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In just over 2 weeks, over 21,000 readers signed up to our Facebook page featuring links to a lot more goodies we don't publish here - along with a further 21,500 on Twitter. Stay in the know by receiving our free weekly newsletter which reaches over 110,000. Because being connected makes you so much more interesting.

It's incredibly rare for one individual to achieve major success in two different creative or business fields in the one lifetime. Just ask Madonna, who, while being an indisputable icon of pop music has failed dismally in her attempts to move into movies, on both the acting and directing fronts. If Madonna, with all of her resources, contacts and indefatigable energy couldn't pull it off, then no one could. Her experience was a warning to all super-successful geniuses out there - be content with the success you do have, don't bother trying to conquer the world outside of your own walls.

Which is why we had seriously low expectations for Tom Ford's debut in the film world, as the director of A Single Man. How could Ford, who had pulled off one of the greatest fashion reinventions in history with Gucci (and consequently shaped the dominant style of a decade), possibly do it again, in a totally new and notoriously difficult medium such as film. Most people regarded Ford's move into film as a vanity project; one that if actually realized would be all style and no substance, a glorified TV commercial of beautiful people.   

Well. He proved us all wrong. Ford, it appears, is one of those rare people who can transfer their genius. A Single Man, starring Colin Firth and Julianne Moore, has been lauded by critics. W magazine called it "...poignant, stunningly realized tale of loss and long."  Screen International heaped similar praise, "Tom Ford gets it spectacularly right,” while Variety deemed it  “an impressive helming debut.”  

The film, adapted from the 1964 novel by Christopher Isherwood,  tells the story of a college professor played by Firth, who is confronted by the sudden and tragic death of his long time partner.  Since the movie's premiere in September at the Venice Film Festival (where it received a 10-minute standing ovation and the best actor prize for Firth, who is now the subject of major Oscar buzz), it has enjoyed acclaim at most of the world's major film festivals. It will be interesting to see what it does at the box office, upon its opening in the US in December. We expect to see Madonna, front row, taking notes. - Laura Demasi

Much has been said about the state of Dubai since its lightning speed of development almost ground to a halt, thanks to the global financial crisis. What, everyone is wondering, will come of Brand Dubai?

The Cool Hunter Platinum team has visited Dubai regularly over the last few years and on our most recent trip we asked ourselves the same question. Aside from the fact that Dubai was (and still is) trying to cram 100 years of development into less than two decades - the making of Dubai marks one of the most audacious and epic branding exercises undertaken in modern times. The task, to transform a Middle Eastern port into an ultra-modern global financial, business and cultural centre, has been attacked with gusto, to say the least, funded by incredibly deep local pockets. Like a new brand of soft drink, the marketers approached Dubai like a product and brought it to life.

The seemingly unending supply of money sparked an unspoken competition between developers and business leaders to create the most ostentatious - biggest, tallest, widest et al - of absolutely anything, not least the 'super' buildings, created by international star-architects, all vying for 'icon' status. More than anything, this was the cornerstone of Brand Dubai. Which worked quite well for a while. And then the world changed. The bubble burst and everything that Dubai stood for - overt displays of wealth and conspicuous consumption fell dramatically out of vogue. 

So where to now? We wondered, looking around at all of the unfinished skyscrapers on a recent trip.

Like a soft drink brand that has misjudged its market, Dubai needs a 're-brand' to reposition itself - that much is certain. The world doesn't like the flavor or texture of Dubai anymore, so R&D needs to go back to the drawing board.

Snapping at its heels are other centres in the region, such as Qatar, which appears to have learned from Dubai's mistakes. It too has dizzyingly deep pockets but appears to be taking the path of relative restraint. Which, in a world still reeling from the GFC, is totally on-brand right now. - Laura Demasi

We're getting ready to launch the real estate portal of TCH next month - The Cool Hunter Living, an uber-luxe real estate listings portal which connects vendors to a discerning, hard-to-reach market of high-income architecture and design aficionados.

For the first time, The Cool Hunter Living gives vendors access to this hard-to-reach market. The site also offers vendors an unparalleled opportunity to “position” their properties amongst the best and most luxurious in the world, endorsed by the highly-credible voice of The Cool Hunter, which has become a global authority on design.



The Cool Hunter Living offers technology savvy agents and vendors a completey new way to market their properites in a “designer” online environment, unlike other ‘real estate’ sites which are pitched at a mainstream audience and offer low value aesthetics in terms of site design.

