*travel related pun*
I bloody love a good print/press/whatever you can them ad. That moment flipping through a magazine when you can’t quite get past a page; you stop, turn the page and flip back to to take it all in. It’s just as good as that feeling walking past a bus stop, doing a double take and shuffling backwards to have another look. Maybe that’s just me and I’m more easily pleased/simple than I thought.
It’s why I absolutely love the ads below for Expedia with phrases made up from luggage tags. It’s so simple you can hardly believe it hasn’t been done before but that same simplicity makes me just sit and stare. Word on the street/Ben Kay’s blog is that the ads are limited run and have been made just to be entered into awards (where I imagined they’d do pretty well).
The Bon Voi Age ad is my favourite by far (despite the spelling). I actually kind of hate the ‘wish you were here’ one but thought it was worth including. You can see the rest on the Creative Review site.
a tribute to Coverjunkie
I like magazines more than is financially viable. On a recent trip I had about thirty pounds (£s and lbs) worth of magazines in my rucksack. Worst bit is that I probably read less than half the content, mostly flicking through reading a few features and perusing the glossy images. Being shamelessly attracted to magazine visuals over written content I’m a sucker for a great cover.
So in tribute to Coverjunkie here’s a rundown of the magazine content of my rucksack and a few I’ve got lying around. They’re in no way the best I’ve seen but they’re what I have access to.
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Vogue Italia
good or bad? : creepy good.
why is it good? : the ‘real’ face looks genuinely mask like (in a good way). good text distribution.
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Vogue Unique (Vogue Italia supplement)
good or bad? : pretty damn good.
why is it good? : this is what the Resident Evil movie could have been (that’s Milla Jovovich fyi).
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L’Uomo Vogue / Man Vogue
good or bad? : bad.
why is bad? : Shia La Beouf is pretty pants really. bad text colour and placement.
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The Art of Merino (L’Uomo Vogue supplement)
good or bad? : really, very good.
why is is good? : fantastic use of typography (and wool).
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iD
good or bad : really good.
why is it good? : Linda Evangelista.
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Wallpaper
good or bad? : fantastic.
why is it fantastic? : it’s the Virgin Mary, but not. modern day iconoclasm. #douchebag
graphic design
warning : the picture grid below is vaguely NSFW
I’m writing about the pictures below as an amazing piece of design. Yes, they’re advertisements and this is an adblog (I guess) but I don’t think they work that well as ads. Beyond the shock, and design, value they isn’t much happening at all.
At the risk of being crude, it’s probably the best use of a page spread that I’ve seen. It plays perfectly into the illusion and really makes you do a double take. The images are just as strong, if not stronger, however, as ‘flat’ digital images. I could be crazy but the images on the right are altogether more artistic and cerebral (yeh, I said it). As the campaign has been designed for print it’s pretty obvious why the distortion is always central. It would be great to see what they could do with moving it around a bit or using a horizontal break. I’m a big fan of this sort of skewed, hackneyed editing so I’d love to see what else they can do. I’d even like to see the distortion line even more exaggerated.
If you can’t work it out, and I don’t blame you, they’re for a lingerie ad. You probably need to click the images to really see what’s going on.
grin and bear it
There aren’t enough words for me to say how much I love this ad. It’s just got so much going for it that I think is just plain cool. With all the empty space on on the left hand side and not a product in sight it’s basically a massive ‘fuck you’ to advertising expectations. Pretty ballsy really.
Never have two fake polar bears looked so cool.
let The Good Times roll
Living in that part of England referred to as ‘Not London’ I’ve only just laid eyes on The Good Times. For those of you with puzzled expressions it’s a newspaper put together by The Church of London ‘celebrating’ January 16th, the most depressing day of the year. Geographic positioning meant the timing didn’t work out quite so well for me. I can assure you, however, that even on January 20th (a day not typically known for being depressing) it still raised a smile. It looks, and smells, great and is generally one of those lovely, nice ideas that is all nice and lovely. It also came in a very nice envelope (not shown).
I am particularly in love with the centrefold. That all sounds very suspect until I tell you it’s a ‘Puppy Pullout’. At that point, it sounds even more suspicious, right? It’s here that you meet ‘attention magnet’ Luna (the dog) who undergoes an afternoon of poochie pampering; all in the name of journalism. What a babe. Other highlights include a rather spiffing font (seen above in orange) and some nice robots.
