Roll up! Roll up, for the Christmas Card Making Machine, a festive phantasmagoria brought to you by Wieden + Kennedy London and designer Joel Gethin Lewis. The magical Machine is to be found in our Hanbury Street window, delighting crowds and astonishing the crowned heads of Europe.

The Machine will permit anyone who so chooses, to fashion a pictorial likeness of themselves, which it will then, using the wonders of science, conjoin with a seasonal tableau. Said tableau can then be viewed via that marvel of the modern age: The Interweb. It is situated here:  christmascardmakingmachine.com

The pictures can then be printed in cardular form, affording glad tidings of great joy to all.

Delighted to see that the subtitle of the IPA's new book Brand Immortality references the old Vulcan valediction 'Live long and prosper'.

However, the wisdom of Spock doesn't appear to be acknowledged within the book, so perhaps the reference was not made consciously. Fascinating. The IPA book looks as if it has some good stuff in it but I haven't read it yet.

Meanwhile, for the real deal on how Star Trek relates to the ad industry, see the classic 'All I needed to know about advertising I learned from watching Star Trek' by Dave Marinaccio. It seems to have been reprinted as 'All I really needed to know I learned from watching Star Trek', presumably to broaden its appeal beyond the possibly small overlap of trekkies and people in advertising who read business books about the industry. In fact, that could just be me and Renny Gleeson. But it's full of useful stuff like why you should never wear red to a pitch and how to base your mission statement on that of the starship Enterprise.