TCH Living showcases properties in an unparalleled design-led, online-editorial environment positioned amongst the world's great architecture and design. Properties will be hand picked by our editorial team. For pricing, more info - contact bill@thecoolhunter.net
 


We'll also be adding rentals and commercial properties, so next time you find yourself in a new city setting up an office and home, you'll have to look no further than TCH Living - a gateway to inspiring design you live in.

Follow us on Twitter and subscribe to our weekly newsletter, because being in the know makes you so much more interesting.

TCH wins best culture blog for 2007 & 2008!

It's official. We are proud to announce that we have won the Best Culture Blog category at the Weblog Awards for 2008. We are thrilled to take out the prize, our second, after also winning the same category at last year's awards.



A huge thank you to all of our very progressive and active readers who voted for us. We thank you for supporting us. We look forward to continuing to inform and inspire you with our finds.



Pics via TCH Platinum

Cool hunting, we've discovered, has an interesting side effect. Each week we receive excited emails from the creatives, designers, architects and entrepreneurs we have featured on the site reporting massive spikes in traffic on their websites and an avalanche of international enquires from agencies, retailers and other potential customers wanting to know how they can get their hands on their work. Most report being inundated with enquiries from the international print media - major magazines and newspapers who rely on The Cool Hunter and other great blogs to find content for their pages.

It's all part of the Blog effect, lead by the Bloguls (blog mogul). The Bloguls have revolutionized the global media and the practice of journalism. Print can no longer compete, in terms of reporting information first. By the time newspapers and magazines hit the news-stands their content is already old news. Bloggers are setting media agendas and have become a crucial resource for print journalists, who rely on them to supply raw, uncensored, immediate information. We experience this first-hand every day when we receive emails from major publications asking us for high res images and more information on posts, which we see covered in their pages weeks later.

The world's most powerful mastheads, such as the Vogues, Vanity Fairs, Wallpapers and New York Times' of the world - have had to accommodate the increasingly influential Bloguls, with whom they now compete for advertising dollars as growing slices of marketing budgets are being funnelled into the blogosphere.

Google validates the Bloguls' influence. As just one example, our recent post on the new W Hotel in Hong Kong ranks as one of the top three posts on the property, just below the site Starwood Hotels that owns W. This means that when anyone in the world does a Google search on W Hong Kong, the very first review they see is ours. The bottom line is that blogs reach more people than print media.

Here at The Cool Hunter, we are happy to report that much of the benefit of our influence as an information source flows straight back to the people and brands we feature. For the past four years we've endeavoured to bring you the most inspiring stuff from across the globe and we are thrilled that the exposure we have given up-and-coming creatives and designers has helped launch careers, build media profiles or taken their businesses to a whole new global level.  

We thought we'd share some of these stories with you from a selection of random posts.



Within 48 hours of being featured in this post Amsterdam-based architecture and interior design group i29 was flooded with emails from design publications around the world including Frame Mag (Netherlands), Monitor Mag (Russia) Elle Decoration (Romania) CASE da Abitare (Italy), LOFT publications (Spain) BOB magazine (Korea), GULF interiors (Dubai) De Architect (Netherlands), ONoffice (UK) Cover Magazine (Venezuela), Sisustajalehti (Finland) Vivenda (Netherlands) Maru Magazine (Korea) and plenty of other print media and numerous design blogs.





Dutch architects and interior designers Uxus recieved a "tenfold" increase in traffic to their website after we featured their project Merus Winery in California. Uxus was flooded by queries from magazines around the world, including Wallpaper (UK), Noblese Mag (Korea), Marie Claire (Brazil), GQ India, Casa Da Abitare (Italy) FX Mag (UK), Absolute Marbella (Spain), Home Journal Mag (Hong Kong), ID Mag (USA), The Shorlist (UK), Future Laboratory (UK) and many more.





"I have received tons of inquiry e-mails from all over the world with regard to my collection after your feature. Several people ordered hats. I assume the order volume would have been quite a bit higher, though, had my online shop been up already.
 
It has been interesting to see that the inquiries also came from very far away places – Mexico, Argentina, Australia, Korea, Israel (in addition to the US, UK, Belgium, etc.). Since I have had a lot of good press in Europe (especially the UK) and in the US and UK for instance through the publications in the respective Vogues I was quite used getting mails and orders from Europe and the US. But before your feature I had definitely fewer attention from the aforementioned other areas.
 