In short, The Good Times = Good. We want more Good Times! oh, and more information here.
the nineteenth post of christmas
I’m back at home now and it kind of blows. There’s very little to see or do so I’m feeling pretty uninspired (and also like an absolute tool for writing that last sentence). This boredom provoked me to tidy up my old room which is a sign of absolute boredom if ever there was one. I haven’t been home for about a year now so I have plenty of old tosh to sort through. This got me thinking about a series of self-indulgent posts within a series of self-indulgent posts. So, without further ado I present the ‘ghosts of (christmas) past’. The pictures below probably say more about me than I’d like. They mostly say that I’m an absolute geek.
In order to embarrass myself to the fullest extent the items are (from top left to bottom right):
- my birth tag (?) – I have no idea what that should really be called but I’m going to call it my birth tag.
- Pokemon Blue – nuff said
- a badly extracted print ad about Venice – pretty isn’t it?
- Teach Yourself German – I can’t speak German. Unless I’m trying to speak French. In that case all I can speak is German.
- special edition Plains card – I paid for this. I can’t remember how much but probably a lot. It’s got the Great Wall of China in it.
- Final Fantasy VII – The best of one of the least Final Fantasies.
- ‘retro’ Puma tshirt – I just plain like this.
a little something different
I’m veering away from the Christmas posts to blog about something topical before it gets too late: male man model Andrej Pejic advertising breast braziers for female lady shoppers in Holland. I spotted this piece in the Daily Mail which is probably just about the worst news source for unbiased comment but what can you do. The comments accompanying the article are as to be expected with one comment stating the ‘offending’ ad agency should rot in hell and others jumping on the ‘fashion only ever shows unrealistic ideals’ bandwagon. Check out some pictures and then I’ll go into why I think this was an absolute stroke of genius.
reason #1 : Now, I usually hate celebrity endorsement but for that reason alone this campaign is a winner. At the risk of sounding like a reality TV show contestant Andrej Pejic is like so totally hot right now and this ad was always going to get press coverage and provoke a response. In that respect the model choice is an educated risk.
reason #2 : Not only is Pejic ‘culturally relevant’ but he’s the the best man for the job. A pushup bra is designed to make boob from whence there is no boob. What better model to promote this than a boy man male model who is literally breastless? If this bra can give a man curves then it will most definitely work for you.
reason #3 : Pejic has strangely wide appeal for a male model in a bra. Looking at this image you can barely tell that Pejic has a penis. As a generic middle age Dutch woman I’d doubt you’d realise it was a male model. All you’d see was a pretty model which is a fairly safe approach. In that sense this ad is unlikely to alienate or offend current customers. However, bring in model hot topic Pejic and you have an entirely new, fresh, young, fashion savvy audience on your side and dollar in your till.
Pretty clever move if you ask me.
the thirteenth post of christmas
In the process of packing to go home for the Christmas I’ve had to finish off a bit of unpacking that I still haven’t completed. Going through a few boxes of miscellaneous items I came across a beautiful thing. It was a glossy, navy plastic bag (that feels relevant for some reason) full of pages I’d torn out of magazines during my year in Italy. I thought I’d already used most of the good pages in various ‘projects’ last year but I managed to find some amazing pages that I thought I’d share. Very much in the same vein as yesterday’s post though this time it’s much more excessive.
This first collection is by far my favourite. It’s from an Italian magazine called Max which I absolutely love. I even tried to get a subscription here in the UK but couldn’t. They have an iPad version which is pretty sweet; shame I don’t have an iPad. Anyway, I love this spread which translates as ‘for the love of sneakers’. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a magazine spread that has ever made me want anything so much. I just think this is a really great ways to sell shoes in a less obvious way. It helps that I love high tops but I even want the socks. Good job Max!
Another one from Max and another spread I love. There are a few more shots that were on white background but I’m not so hot on them. Monochrome is/was massive in Italy and it’s cool to see it done (well) in something other than black. Again, I think this does a really good job at selling clothing in a less obvious way. In many ways it’s completely unnatural, the shoes mostly, but it still feels really easy, natural and effortless: in sort, Italian.
