Diana Paez

I discovered this illustrative motion graphics designer by chance on youtube, the site is worth checking out, the short videos and self promotion collage style collections are contemporary and nothing too unusual but I found myself thinking that they may be achieveable by myself and fellow students whereas usually im daunted. The content varies from things like brown paper bag backgrounds, to 'godzilla' size woman striding through sky scrapers, animated little cubes jumping down stairs, shapes and blocked colours falling from the sky, words flying around etc etc, all very positive 'day dream' material, simple visual ideas to perhaps base your own beginners level videos on if you're not too competent like me yet!

Check out her site www.dianapaez.com

Junk Food ad ban

I've been considering the vast scale of the food industry and the opportunities for research and personal study. The continuing national debate regarding child obesity, and the pressure upon fast food chains to take responsibility in informing customers of nutritional information in printed formats etc. I wasn't aware of the decision made by OfCom, as documented in Nov 2006, to ban tv advertising of convenience foods deemed unhealthily high in fat, sugar and salt during
- pre-school childrens programmes
- entertainment channels popular with under-16's
- all cable and sattelite children's channels
- pre-watershed adult shows that are popular with school children.
This apparently came into effect after January of this year, with Burger King voluntarily withdrawing adverts and deciding to stop creating them.
You can read a full archive of articles and debates...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6157708.stm

paperchase design @ Borders

I seem to spend increasing amounts of money in 'Borders' these days, the selection of stationery and greetings cards are often sources of inspiration and visual indulgence for me. The designs of paperchase lately are based around vivid colour, floral patterns, fantastical arrays of nature and swirls, very nice to draw ideas for illustrations from.

PROVOKATEUR

I found the link to this agency's site on hannah smithies blog and took a look as i was drawn to the sketchbook style aesthetics. It's another funky layout of books and interactive sections to explore. Most interestingly, the 'think tank' section provides several scrapbooked articles taken from archive newspapers spanning controversial issues in the world of branding. 'Charity Chic' for example, documents charity's in their quest to brand themselves, but with the danger of becoming seemingly too polished, products, instead of a service.

It's worth a look, the full articles can be read and there is definitely dissertation possibilities!

Edward Monkton illustration

I discovered a link to his website on Rebecca Pericleous's blog and was very glad. His greetings cards never fail to make me smile, the pure random humour he associates with the grand scheme of life as a journey in such raw hand drawn formats is one of a kind. I often purchase his cards for others, but mostly for myself to pin up and enjoy. There are several desktop wallpapers to download and a screensaver also if you appreciate his work as i do.

www.edwardmonkton.com

ambient media.. continued

Yet another strong example of clever street ambient media from Leo burnett. This time for bird seed, how better to communicate its yummyness, than by installing a giant box of the stuff on a street, lining the top with real bird food, and waiting for the flocks to arrive!

Leo Burnett Macdonalds ambient ads

ambient media is by far my favourite method of advertising to study, I am forever amused by new genius examples, these ads for macdonalds, created by Leo burnett were no exception. Arctic shakes, advertising upon a huge orange snow plough vehicle parked on an american beach, extra thick milkshakes shown upside down formating a street lamp post, and the huge red shoes of ronald macdonald emblazoned upon a city bus! Very quirky, youthful and upbeat, its no wonder the campaigns are successful globally in more than a dozen marketing formats, these have led to a global resurgence in sales, especially amongst teens and their mothers apparently.

Leo Burnett website navigation

I'm aware of Leo Burnett's amazing website being previously mentioned on other student's blogs, and I found it great to play with. The large black pencil operating as the cursor, along with the scrawled pencil lines it leaves wherever you drag was very novel, but the way the sections of the site and the subheadings etc all swing around with sound effects and thumbnails is very visually stimulating. The way its put together makes it all seem so easy to create an interface such as this, if only that were the case!

sex or the monkey?

I thought it would be interesting to look for other chocolate advertising, the 'indulgent' sector of products has given me food for thought and may well lead to a vast area of research. I thought this advert for magnum ice cream (although in french) uses sex to sell, in the form of Eva Longoria. The luxury and desirability of the product is there for all to see, but personally i think the choice of Eva Longoria, who has I doubt has ever eaten an entire chocolate ice cream, is a tad inappropriate. The hairy monkey for dairy milk wins hands down!

