Most of us are guilty (or unashamedly proud) of collecting something or other. I was recently told of a theory that the more technology advances, the more we have to make up for it by surrounding ourselves with tactile, non technological objects. Maybe there's a shred of truth in that. However, what is deemed worthy of collection by one man, is considered a big load of old rubbish by another. And if this wasn't the case, what a boring place the world would be!

Alessandro Esteri of Italy-based company Hand Made Group has made a collection of what most of us would undoubtedly deem to be rubbish into a small book. Just for fun, you understand. At first glance it appears to contain poems, one per page...

but closer inspeciton reveals that each ‘poem’ is, in fact, the text from a spam email – you know, one of those ones designed to encourage feelings of inadequacy in men. Well, I guess there was a visual clue in the front cover design...

One of our favourite 'poems' from the book:

Nights of Love

Your nights of love could be much
happier and longer…
No doubt girls adore massive cocks.

How poetic.

While we would imagine that this volume isn't a contender for a title such as 'poetry anthology of the year', it does make you think about the amount of absolute tosh floating round cyberspace. Does anyone really respond to those 'bigger-dick' emails? They're so predictable and monotonous. And er, text-based. Do they have any real impact on a real market? And where, oh where do these companies get their copywriters from?

Jeeesh...

Design studio Airside 'remixed' a typical viagra type spam (for inclusion in a Creative Review 'remix' mailout produced last year) to give the 'bigger dick' message more impact. Some of you may recall the image...

In terms of grabbing your attention, a little illustration certainly does go a long (no pun intended) way.