win not one but two awards – One Direction snapped up Favourite UK Band but also Favourite Music Group overall, which shows just how much those Americans love us really (and Fluid’s album artwork, of course!)

Click here to view the embedded video.

Its in this vein that we present to you…Sign Painters, a brand new documentary chronicling the resurgence in hand painted signage in the USA. Though we’ve only watched the trailer, it looks a treat. The filmmakers wanted to explore the world of traditional sign painting as, in their words, “like many skilled trades, the sign industry has been overrun by the techno-fueled promise of quicker and cheaper” giving way to a “creeping sameness into our landscape”.

The brushstrokes and stories of over two dozen American sign painters are featured in the documentary, which you can learn more about here.

Those who remember the Arts Labs that sprung up around the country in the late 60s, and those with memories of the Birmingham Arts Lab in particular, will be interested to know that as part of the Flatpack Festival a set of dates will focus on a homage to the period in the form of documentary films, audio interviews and memorabilia.

The Birmingham outfit is an interesting case as it was able to carry on throughout the decade when many other Arts Labs across the country fizzled out, and in a large part this is attributable to its strong film programme, which arguably subsidised the music, visual and theatre output. Its key players in film were Tony Jones and Peter Walsh, who assembled a rudimentary cinema from salvaged bits and pieces and showed films that would not be screened elsewhere in the city. Their stories and those of many others have been unearthed and brought together in a ‘bricolage of memories’ of this creative culture.

Among the events are the chance to see Tony Palmer’s documentary on the city from 1971, a collection of interviews unearthed by Trevor Pitt in an atmospheric audio installation, and a talk headed by many of the Lab’s original participants about what worked, what didn’t, and what we can learn from the Arts Labs today.

For more details on the Birmingham Arts Lab sessions visit the Flatpack Festival website, and to learn more about the Birmingham Arts Lab there is an article here.

The programme of events lined up for Flatpack Festival at the end of the month is looking pretty special; among the ever growing list of shows we’ve got our eye on, one stands out in particular: the live AV sets from un-categorisable electronic acts Demdike Stare and Lee Gamble. In a live show with visuals stitched together from a collection of VHS horror, Demdike Stare’s music which includes ingredients of film scores, obscure jazz and Iranian folk to name a few, will be coming to Birmingham on the 29^th March at the Flatpack Palais, so you probably shouldn’t miss out.

As a Birmingham-based agency we like to support initiatives from our fellow residents, and this week saw the launch of online boutique Library from the Birmingham-based design agency Family. Featuring a great offering of prints from designers and illustrators, many of them sharing our impeccable choice of geographic location… these prints aren’t available for sale anywhere else.

Take a look at http://www.wearelibrary.co.uk.

If original vintage Polish and Turkish film posters are your thing, then you’ll want to check out Eye Sea Posters, which sells originals and is a great source of some of the bizarre film artwork produced by established artists in the 60s and 70s. Originating from a time when the Polish film industry was regulated by the Communist state and artists were commissioned to produce unique artwork individual to a film; photographic stills and advertising a film’s main stars weren’t a requirement and this gave way to some really creative interpretations of a film’s imagery.

Plenty of inspiration to be found there…