As part of an ongoing partnership with the Rights Workshop, Avantgarde co-hosted a special solo performance and talk with Stephin Merritt at Goodby, Silverstein & Partners. He performed three songs including Book of Love on his Ukulele and then Brooke Wentz, the Rights Workshop, interviewed Stephin and his manager Claudia Gonson and then moderated an audience Q/A.

Stephin Merritt and the Magnetic Fields have just released Realism on Nonesuch records and are touring the West Coast.

Prolific New York singer/songwriter Stephin Merritt was born in 1966. Raised by his counterculture mother -- he has never met his father -- Merritt spent much of his youth moving from house to house throughout the Northeast. It was during that time that Merritt became enamored with Top 40 pop, specifically ABBA. His interest in music began to take on a physical form at the age of 14 with a cheap synthesizer and an old four-track recorder, a sound that still captivated the artist in later years. In 1989 he formed the Magnetic Fields in Boston with drummer and manager Claudia Gonson. Merritt, who is more often than not the sole player, producer, and arranger on each track, released numerous records under the name, including 1999's epic three-disc set 69 Love Songs. He has also released material under the names the 6ths, the Future Bible Heroes, and the Gothic Archies. He has been a copyeditor at Spin and has written numerous reviews for Time Out Magazine in New York. He provided the soundtrack to the James Bolton film Eban & Charley in 2002, followed by his first -- under his own name -- solo release titled Two Chinese Operas in 2005. Showtunes, which was released in 2006, featured selected compositions written especially for Chen Shi-Zheng's Orphan of Zhao (2003), Peach Blossom Fan (2004), and My Life as a Fairy Tale (2005).

-- by James Christopher Monger, AllMusic

Waffle Mania, one of my favorite street vendors in San Francisco, is benefiting from our social media strategy. We found them a new location on Tehama Street @ 2nd St. and established a twitter feed for them (@WaffleManiaSF) in January and they have taken off. They just doubled their followers in one day with a post on KQED's food blog Bay Area Bites and are thinking of getting a new truck.

a downtown trek to waffle nirvana

The "waffle man" that many people seek out is, more often than not, Alain Dupont (while there are a few other business partners, Dupont is frequently working the waffle irons). While he's a familiar face at many of the local markets, the Tehama Street routine is new. I asked Dupont why he decided to spend more time in San Francisco and how he chose the quiet, unassuming street. After doing a very successful catering event in mid-November at BarrelHouse (@barrelhousesf), friend and marketing guru Marcus Colombano encouraged Alain to come down to BarrelHouse on a more permanent basis, and the CBS folks across the street have welcomed him with open arms. The rest seems to be history.

I am happy to announce that Particle Programmatica has asked Avantgarde to come on board and help craft their marketing communications strategy. We will be working with them to develop their brand platform and messaging as well as assist them in the development of strategic press, influencer and co-marketing relationships.

"We make massively small products that shorten the distance between the internet and awesome," says Aubrey Anderson, Particle Founder and CTO. "We look forward to working with Avantgarde to continue that mission and make the conversations we have with our customers and partners as meaningful and as resonant as possible."

roboto

Robo.to is a way to extend a user's status updates with a video avatar using your webcam or camera phone. It also aggregates their latest vitality from around the web and puts it all in a tiny calling card that stays fresh. Write once, publish everywhere!

crusher

Crusher is a new way for sending engaging invitations to your next party that doesn't require sign-up. Pick and choose what features to include, change the layout completely and customize the page to your style.

smirk

Open Smirk is for developers who want their users to have the ability to create video avatars alongside just basic photo upload. It can react to a user's interaction and is open to other creative (mis)uses. Smirk video icons come in three flavors - Flash, Jpeg, and Gif.

Last November, Avantgarde worked with Pereira & O'Dell to produce Creative Social's tenth creative summit this time in San Francisco.

Creative Social

Every big idea started out as a question. Global brands, political revolutions, successful blind dates—they all began with What if…? What if we put cotton on a stick? What if we sent bits of data through the air? What if we made a car that runs on feelings? That last one’s made up, but then again, so is everything.

This year’s Creative Social brought together some of the world’s most notorious what-iffers from 15 cities across 10 countries. These infamous innovators assembled in a 100-year-old former speakeasy, the BarrelHouse, to share stories and discuss the future of their respective fields—Design, Music, Film, Technology, Food and Business.

