Posts Tagged ‘Design’
Really good stereotypers
Recently, I’ve been working on a minority-focused campaign, and it’s done nothing but made me ask lots of questions. Now, for a typical white guy working in the ad industry, I am blessed to both work for a minority-owned firm and have very candid relationships with several black people I work with, which means they will give me nothing but honest feedback on whether or not an idea is treading too close to that mythical line of offensiveness. And for our whole creative team, that’s an invaluable asset. But this process has made me analyze the way other brands flail in their attempts to market to segments by ethnography instead of demography. All that’s to say: I don’t think anybody is getting minority-targeted marketing right.
Club & Rubber
A few weeks ago, somebody left hard evidence of a good time in our parking lot. Now, I know what you’re thinking: ad people. However, based on our proximity to the local high school, university and retirement community, I think it was somebody looking to do something outside other watchful eyes.
Basically, we found an expended prophylactic right next to a shattered bottle of Canadian Club. And while the scene looked like evidence of some recent debauchery, I couldn’t help but notice how awesome the shattered bottle looked. The patina of the glass. The perfectly preserved type. The contrast against the newly blackened asphalt. It seemed like so much more than a broken bottle, but a statement of the man behind the bottle. And since I’m on it, I do love the long history of Canadian Club’s advertising. Especially the new stuff. And the old stuff.
So, I snapped a picture to preserve this iconic moment in time. Ok, actually I snapped about 4 pics, this being the best one:
So, Matt Lane Harris, being the lover of all things aesthetic that he is, took it upon himself to turn this simple photo of a broken bottle into a pretty awesome gig poster for Blue Mountain.
Here’s the full gallery:
Two of my favorite things: helvetica and moleskine
Ask anybody I work with, and they’ll tell you just how much I’ve grown to love type in the past few months. This little journal is probably the apex of that love. These babies have been out for almost 6 months now, but that doesn’t mean they’ve gotten any less awesome. There’s no better concepting book out there, and what creative isn’t an absolute sucker for really clean, chunky Swiss design. It would be one thing if they were just well designed, but they just photograph so well.
The only problem is they’re only available from Moleskine Asia.
Change: Redux
Well, if you viewed my first deck, scrap it and check out this one instead. The original presentation was given to a room full of PR folks concerning the blending of PR and design. This one was supposed to be the same presentation give to AdFed, only I found out the night before that my topic changed. Snap.
Instead of just rehashing an old topic, I spent most of my evening retooling the presentation to talk about the changing nature of our industry and where things are headed. I think it does a much better job of reaching conclusions and makes far better recommendations as to what we can do differently to more rapidly evolve.
FFFFound is on the verge of becoming NSFW
What creative mind out there doesn’t love to peruse the annals of FFFFound to get inspiration for a project or just to see what’s pretty cool in the world of design. But for the scads of creatives that sit in open environments, that daily ritual has become increasingly risky. Or should I say risque. Don’t get me wrong: I can respect artful photography as much as the next guy. What’s more beautiful than the human form? However, there has been quite the addition of things that I would consider, and most inter-office personnel would agree, to be nothing but very artistically done porn. Sure, the lighting is perfect, the styling is incredibly rad and the shadows couldn’t illuminate that subject matter any better. However, that subject is often nekidness. Hey, to each his or her own. If that’s the kind of site you wanna check out, go ahead. Jump on into that addiction. But, please don’t inundate me with awesomely photographed russian porn when all I want to do is check out some really awesome hand type or package design.
Say what you will about his politics, but this dude has quite the logo.
It’s my job to recognize good design when I see it. And in the world of politics, finding any smart design is like finding a coelacanth off the coast of Madagascar. Coelacanth.
Seriously, if a candidate’s logo doesn’t feature at least 3 (preferably 5) stars and the color navy blue, than you can forget it. Just look at the previous campaigns of John Kerry, W, Hillary Clinton and the wily Ron Paul. All have lots of blue, lots of stars and an even heavier does of mediocrity.
But B.H. Obama is another matter. It’s not the best logo I’ve ever seen, but it is by far the best political logo on the market. It’s both symbolic and simple; versatile and iconic. It looks just as good as the first letter of the candidate’s last name as it does in a simple square on the back of a Toyota Prius. It says American without relying on the trite star/navy blue combo that everybody else has done since Eisenhower. The design community has given it mixed reviews overall, but in the context of everything else, it’s outstanding.
Contrast it with the militaristic emblem of the McCain campaign. Dark blue. Power font. Single star. Amazingly predictable. I really can’t fault the McCain camp for going with a mark like this, but I wish they would have consulted someone outside one of the three agencies in Washington, KC and Charlotte that do all the work for the Republican party. It’s hard to attract new voters to an old dude by rehashing a logo straight out of the 1950s. And not in a good, Paul Rand kind of way. Not that a logo should do the attracting, but it should communicate something other than “I have military experience.”