Wait Watching from Fitness First

You should never ask a lady how much she weighs. But in this clever ad Fitness First tells the ladies how much they weigh in a very frank and public manner (of course the gents can participate too).  This Rotterdam bus stop was set up to weigh people when they sit down and display it in bright LED lights before them and perhaps shocking and shaming them into joining Fitness First. While I think it's extremely clever and could be very persuasive- in presenting someone with the exact and honest reason why they should join Fitness First and get exercising, I think many people could also be insulted by it. Then again this could leave them feeling embarrassed about their weight and unable to forget about the ad all day. Then they'd probably join up. It's amazing what you can do with a bus stop these days.

http://www.thecoolhunter.co.uk/ads

Shelf Awards 09

I recently attended the exhibition for the Shelf Awards 09. The shelf is an award scheme where undergraduates are given the chance to answer an integrated creative brief and then exhibit their response and a selection of their work to Creative directors and other industry experts. I was invited to attend and vote for which work I thought deserved an award. The winners will receive The Shelf - so called because upon it they will be able to place the future awards they gather in their career.

The creative brief this year was to create ideas for a new 'Text to Vote' service which enables the public to vote via text message from anywhere they want. One of my favourite campaigns for this brief used statistics for text messaging in the UK, in particular, statistics relating to obscure places in which British people text. I think the campaign works well at grabbing the audience's attention and engaging them with it. You will find you are either shocked by the statistic or remember a time when you have been one of those statistics. In some cases I didn't believe the statistic but it got me thinking about how easy, quick and also discreet text messaging is which is what the campaign wants people to realise in order to encourage them to text to vote.

Another campaign that caught my eye, displayed by the same design team, was this campaign for PJ Smoothies.  The posters are really colourful and eye-catching and the handwritten type in loads of different styles draws you in to read it. The words used and the childish handwriting is really fun and leaves you with a fun, happy feeling about the product.

Credit: Thomas Perry

http://thomasperry.co.uk/index.php?/university-work/creative-cv/

Peggy

I think my favourite artist of all time is probably Roy Litchenstein. I love the tongue in cheek comic strip pieces he did with their bright colours and good-looking glamourous subjects.  

Californian bases artist, Matt Billfields created this 3-dimensional interpretation of one of Litchenstein's paintings, which gives the viewer a different experience from every angle. I like how the pixelated appearance of Litchenstein's painting is taken to another level using 3d pegs and I'd like to see how it would look when looking straight on.

A murder mystery in reverse- A Secret History by Donna Tartt

I've just finished reading The Secret History by Donna Tartt. I read it in order to respond to a competition brief from Penguin which was to deisgn a new cover for the book, to bring it up to date. The current cover is certainly in need of a re-design. It's very boring and, added to by the fact that the word History is in big letters on the front, looks very much like a dull history book.

The book is in fact a murder drama, or what has been described as a murder mystery in reverse. It's not a particularly exciting one, and rather slow moving, but the characters are intiguing and unusual and there are some scenes of violence ad drugs to spice things up a bit. Being a murder mystery in reverse is quite interesting because you already know who is murdered but you don't know why or how. And at the beginning of the book you can't work out if it's one of the main characters and if so why they would do it. Once I had found this out though, i got a litle bored and hence I've only just finished the book. I also found it hard to get inspiration for designing the cover of the book. I was interested by the  drug themes running through the book and the growing mass of  lies and secrets that the group had to keep within them. I thought about using hair on the cover to represent this as hair can be used to find out if someone has been taking drugs but paranoid people trying to cover this up sometimes resort to shaving it off. I made me think of the extent the group went to with their lying and trying to cover up their crime. I did some drawings for this but it looked too decorative and not dark enough for the book.

I looked at the winners of the cover deisgn competition and this one that came joint third, made the best cover I think. The imagery reminds me alot of the sort of images the book created. The boy covereing his face with the deer's head, respresenting the mystery and lies and also the deer that they remembered from the woods on the night of the crime, and also the woods in the background which features quite a lot in the book.

It's not a book i'd say you must read, as i wouldn't say its particularly exciting and it's quite hard to read and a bit slow but I don't feel it was a total waste of my time. I was perhaps a little disctracted by trying so hard to notice themes and strong images to enjoy it.

Summer Coca-Cola Cans

I'm addicted to coke anyway, but these summer Coke cans would encourage me to drink coke even more often.  They are a range of special designs released over a few months this summer in the USA and express the relevance of Coke to the summer. The designs are really simple, using classic symbols of summer in the classic red and white/silver colours. The coca-cola logo is, on most of the designs,  obscured or warped but because it's such a recognisable logo it doesnt matter and shows how strong the brand is.