Cadbury's zoo fun

I've seen the cadbury's vids already posted on students blogs and its also proved worthy of the CR blog, several youtube viewers seem to feel strongly negative about the humorous gorilla playing the drums idea but i personally defy anybody not to have a giggle! the soundtracks and facial expressions cannot be taken seriously and I am indeed feeling the urge to go and purchase a large bar of dairy milk grinning all the way to the cashier as i remember the large hairy beast swooning to phil collins and bashing out the chorus with a genius array of facial expression. Enough said.

Made you stop and stare

The colloquial language hand scrawled across these Nike basketball trainers made me smile as I had adopted the same approach to the D&AD land securities 80m hoarding brief, "made you look made you notice' is the type of 'i'm talking to you, yes; you' attitude I tried to convey, catching people's eye with handwritten dialect of a casual manner across a product or place. I think it's successful due to the quirky unfinished look, these trainers arent clean and white, they're covered in unsteady black ink, unstraight and squeezed into an ill-shaped space, its 'street wise' and edgy which is the type of consumer Nike attempts to appeal to.

Cancel Cancer - Cigerette Ad

An ad taken from a useful advertising archive site adparade.com. It communicates 'smoking is a primary cause for lung cancer, some things you cant undo. Stop smoking'. (Agency - Y&R Beirut 2006)
A very simple use of universally recognisable computer 'loading'/'downloading progress' status bar with the 3 blocks of colour outlining the shape of a cigerette. The two buttons 'cancer' and 'cancel' are all that are needed. Not a very visually sophisticated layout or choice of background colour with faint smoke - slightly cliched, but all in all an effective idea that would be understood by all.

Colourful cabs

Another image from my stay in Bangkok this summer that I thought I would share. Throughout the City the taxi's were all multi-coloured and when gathering in traffic in colourful collation it was an interesting sight

Paul Davis Website

This is the guy who did the humourous illustrations for the book 'Us&Them' that I previously posted. His new website also happens to be featured in the latest CR mag. It's worth visiting, if only to play with the interactive spider diagram that makes up the main menu, the individual hand-sketched arms are almost 'friendly' its quite a creepy experience! You can view his illustration collections, the sex diagrams are not for the faint hearted! Quite amusingly there is a section 'lunch with Davis application form', whereby you can complete your name, contact details, your budget, choice of restaurant and an explanation as to why you are worthy of his time. The guy's funny.

The New York Times magazine

The September issue of Creative review has an interesting article on the colour magazine that accompanies the New York Times newspaper, the American version of the Sunday Times magazine. "The newspaper still remains archaic and old fashioned design but the magazine is far more contemporary and graphically vibrant".. The photography within the publication is said to be award winning and at the forefront of US editorial art direction. The editors pride themselves on not working to a rigid layout of type boxes and image scale. The cover designs shown here simple state "T", the title of the magazine, derived from the black letter of the daily paper's titlepiece. It became the mag's logo and each issue the letter is represented in a visually stimulating new form; chocolate cake, black lace and colourful intricate swirls. It is a luxury magazine, embracing visual culture "T's art direction is a mix of appropriateness, wit, sheer beauty and clever page planning".
I thought it was a nice concept to draw upon the age-old "T" from a family of typefaces that have been used for decades upon the newspaper cover, and reviving it regularly to represent the contemporary awareness the publication has regardless of its age.

Work of the chase

I liked this simple literal identity for a hairdressers (ground floor) seafood restaurant upper floor, a strange combination that could have gone very wrong, but the image pulls together scissors and seafood in a subtle sophisticated way, i think the deep marine colour was a good choice as opposed to the red lobster stereotype that could have been chosen.

The attitude of 'The Chase' towards contemporary graphic design has always struck a chord, their philosophy of it being as important to cut out what isnt relevant to a clients brief as well as to define what is, makes sense. The Indian carving analogy communicates this well and I thought I would share it ..

Digital Vs Hand-crafted Illustration

A real gem of a book I accidentally found amongst the library bookshelves, a sequel to 'Pen & Mouse', it features the work of 45 illustrators, questionning whether the torrent of digitally mastered illustration has become soulless; with more and more illustrators returning to their traditional tools of pen and paper, wood, embroidery, collage and oils to achieve the handcrafted style that was thought to be outdated.





HAND TO EYE - contemporary Illustration
Angus Hyland and Roanne Bell
2003 Laurence King Publishing Ltd

I'm always inspired when I come see illustrative work that has been crafted via lengthy time consuming techniques, but with programmes such as Photoshop and Illustrator providing a digital playground free-for-all, much of the final outputs appear the 'same', perhaps restricting levels of creativity.