Last one is just a collection of shots that didn’t really fit with anything else. The pope picture is another work of Max and the bottom is Male Vogue (I have no idea what you’d really call it in English, Vogue Man). The guy on the Vogue cover is a moderately famous Italian singer. This is his only moderately good song though. The other two pictures are from supplements of weekend papers. The top right was from an amazing spread with an extravagant neo-Victoriana thing going on. The tiny picture is from a spread on futuristic knitwear (I shit you not) and was focused on a post-apocalyptic superwoman who looks like she was knitted rather than born. You can’t tell from the picture I’ve included but she has sick hair, which is kind of like mine, embarrassingly.
the twelfth post of christmas
This post should officially mark the end of ‘the posts of Christmas’ but I’m enjoying this all a bit too much. I’m not sure when I’ll stop but it isn’t today. Too much of a good thing innit. Anyway, on that vague theme here’s a cover I worked on recently with a few friends. The theme for this particular pullout was EXCESS and the name of supplment is e2 (inventive, eh?) hence the e2XCESS stylisation.
My camera is pretty crappy so will upload the original file when I’m next in the office. Newsprint hasn’t been kind to the image. The original plan was to have some sort of post-apocalyptic capitalist three ‘kings’ but one of the girls pulled out so we had to come up with another idea to use what we had. As sick as it would have been to have the three girls garbed up with bling and brands I’m really pleased with what we ended up with. I really like that we ended up with something a bit less typically excessive as it would have been really easy to get something really kitsch and campy (and we have other shots to prove it).
Merry Excessmas, yeh?
the tenth post of christmas
I’m in the drive to get presents sorted and it’s stressing me out. I have no idea what to get either of my sisters and it’s getting to be ‘think outside the box’ time. It’s pretty convenient timing too as I was planning on visiting a few Bristol pop ups that are pitched towards the Christmas market (pun completely intended).
I was expecting to have much more to say, and show, but unfortunately I was kind of underwhelmed. It’s not that it wasn’t good (it was!) I was just expecting something different and my expectations were very high given the quality of pop-ups I’ve been to before in Bristol. Their website is here is you want to see a differently subjective take on the whole thing. The ‘collection’ is split up into four shops. Which I’ll give a really quick rundown of with some pictures.
The first, that I went into at least, was definitely the most ‘crafty’ and closest to what I was expecting. It had what I would say was the best gift potential and I was hoping that I’d get something for my sisters there. It wasn’t meant to be. There was a lot of great stuff but I found the pricing to be a bit off. It wasn’t that the stuff was too expensive but it just wasn’t at a price that I was willing to pay. They have an amazing dinosaur lamp which I don’t have a picture for but it was definitely a winner. Some pictures from stop one are below:
My second stop was by far my favourite and much more of a guerilla gallery than anything else. Everything was reasonably priced but still quite a bit out of my price range. I actually saw too many amazing things to go into too much detail here. This shop definitely had the best content and layout in my opinion. Really engaging and interesting. I particularly liked the stuff by Data/Robb Wass and didn’t see a piece of his there that I didn’t like. His butterly/stained glass mashup is incredible. General pictures here:
Third stop was Antlers (with an upside down A). It was cool but nothing new to me. Antlers (with an upside down A) are a cool bunch and I saw some nice tees that I’d never seen before. This was my third time at an Antler (with an upside down A) gallery and I’m impressed how good they are at keeping each new location fresh. It can’t be easy being a ‘nomadic gallery’ to use their own terminology. Nice things included the porcelain tea sets and tees. The animal bones are what stole the show for me though. Again, pictures below:
I don’t really have much to say about the final location and have no pictures at all. Best thing about it was seeing some Susan Taylor prints especially the Rome one which I’d never seen before. She’s on the much more affordable end and if you like striking, graphic typography type artwork then you’ll love her. Definitely worth checking out her website as I’m not doing her justice. Pay particular attention to her city prints. They’re great.
I really recommend that you go down and check it out for yourself. My problem was my high expectations that realistically were never going to be fulfilled. I especially recommend you go it you’ve read the whole review. Maybe after seeing this you’ll absolutely love it!
