First a MINI, then a bag.

Under the style-assured guidance of Ilaria Venturini Fendi, elements from prototypes of the new MINI Roadster were combined with discarded colour samples and other materials to create fashion designer bags made by Italian craftsmen. This capsule collections comprises week-end and city bags for women and men. The wide-ranging materials from the MINI Roadster provided an extensive source of inspiration. In some styles, the soft yet robust seat leather formed the outer shell of the bag, while the canvas from the soft-top was often decorated by a mosaic of small metal plates coming from the colour samples of the car body painting. Sunvisors hide make up mirrors while from the car interiors, handles become a special detail in a tiny proportioned bag. Reclaiming unused materials, defective or no longer fit for their intended purpose, or searching for stocks of end-of-lines and vintage materials that may change their function in the design of a new object, has been Ilaria Venturini Fendi’s creative approach from CARMINA CAMPUS’ start. This perspective on materials is being increasingly shared beyond the fashion world, and MINI is embracing the practice that now goes by the name of “up-cycling”.

“For many years now, the BMW Group has been working with creative people from all manner of fields,” says Anders Warming, Head of MINI Design. “We are delighted to have found in Ilaria Venturini Fendi a designer who devotes her artistic powers above all to considerations of sustainability and up-cycling. For us these are key issues of the future which we are now addressing through this collaboration in customary MINI fashion”.

The CARMINA CAMPUS label.

The youngest daughter of Anna Fendi, and once herself Creative Accessories Director of the Fendissime young line as well as shoe designer for the legendary fashion house, Ilaria Venturini Fendi retired from the company some years ago to run an organic farm in Northern Rome. In 2006 she launched CARMINA CAMPUS, a label that specialises in making furniture, jewellery and bags from re-used and up-cycled materials – to the highest standards of design. “I’m very happy about this collaboration,” says Venturini Fendi. “It shows just how aware MINI is of the motor industry’s impact on the environment and that it is working towards change. For big brands like MINI in particular, up-cycling is an important issue. After all, this is where you will always get scrap material that is generally described as waste, but in fact can become part of a high-quality object.”

Local Singaporean band, SIXX, piled themselves into a MINI Cabriolet together with their instruments and took to the streets of Singapore, injecting a little fun into the local mundane daily commute. The MINI Traffic Jamming campaign’s success put Singapore on the MINI Map as the first local campaign to be aired on MINI TV.

The MINI Mob team met up with lead singer, Aarika Lee to find out more about her MINI Traffic Jamming experience.

How did the whole MINI Traffic Jamming project come about and what inspired it?

SIXX hit the streets some time last year with the intention of bringing a bit of the NY/London/Paris busking spirit back to Singapore. We wanted to do more than just perform along the busy streets; we wanted to push the boundaries by going into MRT stations, buses and trains and entertaining commuters on their weekend train ride!

The initiative was a huge success and generated quite a bit of buzz. When MINI Singapore created the traffic jamming campaign, we were the band that came to mind!

What were your first thoughts when you first saw the car you’d be driving around in?

I was very excited that we’d be zipping around in a stylish MINI Cabriolet, but I was concerned about how Joe (Our drummer, he’s a big guy!) was going to fit in the back seat with his Djembe drum.

Turns out everyone managed to fit into that baby comfortably with our instruments.

You were on the road for quite a bit, how was your experience singing while cruising around in the MINI Cabriolet?

It was definitely different from anything we had ever done before. It wasn’t like a live show, and it wasn’t like our busking experiences. It was actually a lot more challenging trying to get people’s attention, by getting them to wind down their car windows and listen to what we were playing.

It was much easier grabbing the attention of pedestrians; we even went to a McDonald’s drive-thru and got the crew to sing along with us. That was awesome.

What do you personally like best about MINI?

I love how MINI dares to be adventurous and stays open-minded to do things out of the ordinary, like the MINI Traffic Jamming campaign for example, and their ‘BE’ campaign.

Which MINI model describes you best and why?

I think the MINI that best represents me would be the Mini Cooper S Cabriolet! It’s outdoorsy, fun and zippy! If you’re up to braving the wind in your hair and feeling the sun shine on your skin, it can only promise you an adventure ride. I love the idea of letting my hair down and leaving spontaneity in charge, and the Mini Cooper S Cabriolet gives off that exact energy!

What can we expect from you and SIXX in 2012?

2012 is looking like an exciting year for SIXX! We’re headed to France at the end of the month to be part of the Midem Festival in Cannes, right after we release our debut single Supersonic as well as more music throughout the rest of the year.

Personally, there are a couple of projects that I want to get my hands into as well so I’m excited for all that! It’s going to be a busy year, but it’s going to be a fun one! -

Catch Aarika and The Next Movement (a subsidiary of SIXX) live at these venues every week:

Monday: Wala Walas, Holland Village, 930pm-1am
Wednesday: Hard Rock Cafe, 830pm-12mn
Friday: CM-PB, Dempsey, 930pm-1am
Saturday: Balaclava, 930pm-1am

- The MINI Mob Team

Visit the official forum thread here to find out more! If you’re not already a member on our forum, well don’t be shy, it’s just the internet. Plus we won’t bite..promise! Join in on all the latest buzz and get to know other fellow Mobsters.

Enjoy!

The MINI Mob Team

Launched as part of Japan’s year end celebrations, fans snap pictures of themselves wearing bright-colored headphones that resemble the side mirrors of a MINI and then pair themselves up with their favorite models; the Coupe, Convertible, Countryman, Clubman or Cooper.