In total, the visitors on my page are up by 100-200% at the moment". Rike Feurstein



"For the month after we were written about in thecoolhunter.net, I watched the history of Europe unfold in my inbox. At the time we only had UK shipping enabled, and I was getting emails every day: he said 'How can you ship to England but not Germany?' and then 'You ship to Germany but not Poland?!' Now we’re in Luxembourg and the Czech Republic and Slovenia. We just enabled shipping to Colombia." Andy Dunn - Bonobos Founder



"Being on The Cool Hunter has resulted in a handful of opportunities - the NYTimes being one of them. After my work was posted on the site and I was commissioned to design an image for the cover of New York Times real estate magazine. My exposure on The Cool Hunter has allowed me to quit my day job." Andy Gilmore



"It’s because thanks too The Cool Hunter I’ve been featured in over 50 magazines that can be viewed on my website under editorials on the information page. The lights even ended up in Argentinean Playboy! Along that I also have generated many jobs within Australia, many o/s enquiries and an actual job in San Francisco.
 
I’m about to move out of my studio in my garage into a real studio which allows me to employ staff, too as business is growing fast and I desperately need more space as well as extra hands. So I can’t begin to tell you how much I thank you for making me famous!" Volker Haug



"The opportunities that thecoolhunter.net feature has provided me are beyond what I could have ever imagined. Not only did it kick start my career as an artist, but it did so almost overnight. I’m a graphic artist for network TV as my day job and fine art was solely a hobby. The day the feature came out I literally woke up, looked at my phone and had about 100 emails asking for information about the piece.  Within a couple of weeks the stats for my website showed over 300 other websites linking to me and nearly a half million visitors to my site from over 60 countries. 

I was written up in a number of international publications and was offered paid corporate speaking engagements such as at Disney animation. I just completed my first solo gallery show but have also had my artwork featured at 2 additional art galleries in group exhibitions. Additionally, I am working on commissioned pieces for international buyers all of whom found me on thecoolhunter.net. Currently my art is being considered for a feature film in which it would appear in a high end home. I am also about to show some pieces in homes for sale in the 10 million dollar plus price range.

There are no words I can use to express my gratitude for the exposure that you have provided for me." Matt Bilfield, artist



"Being featured on The Coolhunter has certainly increased awareness and understanding of Aesop to a very appropriate and progressive audience. Posts have resulted in communication with Case Da Abitare, Harpers Bazaar, Virgin Blue Voyeur, Surface, DIDD (industry), GDR (industry), A4 (Poland), Attitude (Portugal), BMW Magazine (Germany). Belle (Australia), Marie Claire (Australia), Cubes (Singapore) too many to list." Indi Davis - Aesop



Pretty Beach House has been inundated with queries following the distribution of your newsletter and post - I can honestly say it’s one of the best ever results we have seen from the publication of an article. Kate Pascoe Squires - Mark Patrick Agency

 

The web's most read culture, architecture and design site will soon launch in early 09, The Cool Hunter Living, an uber-luxe real estate listings portal which connects vendors to a discerning, hard-to-reach market of high-income architecture and design aficionados.

Since its inception in 2004, thecoolhunter.net has amassed a global readership consisting of close to 1 million unique visitors a month who visit the site for the absolute latest in innovation and inspiration in all disciplines of design - from the most awe-inspiring architecture to the coolest new artists and products. 

The site's subscriber list reads like a who's-who of the international design, media, fashion, architecture and publishing industries. For the first time, The Cool Hunter Living gives vendors access to this high end market. The site also offers vendors an unparalleled opportunity to "position" their properties amongst the best and most luxurious in the world.



Also, in 09, we'll launch The Cool Hunter Hotel booking service, an online store, global job lists, Cool Hunter TV, magazine, retail stores and some major offline events. We’re eager to see our efforts translated into major global markets such as India, China, Japan, Singapore, Italy, Brazil and more. STAY TUNED!

New site designed by TCH Design

The World's Coolest Hotel Rooms - the first in a series of the cool hunter-branded books has just been published by Harper Collins Publishers (US). Next in the line will be The World's Coolest Houses, The World's Most Creative Work Environments, The World's Most Innovate Retail Stores, The World's coolest kids spaces/playgrounds and a few other special book projects.