How will your eyes give you away exactly? New Think! UK Drug Driving Advert

I saw the new Think! Drug Driving advert the other day and I didn't get it. It could be because I don't drug drive or use the drugs that they are referring to but I tried to put myself in the place of a drug user and I really don't think this advert would make me 'think' much about drug driving. I know that drug driving is dangerous and illegal, but if I wasn't already sensible enough to never do it I don't think this advert would really put me off. The oversized eyes of the people in the car are unrealistic so it just makes me think, well, the police aren't really going to be able to see my eyes when I drive past them, as they don't really increase in size like that. Perhaps the tag line 'Your eyes will give you away' is referring to how the police can see the size of your pupils once they've actually pulled you over.  Or perhaps the whole thing is deisgned to cause paranoia in cannabis users, as they will hopefully be too paranoid to drive aftre seeing the ad. I think the whole angle of the advert is wrong though as it only warns you of how you could get caught. There's no mention of the real reason why you shouldn't drug drive, and why it's illegal: because you could kill someone! I just think the advert has no real impact apart from the kind of freaky-looking big eyes, but they just look like a bunch of bush babies in a car.

Use Hearing Protection

I was watching a documentary the other day about the record label Factory Records and it was really interesting, particularly when they talked about the design side of things. They talked about a poster design that has become somewhat iconic and I remembered that I had recently seen a rip off of the poster on a flyer for a local nightclub.

It's amazing that a poster that such a simple poster design is still being copied 30 years later. 

Factory Records was a Manchester based british independant record label and they used a creative team; most notably record producer Martin Hannett and graphic designer Peter Saville, which gave the label and their artists, a particular sound and image. Peter Saville is responsible for designing the famous Factory 1 poster and he said he got the idea from a safety sign in a factory that he would wak past everyday at work. With the club being called factory he thought it was relevant so he decided to use it. He had no expreience is designing club promotion posters but designed probably the most famous poster for a club event ever.

The original design still looks modern now.

The first human synthesizer- Humanthesizer

Calvin Harris became the first musician to play his music on a human synthesizer, with his new single Ready for the Weekend. The instrument uses 15 bikini clad models painted with Bare Conductive, a new skin-safe ink which conducts electricity. When the performers touch the connection completes a circuit, triggering a sound.
The instrument also consists of 34 pads on the floor which have been painted with the conductive ink and are connected to a computer via some clever custom electronics. The performers stand on the pads, and touch hands to complete a circuit and trigger a sound. Different combinations of pads trigger the different sounds needed to play th track. The project is the result of a collaboration between Calvin Harris and masters students from the Royal College of Art's Industrial Design Engineering programme. Apart from being clever technology, it's also quite a clever bit of PR for the single. WIth nearly 500,000 views on youtube, it's got a lot of attention. Viewers who hear the tune during the video, who may not have heard the song before, might then want to hear the full song. I already loved the song but was intigued to compare the humanthesizer version to the original. 

How to Get Your First Job in Advertising by Dave Trott

I recently had a talk on TV advertising from Dave Trott, a well known art director of many famous and award winning TV adverts. He showed us a selection of adverts form the 80's which he chose because he said we would never have seen them before and therefore would have no pre-judgements of them. He told us a good advert must first have impact and then communicate a persuasive reason to buy the product.  When writing an advert you should first find the persuasive reason to buy the product and communicate it with impact. I found this very interesting and useful.

 The adverts Dave chose to show us were played in pairs, and these pairs of adverts were for the same or very similar products but from different brands. After watching each pair we discussed which one of teh worked and which didn't. We were told never to look at an advert and say 'I like it' or 'I don't like it' as that is a subjective view. We should always look at an advert objectively and say 'It works because..' or 'It doesn't work because..'.  As we went through the sets of adverts we began to identify the reasons why each advert either worked or didn't work. As Dave explained to us, an advert needs to give you a reason to buy something. It seemed obvious but after watching these adverts, we saw that many big brands run adverts that don't actually give you a reason to buy the product. The competitors then seemed to follow with an advert which would give you an actual reason to buy the product. 