It was only fitting that the Fall ’09 Creative Social landed in San Francisco. A notorious bubble of innovation, ideas, and liberal politics, the city by the Bay is the perfect backdrop for this weeklong what-if-a-thon. Each day, talks explored concepts, products, and movements that began locally, but grew into global phenomena. All this occurred over delicious local fare and the muffled din of smart people whispering excitedly to other smart people.

Timbuk2 Yoga Bag $100

For the yogi on the go, we couldn't find a better choice than this bag by Timbuk2. It's sturdy, compact, stylish, and fun. It comes with a detachable padded shoulder strap and an easy-access pouch for a water bottle. The mat buckles to the outside of the bag, leaving plenty of room inside. There's a large inner pouch plus four small pockets for essentials like your keys, wallet, and cell phone. One zipper pocket is perfect for file folders and papers.

- Check out Yoga Journal for a full read.

America's Role in Asia is a 310-page volume of recommendations on U.S. foreign policy for the new administration from some of the world's preeminent American and Asian experts. Their analysis and insight came out of a year of closed-door summits convened across Asia and the U.S. by The Asia Foundation. Completed just prior to the presidential conventions last fall, we created a sophisticated rollout strategy aimed at getting America’s Role in Asia (ARA) into the hands of every influential advisor on both campaigns. Our ads complement that strategy with the aim of conveying the seriousness of the content, while evoking rich cultural aspects of Asia. The ads feature brilliant, arresting Asian images and elegant artwork in a palette of plums and golds, with crisp language to quickly attract and communicate with our audience. Targeting changemakers, foreign policy advisers and other influencers, our first ads ran on Foreignpolicy.com, and Newsweek.com, leading up to our Washington and San Francisco releases. Ads then ran in The Washington Post.com, and in a targeted “Today’s Headlines” New York Times blast. Finally, at dawn on the day President Obama took office, we ran a dramatic, rich ad at the top of The New York Times inauguration blast, offering “Foreign Policy recommendations for President Obama”. The entire campaign funneled unprecedented web traffic, dramatically overtaking all previous records; the final New York Times blast resulted in the highest ever number of visitors to our site in a single day, tripling our average: 10,790 visitors.

Just ran into this interesting review of the design aspects of the Timbuk2 retails store written for a design class out of Stanford.

"When I first embarked on my research for this project I was looking a for a few specific things. I was trying to discover what were the human factors behind design. How was the object culturally appropriate? What does it say about the user and what does it reveal about their status? What I began to see was how a company chooses to market themselves. How they companies position themselves in the market. It seemed to be a complex formula about perceived value, price points, and target market. I thought to myself that the world of merchandise was a sterile formula applied universally to a baseless market, that was successful for a handful of well financed companies. However, In the midst of my research I found a company that was above that influence. A creatively unique brand, with a story and product to match. That company is Timbuk2."

- Check out Ten things 2007 for a full read.

Our take, "Throwing tons of money at all the influentials in the world won’t work if the product itself doesn’t meet a genuine unmet need. The brand experience has to be a reflection of the personal creativity of the user in order for a product to translate from a small circle to mass consumption."

Read more on this blog: Bernaise Source

As the Creative Director for the Asia Foundation, Kristin Colombano has won the Internet Advertising Competition award for Best Non-Profit Online Ad. Since 1997, the Web Marketing Association's annual WebAward Competition has been helping interactive professionals promote themselves, their companies, and their best work to the outside world.

The new Avantgarde website is actually three websites in one:

1. First you will find the corporate information site. This area has all of Avantgarde’s updated information, a new portfolio area, and a collection of new clients and updated case studies. These case studies include 4 new stories about our work with Palm, the Timbuk2 store and Timbuk2 TED Bag and Zone Labs.

2. Next you will see the first of two blogs. The Press blog contains all of Avantgarde’s company and client announcements, press clippings, press releases and client quotes. This area will be updated regularly with new press, client announcements, site updates and portfolio additions.

3. Finally you will find the Avantgarde Journal. This area contains musing about our personal interests in music, fashion, food and design as well as any other areas that we might fancy.

I would love to hear what you think about our new look and content. When you get some time, send me an email to marcus@avantgarde.com, or just put up a blog comment on one of our entries.

If you want to keep on top of what’s new with Avantgarde and see what we are doing, you can either subscribe to our site RSS feed or sign up for our email list. The first fifty people to sign up for the email feed will get a copy of our recently released limited edition double CD: Avantgarde // Swayzak Presents Serieculture.

- Mark Dwight, CEO, Timbuk2

– Allen Bush, Director of Carrier Marketing, Palm and Director of Worldwide Communications Handspring