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.
Bleed is a graphic design agency based out of Oslo, Norway. They were established in 2000 by a group of like-minded individuals with backgrounds in graphic design, advertising and technology. Bleed’s work no spans art projects for exhibition, branding work, as well as the design book Nordic Youngblood published by the German design publishing company Die Gestalten Verlag. They are also now running their own concept store simply titled, ‘One’. They employ 13 people full time with a broad mixture of cultural backgrounds and expertise in varying disciplines. Since their inception they have become one of the most awarded agencies in Norway and their work no spans the globe.
Seymourpowell was founded in 1984 by Richard Seymour and Dick Powell. They are now a team of 65 strong in London. Companies seek out Seymourpowell from around the world to help them answer three basic questions: What should we do? Why do we do it? How do we do It? They provide the answers through; ethnographic user research, brand and design strategy, trends, innovation process, transportaion design, product design and development, packaging and interactive.
They are fueled by a passion for all things creative and an absolute commitment to the cause of creating better products. They believe design is about making things better. Better for people. Better for business and better for the world.
Now that is a philosophy I can get behind.
Multistorey was established in 1997 by Saint Martins graduates Harry Woodrow and Rhonda Drakeford. Their alma matter left a recognisable stamp on the way they approach their work and helped them develop a blue print for how to approach a potential creative project. They have no discernible style and seem to prefer to let the clients do the talking when it comes to their work. They aren’t afraid to experiment in their work and enjoy using other tool and formats when it comes to their creative process. They are located in London where they are still working hard on generating original advertising and graphic design.
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.
According to their website: Multi-Adaptor is a vibrant design studio, run by creative, forward-thinking, inquisitive and ambitious personalities – people who love what they do.
Their tiered approach to branding for their clients across the digital to print divide has allowed them to build a portfolio of show-stopping work.
Saturday is a creative agency that offers branding and advertising from concept through execution. The agency is the brainchild of the Swedish duo Erik Tortensson and Jens Grede. The idea driving their unique philosophy was to birth an agency that serves clients who believe that aspirational design is a commercial advantage. Four years after it’s inception it has crafted brilliant work for clients like North Face, H&M, Kurt Geiger and Jenny Packham to name a few.
The, apparently, laser-etched packaging for North Face above is an absolutely gorgeous piece of iconic design.
Marcus Walters is a UK based designer who has hand crafted simple iconic designs and illustrations using analog techniques such as collage for the like of BBC, Sony, Orange, Levis, Amnesty International, Volvo and various others. It appears as though many of his contacts have come by the way of the advertising agency Mother in London. He also art directs issues of Cult Magazine and The Illustrated Ape. His artwork has been published the world over in design books and he has exhibited his collage work in London, Paris and New York.
I am fairly sure I have posted their work before on previous versions of my blog but they are worth a repost. The Peepshow Collective is a Design/Ad Agency based out of the UK who have a portfolio full of top-shelf work for clients like Perrier and Coca-Cola. Their website perfectly matches their name as well.
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.
This Ain’t No Disco is a blog archiving the interiors of Design Firms, Ad Agencies and the like from across the globe. It is a great study in the environments containing our strange little business. If you are trapped in a cubicle somewhere and want to daydream about being somewhere that not only creates for their clientele, but provides an environment to nurture that creativity out of their employees, then it is a great site to spend some time on. On the flipside, if you are working in one of these great places, you might want to send in some photos of your office, so the rest of us have something to salivate over.
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.
There is some fascinating work on display from the no doubt highly intelligent minds behind Us Design Studio. The British trio, comprised of Christopher Barrett, Edward Heal and Luke Taylor founded their studio last year and have already amassed a body of thought provoking work.
Well my verdict is in. Quite a game by the way even though I am the world’s worst sports fan. I am a nerdy artist to the core, so I watch football about once a year and that is usually the superbowl, since naturally being in advertising, I like to watch the ads. Anyway, my favorite by far this year was the talking eTrade baby. There were two separate eTrade baby spots, but the one where the kid pukes was the funniest. A close second was Tide’s talking stain spot. You can watch that spot as the second one down but there is a little plug at the beginning for a contest Tide is running. Stick around for the spot though because it is pretty damned funny. The last would be the FedEx giant carrier pigeons spot. The premise was pretty lame, but it did have some good moments, and you’ve got to give credit where it is due for special effects. You can watch that video here, on MySpace but consider yourself forewarned, it loads very slow. The spot starts off a little slow, but you forgive it in the end after giant carrier pigeon havoc breaks out on the street.
Wow, I can’t believe I haven’t seen this before but a friend sent this to me today and I was highly entertained. It is a great source of inspiration for those of us in the ad business who enjoy inserting humor as well. The site ‘Very Funny Ads‘ features funny T.V. spots from around the world including spots declared ‘too racy’ to run on American television. Those are probably spots that have things like boobs in them instead of bullets.
My Creative Director and all around diplomatic nice guy Norm Shearer has granted an interview with the local ad-speak blog, The Denver Egotist. He speaks about our elusive Ad Agency, Cactus. He also talks a lot about his personal philosophy on managing a creative team, which was enlightening to me on a personal note. We are a rough and tumble, super-determined crowd at Cactus and Norm often finds himself in the middle of the rumble. It’s a special kind of chemistry that keeps us all going and a unique brand of glue that holds us together. Each of us is, in no uncertain way, our own individual, and that goes from account side all the way up through creative. The thing that keeps us together is the respect we have for each other. We often agree to disagree. We also measure our success by the end result we achieve for our clients, not our shelf of awards. A lot of people find that hard to believe and think they smell something disengenuine but that is the truth. It is really the only ultimate way to achieve job satisfaction in our industry and that may not seem important right out of school, but it sure as hell becomes important after a few years of practice. Of course you always insert a certain amount of your own agenda and if you do receive recognition from your peers, you won’t turn it down, but client’s could care less if you win some award they have never heard of. They want to see the line move on the graph in an upward trend. We really get in there with them too because good advertising stems from good strategy and it is pretty damn hard to move the needle without weaving them together.
Norm addresses all of these issues and more. So, if you want to know more about what is going on at my day job, head over to the Egotist and check it out.