"With digital illustration, it seems that a certain style becomes fashionable, everyone jumps on it and learns the technique and it becomes boring very quickly...It's the same as knowing how to play the piano doesnt necessarily make you a good musician" (Hungarian Illustrator David Foldvari)

Many images in this book aim to demonstrate that the digital process will never replace the hand-crafted one, however illustration can be rejuvenated by a reaction to its dominance. Tradition and technology can I feel co-exist as much as contradict one another.

I wanted to share this publication as the first time in a while I was inspired to go home and crack open the box of coloured papers, glue, ink, string, whatever I could find! It is relevant to what we have been taught so far.. as long as the ideas are there to start with, the image shouldnt suffer due to a bad job on a mac.

Just Jack- music video

The Video for Just Jack's 'Writer's block' is created in a narrative way, the everyday 'routine' vibe of the lyrics, and the laid back nature of the singer contrasts against the movement taking place with continuous shifting of background and panning of view. The background mainly consists of the aged scrapbook style page of a book, with fast paced black pen scrawl and doodles appearing, some of the objects - a telephone for example, 'ringing' on the page to illustrate the lyrics of the song. It's a fantastical combination of styles, colours and activity, I loved the contrast between the face-on attitude of the singer, and the hand-crafted style of the background. Cartoon characters and a lady with a brown paper bag on her head dancing around a possessed toaster; I can appreciate it for all of its randomness and comic book quality!

The innocence of the child mind

I took some time out of the gallery 'exhibition' in Manchester, to appreciate the interactive arts centre created for children and their parents, to bond with objects, spaces, materials etc. This giant 'wall' of suitcases and luggage, offered visitors the opportunity to write on a blank luggage tag "If you could be anywhere, where would it be?".
The result was a chaotic fusion of words, doodles and colour, more interesting than any of the official art work exhibited!
There was the usual responses of "On a beach in Hawaii" etc, yet it was the responses of children that made my day. It reminded me of the importance of not taking things too seriously in order to release the most creative of responses. The PC Plod example was a personal favourite.

China: The Land of Opportunity

Design Week drew my attention to the opportunity for the British design industry to penetrate China, a population of more than 1.3 billion, contrasting hugely in culture to the West. China is the country seen as the 'workshop of the world'. There are organisations, such as 'Made in China', established by Phillip Dodd the former ICA director. He wishes to establish cultural commercial bridges, advocating the importance of first gaining an understanding of China's culture before trying to 'do business'. He believes the Chinese have long-term vision, whereas us Brits have a far more short term approach. China itself has begun working towards designing itself, they will only need British design if we understand their needs. The world famous events such as the 2008 olympics in Beijing and the 2010 expo in Shanghai will give Chinese companies international exposure, providing British design agencies huge chances to build links.

Although we as design students have some way to go until we become established ourselves, this article gave me food for thought; I find it contextualises my existing knowledge of British design to consider what is happening on a larger scale.
I also liked the summarising statement of the article, something I will personally strive to adher to.. "If a man takes no thought about what is distant, he will find sorrow near at hand".

Manish Aurora

A 34 year old Indian fashion designer based in Delhi, his designs have hit the catwalks of Paris, showcasing his wild mix of 'traditional Indian costume, exquisite embroidery, Pop Art, high kitsch and psychedelic futurism'. It caught my eye as the intense attention to detail presents art as clothing, the craftsmanship of specialist indian weavers is obvious. One dress in his collection from Autumn/winter, uses the inner mechanical parts of watches, in replacement of beads or sequins. The electric colours and patterns are mesmorising, with his show opener 'all about astronauts invading celestial bodies', it features sci-fi embroidery in a digitally printed universe. My personal awareness of high fashion could be greater, but I find Manish Aurora's alternative fantastical ideas fascinating

Us & Them

Us & Them
Illustrated by Paul Davis
Laurence King Publishing Ltd
London 2004

"This book is a record of one mans encounters with passers-by in Britain and America". He asked the question "Excuse me, what do you think of the British/Americans?". 'Us&Them' reveals 'the daftness, knee-jerk hostility, bigotry, fearful suspicion' each population feels toward the other. Seperated into two halves, i found this book an experience, you have to take a look, if only to laugh at the stark honesty of the true quotes!

