Entries Tagged 'Art Direction' ↓

AdRants is annoyed by their “Pompous Flashturbation” on their website as they lecture the Flash-deprived on the need for the plugin.

According to AdRants, W+K website’s source states:

“You will need to install a couple of plug-ins to fully experience our site. That is not because this is another one of those mindlessly flashy Web sites that give you a headache and make you wonder how you could ever sit through a meeting with those people.”

I frankly couldn’t find this writing anywhere in the early source pages I checked, but it does seem an unneeded lecture.

However, the Flash-powered version of the W+K site is nifty. And they have the courage to put up famous older work — like the dot-com-boom era stuff — that is well-done and fascinating. (Does anyone still use AltaVista? Don’t get too mad: they used to my starting page each time I surfed the web.)

Try the site, and go ahead and download the Flash ™ plugin

The new Apple TV spot featuring Eminem sure looks like borrowed interest — borrowed from a spot for Lugz running shoes.

See a discussion of the remarkable similarities here at Adfreak.com The shoe commercial is from 2001. It is at this site, under Archives, Lugz, 01.

This makes me wonder is the commercial merely derivative or is there a sharing of talent somewhere — designer, or production company?

According to The New York Times, the Metropolitan Museum in NYC is opening a splendid Van Gogh exhibit. Unlike previous shows in the US which showcased his paintings, the new show displays 113 of Van Gogh’s 1,800 drawings.

While many artists did drawings as prelimary sketches for painting, Van Gogh often made drawings in his letters of paintings he had already completed, to show what he was doing. However, in one instance, detailed in the exhibit, he traced his drawing to set up the composition of a painting. (This is a rarity, as he usually painted freehand.)

In all, eight paintings are on display, each chosen for its connection to the drawings.

Many of these drawings and watercolors have never been exhibited to the public before. Moreover, because of the fragility of works on paper, it may be some time before they are shown again.

In a recent issue of Wired magazine, Hitachi has an ad with a real drink coaster insert.

You have to read the back of the coaster to discover the premise. Use the coaster as a drawing pad to design a new great invention using a Hitachi hard drive as part of it.

Does anyone remember the placemat ads for Compaq computers back in the day? Does anyone remember Compaq ™? Hint: they merged with Hewlett Packard.

The UK’s Advertising Producers’ Association has released its annual list of the 50 best commercials. See them at AdRants.

That fantasy flying diesel from Honda (by Weider & Kennedy UK) looks like a Disneyland dream. (Personal skepticism: ok, Honda’s diesel is clean and quiet, but is it fast?)

The Stella d’Artois spot from Lowe London is a major WWI epic. A “reassuringly expesive” spot to produce, I think.

Is that “big and agile” gymnast wearing a fat suit? (He’s selling a “big and agile” Skoda SUV.) You be the judge.

The Return of the Train spot by Rainey Kelly Campbell Roalfe/Y & R incorporates scenes from Hitchcock’s North by Northwest to sell a fast, new Virgin Train service. Using a terrific movie to sell a product without a big stretch of “borrowed interest” is seldom accomplished.

All in all, these are awfully intriguing commercials and easily worth the 2 Euro membership fee.

In what may be the world’s wettest ad posters, a German company Bitfall has designed waterfalls that show advertising in the waterfall itself. On the drops.

They nickname the drops “spherical robots.” Their main website has that phrase in the title, but their internet provider is not happy with all the traffic these amazing still images and movies are creating, so the main site is down. Too much success.

The September issue of Radar magazine, which I mentioned yesterday, shows on its cover a Risky Business photo of Tom Cruise in his underwear being pierced by arrows. I was reminded of a medieval painting of a saint and was trying to find a painting of St. Sebastian.

I was wrong. The closest example to the Cruise cover is a cover of Esquire done by ad legend George Lois. It shows Cassius Clay Mohammed Ali pierced by arrows exactly like the new Cruise cover. (It was so long ago, 1968, I thought it was before Ali changed his name.)

I have a coffeetable book of George Lois’s work too, but I try not to steal so directly. In fact, the Ali image is on the spine of the dustjacket for Lois’s The Art of Advertising. You don’t have to even open the book to plagiarize from Mr. Lois.

To the Radar editor: did you think that blatant copying would pass under the radar?