This was another spot brought to my attention today. It runs a little long but I think it is just brilliant. It builds and gets better as it goes on, not to mention how amazingly it moves from scene to scene.
A writer I am currently working with, Ashley Billings, has been alerting me to a lot of great television spots that escaped my attention in recent past. I know this spot is old but it is just so brilliant. It makes me laugh every time I watch it. Thanks for sharing the laughs Ashley.
If you have seen a television commercial that blew your mind at one point or made you stand up and ask, ‘My God, who the hell did that?’
Chances are, you were watching the work produced by one of the heavy hitters at Gorgeous. Some of the best Directors producing for broadcast call Gorgeous home.
All of their work is either hilarious or spectacular. Also, it is probably worth noting before you visit the site, that they also introduce themselves as cuddly little kittens.
Comments Off on Radiohead – MTV Exit FoundationAdvertising
An Australian Ad Agency has paired with Radiohead to create a video about raising awareness toward free trade, human trafficking and child labor. It’s a brutally simple but amazingly effective concept that is sadly also very very true. Things like this are going on around the world every day and for what? Are lifestyles come at too much of a cost. They just aren’t sustainable and to see something like this is heartbreaking.
It’s definitely food for thought in an age of rampantly destructive consumption.
Comments Off on Guy Ritchie for Nike FootballAdvertising
Director and lucky-ass Madonna husband, Guy Ritchie just directed this new spot for Nike Football. Some of the biggest soccer stars in the world appear in the first-person-perspective video. If you are a fan of soccer, as I am, it is about as close as you can get to living the dream for just a few brief minutes. Fantastic idea. I can’t believe something like this has never been done before. Brilliant.
Wow, I have to say this Skittle ad made me laugh out loud. The agency responsible for it is TBWA in conjunction with the production company MJZ. The abused-pinata co-worker is just a hilarious concept. Awesome.
Every once in a while you see a website that makes your jaw drop. That is what happened when I visited Kashiwa Sato’s website. I also almost had a seizure but sometimes seizure-inducing is a good thing. The site reminds me of the older work of Yugop.
Site aside, there is also a wealth of great work at the website. It comes almost unexpectedly because the strangeness of the site that hosts it. There is almost a strange push-pull juxtaposition going on. Sato is a rare breed however, sacrificing his identity for the integrity of the project and massaging style to solve the problem put to him by the client. That is the definition of a good designer.
Sato was born in 1965 and graduated in 1989 from Tama Art University with a degree in graphic design. After a stint at Japan’s second largest ad agency, Hakuhodo Inc., he went on to establish Samurai studio in 200.
Since then his major work has consisted of television commercials, commissioned work for music, product development, visual identity, branding and creative direction and art direction for every kind of client under the red sun.
He is also a published author. His shelf is home to almost every award the Japanese ad community has to offer. To top all of this off, he also gives back as a professor at Meiji Gakuin University.
Jack Ryan Schuler is now a Denver resident with a book full of confident and effective design. He graduated from the Art Center College of Design. Following graduation he lived in a loft above skid row in downtown Los Angeles while working for Shimoda Design Group. Shimona is an architecture firm that has done commercial interior work for Lord’s Couture, MTV and Rolex. He almost became a back-up guitarist at one point for Kelly Osbourne. He is in Denver now looking for an agency or design firm to call home and I would imagine he is also seeking freelance in the interim. Visit his site and send the guy an email. We don’t want to lose him.
Comments Off on Wexley School for GirlsAdvertising
Ah, what to say about this rare and precious beast? Hmm. I doth wonder? Wow, doth is a real word, my spell checker didn’t even catch it. Who knew.
Essentially, Wexley School for Girls is an advertising agency, and equally as essentially it is a group of the biggest wise-asses ever to run the game. Boy do they run it well. There is so much funny and incredibly smart work in their book that it is kind of daunting. It’s not the kind of work that a lot of overly aesthetic types will appreciate it. A lot of it appears almost ‘underproduced’ in that regard, but lovingly so. Don’t be fooled by this because intelligence and humor permeate everything in their book down to the core. Their broadcast and viral work is a study in low budget meets high concept. If you are in advertising, it will have you asking, “Shit, why didn’t we do that?”
The crazy sexy space cats at Wexley believe that anything can be advertising depending on how it’s thrown out their into popular culture. Traditional media, design, packaging, video games, PR generating lunacy, short films and even an occasional squirrel race. Nothing is off limits and everything deserves thought.