The Americans on the Brits:



The Brits on the Americans:

V&A 150th anniversary images

To celebrate its 150th anniversary, the V&A asked designers and artists to sum up why they love the place on a single piece of paper. This is Manolo Blahnik's contribution, it made me smile due to its literal structure of a shoe from which to base architectural elements. The historical essence of the V&A is maintained with the simple hand sketched london skyline style, the extragavent arched stiletto oozing sophisticated quality.

The Campana Brothers

I saw their 'Favela Chair' (1991-2002) In Manchester Art Gallery last week, and so was pleased to see their work is currently featured in this summers edition of V&A magazine, which led to my own greater understanding and appreciation of their playful creations. Neither of the Brazilian brothers intended to become designers, yet "taking inspiration from Brazil's cultural cauldron, they transform mundance objects such as garden hose and rope into opulent designs". The Favela chair, named after the Brazilian word for 'shanty town', is constructed using hundreds of small timber offcuts (resemblent of scrappy firewood), conveying aesthetic qualities resemblent of a squatters hut. "The notion of manicured ladies who lunch perching on chairs inspired by shanty town shacks sounds like a satirist's dream".

The 'Prived Oca chandelier' (2003) was designed for the Austrian crystal company 'Swarovski', it is made using crystals and fibre optic lights, draped with a 'wig' of banana skins, creating a couragous juxtaposition between the precious luxury associated with Swarovski crystal, and the everyday somewhat menacing mass of dead fruit remains.

I am amused by Humberto and Fernando Campana's wacky ideas, they provide a far cry for attention amidst the furniture worlds taste for refined minimalism and love of IKEA.

LSC Skills advert

The Learning and Skills Council exists to make England better skilled and more competitive. The LSC is responsible for planning and funding high quality education and training for everyone in England other than those in universities.

‘Our future. It’s in our hands’ is the LSC’s most ambitious communications campaign ever and aims to inspire people across England to take control of their future through learning and play an active role in achieving their full potential.

I have seen this advert televised only once, yet found it captivating and inspiring for a Government led campaign. "Our Future. It's in our hands" is literally communicated through a 50 second creative piece. The Narrative makes references to 'competing' against others since birth, with finger tips emblazoned with individual sperm chasing towards a single target, hands joining together to form a very clever image of the human brain, dark mountains consisting of bent palms and fingers forming a metaphor for lifes obstacles in the workplace, ending with red pulsing hands 'flourishing' into individual flowers. On the whole, some cheesy statements are made, however they can still be appreciated due to the clever formation of imagery using the one body part that summarizes the campaign.

KYLIE - The Exhibition

I visited Manchester Art Gallery this week, where the Kylie exhibition is currently on show. Originating from the Arts Centre in Melbourne, and "Following its massive success at the V&A in London", over 300 objects spanning Kylie's vast career are presented across seven areas; Image - Music - Video - Icon -Backstage - On Stage - On Tour. The dress seen here is the signature dress of the exhibition, absolutely tiny in size I didn't believe it was physically worn by the performer! Many of her other infamous iconic outfits were on show, from 'Charlenes dungarees to those little gold hotpants'. What particularly interested me however, was the representation of more than 25 photographers and their work for Kylie's album covers, videos and editorial shoots. Her image as projected through photography provides a means by which to explore and appreciate her as a modern day performer and cultural icon.that characterises images of the star; projected through publications such as I-D, The Face, POP, Vogue and GQ over the years.
Photography inside the exhibition was prohibited, i recommend a visit to appreciate the wall to wall glamour, Manchester is a good day out!
For information, see www.manchestergalleries.org.

The CUBE - Manchester

The Cube (Centre for the urban built environment) in Manchester's city centre is worth a visit. Small open space, representing practioners "working across media that explore the urban built environment in fascinating and ingenious ways. The work presented offers a joyful celebration of the metropolis whilst simultaneously revelling in a dark dystopian vision; the resulting exhibition reveals the complex relationships that artists have with the City today".
There was a small selection of works, all very different in context, media and meaning. My favourite is a mixed media installation by Margaret Diamond, entitled 'Formula Driven No5'. Mundane objects are animated, reflecting how consumerism is responsible for the transformation of urban environments and the loss of individuality. Wandering 'Steak bakes', using internal motors, travel around the floor of gallery spaces, representing 'Greggs' and the steady increase of the presence of its logo and identity on paper bags and litter upon the streets of Cities, with universal recognition by all.