Fans can then share them on their facebook walls or even send them as online greeting cards. We wouldn’t be surprised if some people actually had them printed and framed!

Check out the app here

Wishing you and you a 2012 full of happiness and love,

The Mini Mob Team

Driven by the whole customizable MINI experience, the MINI Configurator has finally made its way from an interactive CD-ROM straight out of the MINI Habitat, to a Configurator website and now its very own app.

Choose between the various MINI models and enjoy customizing your dream MINI right down to the tiny details such as add-on accessories that help complete the entire look for you to marvel at.

Once you’re done, you can submit your master piece to your nearest MINI Dealer and Voila! Perfection is on its way.

The only problem is that the app is only available in Chinese, but that wouldn’t stop non Chinese speaking MINI fans from having a go at clicking about and having some fun with all the cool functions.

Check it out and download it from your App Store.

- The Mini Mob Team

Driving Excitement is the latest Mini Connected app for the iPhone and it measures all the major performance parameters and more.

The Condition Check lets you keep tabs on engine and exterior temps, fuel level and whether the Sport button has been engaged, while the Force Meter visualizes longitudinal and lateral acceleration. The new Digital Sports Instruments takes over the nav screen to a display coolant temperature gauge, along with horsepower, torque and engine revs. And by entering the Excitement mode, you’ve got automatic access to web radio and Dynamic Music to keep the tunes flowing during your flogging.

Article and Images courtesy of AutoBlog

Got your rolling pin out? Apron on? Let’s go! Making your very own gingerbread MINI takes just a few simple steps. Download our instructions, and follow the recipe to bake your Gingerbread MINI parts according to the template. Once you’ve put them all together, it’s time to get creative. Customizing your MINI is much like real life — make it personal! Get those ideas flowing — we’re thinking gumdrops for lights, chocolate sprinkles for tinted windows, sugar glaze for the mirrors and candy cane exhaust pipes … the possibilities are endless. And we want to see them all!

Article and Images courtesy of Mini Space

MINI UKs embarked their drivers on a journey like no other – by taking their cars on a trip to the moon!

Mini Lunatics is the creative brainchild of LIDA London that sports a futuristic and fun twist which adds on to the overall one-of-a-kind MINI experience.

By registering and entering your MINI’s mileage, users are then prompted to ‘launch’ their cars to the moon after which they’d be ‘fired into space’ and finally landing at the ‘space dock’ on the site’s landing page. The more miles it clocks, the further into ‘space’ it’ll travel into.

The campaign was further marketed on social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter as well as MINI Forum posts and social media updates to help drive traffic.

MINI also offered up to 15 prizes that included a family vacation to Cape Canaveral in Florida, should they manage to find the hidden clues scattered within the ‘space dock’.

MINI space cadets will have a blast with this one!

-The MiniMob Team

Image courtesy of The FWA

The MINI Coupé isn’t in the habit of sticking to the routine – it is embodied with that rare and inviolable adventurous spirit emblematic of the finest characters, both factual and fictional. Bonnie and Clyde, Huckleberry Finn, even Ferdinand Magellan all marched to the beat of their own drum. Call them renegades, pioneers, or willful upstarts — but don’t call them a bore. You came to know and love these figures through the epic stories that brought them to life, stories deserving of their grandeur. Likewise, we didn’t think the boisterous personality of the MINI Coupé would sit comfortably in just any car brochure. It needed to break rank and chart its own path.

Where other cars spill drab facts onto creased pamphlets at car dealerships, the new sales catalogue for the MINI Coupé introduces itself via the storytelling freedoms afforded by a graphic novel, ones you can pick up for yourself at your local dealership now. In it, you can follow the newest member of the MINI family through landscapes and cityscapes of all kinds, offering you a taste of the experiences sure to befall you once you get behind the wheel.

The MINI Coupé goes beyond being a getaway vehicle — it’s a daredevil in its own right, and it’s already seen some lively action on the adventure frontier. It’s harbored fugitives in Iceland, parachuted into a crowd of geriatrics in Hong Kong, and dashed through the extravagant”Carnival” in Rio. But traversing into the realm of illustration gives this classed-up go-kart an added dose of the fantastic as it explores its truly imaginative desire for travel.

In this unique world built both by pen and by state-of-the-art computer graphics, we get to see the MINI Coupé roam in a style all its own, creating a genre defying narrative. But the story didn’t write itself; this project took the collaborative efforts of two dedicated teams, and each attests to the satisfaction felt in seeing their visions squarely executed.

Where will your story be? Jump in and go find it.

Though you may feel swept clean away by the graphic novel’s full color and gripping story, don’t forget to check the MINI Coupé’s impressive stats! With 211 horses under the hood, an automatic rear spoiler, 75% more storage than its MINI Hatch cousin, and a wide variety of customizable features, you’ll be grateful this piece of literature isn’t a work of fiction. Care to see the catalogue in person? Just swing by your local dealership to check it out – it’s available now!

Who knows what kind of stories you might end up writing for yourself…

Article courtesy of Logan Woods from MINI Space

Read more detailed article here

Check out “MINI Maps” – an advergame using social networking and Google Maps – just created by MINI France.

The game lets you either create your own tracks (before inviting friends into the race) or join random challenges from around the world as you find them, and then race your friends over satellite images of the locations you choose.

Digital Buzz Blog believes that the MINI Maps campaign will ‘grab some serious traction’ due to the live social element of the game.

Try out MINI Maps on Facebook now. Race on

Article courtesy of The FWA