They may not be what I typically post, which is usually pretty and gratifying design, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t amazingly talented and deserving of every accolade possible. They are the kind of agency I would kill to work for. I would imagine you can hear laughter throughout the day in their office and I bet a lot of it is coming from the clients and not just the creatives. Spend some time checking out their broadcast work because it is pure pleasure. If you like your humor dry with a side of smart ass, then their blog will send you through the roof.
Comments Off on 1950s – 1970s AdvertisingAdvertising
A coworker of mine was sifting through this Flickr collection earlier this week. I noticed some really interesting images flashing across his screen and inquired as to what he was looking at and he said someone had emailed him a link to this really interesting collection of 1950’s through 70’s advertising.
The account claims that you can find Posters, Magazine Advertisements, Brochures, Booklets, Publishing, Calendars, Greeting Cards, Packaging, Logotypes, Trade-Marks, Letterheads, Exhibitions, Show-windows… Graphic design, illustrations and printed artwork in general all from the the 50’s and 60’s era. It’s an interesting study in design and there is definitely a bit of inspiration to be found.
This is an interestingly accomplished little piece of advertising. I think it is well worth a post as well since it is also thought provoking. No need for a lengthy post on this one. So go take your hearing test now.
San Francisco based Art Director Bryan Denman and designer Ryan Teuscher built a special flickr search bar specifically for the creative community. According to Denman, “It pulls in a flickr feed at speed (w/ some other tricks) so that an AD can quickly scour the site as a source for reference material.”
In the image above you can see what was yielded by my search for ‘typography’. You can try it out yourself at Compfight.com. It really is impressive how fast it compiles the images and it even has filters for images licensed by Creative Commons. If you occasionally have to hunt down imagery like I do for use in comps for ads, it could really come in handy. Flickr has a lot of large image as well that will look a hell of a lot better than a stock photo blown up to 20 times it’s size with a giant ugly watermark right over the middle. Thanks Bryan.
Kessels Kramer AKA | KK Outlet is an advertising/creative agency hybrid devoted to delivering original creative solutions to aid in the development of brands, products and content. The ‘outlet’ represents the different aspects of work they deliver from advertising, to product design, to graphic design and publishing. They believe that creative ideas can come from any and every discipling where advertising is an important component but that strong ideas for brands can thread through many mediums for maximum effectiveness to leave a lasting impression.
They also showcase artist, designers and photographers in their own gallery where they sell products and books as well. They are based in Amsterdam where they employ nearly 40 people who work for a broad local and worldwide client base.
There is some powerful work in their portfolio created for the likes of Diesel, Absolut and MTV Japan.
One of my favorite new blogs that discusses topics relevant to design and advertising is Ideas on Ideas. The site is run by Eric Karjaluoto from the web-branding agency Smash Lab. The site serves as his soap box to espouse his views about design, brands and the experience of working in the sometimes foggy ether between them. The site is high on intellect and low on bullshit. If you are looking for pretty pictures, like a lot of the ones you will see here at my blog, you will be disappointed. If however, you want to open up your brain and engage in discussing the strange world we designers inhabit, you will find comfortable harbor at Ideas on Ideas. I hope to begin generating similar discussions here at Changethethought in the future and the writings of Karjaluto have provided an impetus for that ambition. I thank him for that and plan on making some adjustments accordingly.
A particular post that was a standout for me on a personal level, as it forced me to address some of the problems in my own work, was his post on the role of ‘style’ in design. The post is aptly titled, ‘Fuck Style‘. I don’t think it would be hard for anyone to imagine which way the essay veers on the topic taking the title into account but it is well worth every second it takes to read the article. It is food for thought for any young designer caught up in the style saturated universe we currently inhabit.
There has been some fantastic work poured from the minds behind Formavision. Since it’s inception in 2003 they have generated campaigns for brands like Coca-Cola and Diesel. The word, ‘impressive’ doesn’t really do justice to what all they have done, but it comes close. Spend the time it takes to look through their work, it is worth it and the browsing is accompanied by enlightening interviews with the people behind the creative.
Good ideas, solid design and overall beautiful work sprinkle the portfolio and fill the clean intuitive website of Minneapolis-based Advertising Agency/Design Firm Mono.
A fellow Art Director at Cactus, Matt Chiabotti got an idea to make this little Valentines Day video for the Lottery and it is pretty funny. So, consider it my Happy Valentines day card to you vis-a-vis Matt.