When looking back on the talk and trying to recall the adverts we saw, the ones that I remember most clearly are the ones that worked and with these adverts I remember the reason to buy that product whereas I can't even remember the message from the other adevrts. For example, we were shown tow adverts for the same products from Nike and Reebok. They were slightly different in look like all trainers, but had pretty much the same benefit. The Nike advert, I recall, used a celebrity basketball player to advertise the product but gave no real reason to buy the product over other brands. The only reason you might buy them would be that they are 'cool' because so and so wears them (or is payed to wear them). There was no real persuasion.  The second advert was the advert below, from Reebok. It's a funny and surprising advert and therefore has impact: you will remember it, but it also communicates a good persuasive reason to buy Reebok's air pump trainers: they fit better. 

After this talk I look at TV advertising in a completly different way. We see around 20 minutes of advertising per 

hour of TV we watch but when you try and remember one that youve seen recently it's quite difficult. The ads that

you remember, have impact and give you a good reason to buy the product and therefore you also remember what

the product was.

Dave Trott gave us a copy of a short book that he wrote n the 70's: How to Get Your First Job in Advertising . It was 

published by Campiaign and Marketing last year when they set out to publish a series of key pieces about the 

advertising iindustry that are worth preserving and celebrating. Although it was written over 30 years ago the ideas are 

still relevant and blindingly simple. It took only about 15 minutes to read unlike other huge, fat advertising books but I

learnt more from it in that short time than I have from any other book. It tells you how to approach advertising in such 

a simple way with simple rules that shoudln't always, always be obeyed, but usually work. For example 'if your selling 

a cheap inferior product, you say 'Why pay more?', whereas if you are selling an over-priced, expensive product, you 

say 'Buy the best.' You always give the best reason to buy the product. Don't sell it on price if the price can easily be 

beaten and don't sell it on quality if it's a poor quality product. If you want people to remember you're ad, give it impact. 

Simples.

Tilt Shift Photography

I came across these photos taken using the tilt-shift technique of photography. I've never seen photos like hese before r if ihave I was perhaps fooled into thining they were photos of minitiare villages or objects. Tilt-shift photography involves using both tilt and shift camera movements to simulate the depth of field of a macro lens, making normal objects and landscapes appear as though they’re actually miniature in scale. The effect can be incredibly powerful, instantly turning a sprawling metropolis into a miniature village or toy town. 

While some photographers use expensive cameras and lenses to create their tilt-shift images, others choose to use postproduction techniques instead. By blurring the top and bottom of an image, as well as increasing its contrast and saturation, you can create a tilt-shift miniature fake that looks just as good as the real thing. Some of the photos ive seen don't look as good as other's though, possibly because theyr'e fake which weren't done very well. These are pick of my favourites from a selection I found.

I Love the 80's revival

There seems to be a revival of al things 80's at the moment and I'm loving it. Apparently its due to the recession, but I'm not sure how that would effect music and fashion. Perhaps because its cheaper to stay in fashion by ripping the arms off an old denim jacket or cut a pair of Jeans into shorts than buy new clothes. But 80's fashion is in more than ever before, since the real 80s. Popstar's clothes, hair and makeup is more daring a la Lady Gaga and La Roux, and the electric sound 80s music is back. 

  Yesterday my dad introduced me to the band, Empire of the Sun. I gave it a listen on Spotify and I loved it straight away as it sounds so 80's and I love anything 80s. Can't really explain why but everything was just cooler in the 80s. What I also loved straight away was the album art work and I thought I've gotta look at that more closely. 

Empire of the Sun's Walking on a Dream album cover

Their artwork reminds me of movie posters form the 80s and after looking the artwork up on the internet I found that the idea for the album artwork came from the band members themselves after beng inspired by movie posters by Drew Struzan who is responsible for the posters of such films as Back to the Future, ET, Indiana Jones and Ladyhawke. Back to the Future is my favourite film of all time and the posters are timeless classics. I love the graphic style in which you can't tell whether the image is a painting or a photograph. They look almost like they are painted with an airbrush.

The Empire of the Sun album cover also reminded me of Michael Jackson's Dangerous (1991, not quite 80's but close enough) album cover, my favourite album cover of all time. The photo montage of futuristic buildings, animals and a dark night sky gives it a sci-fi fantasy feel as does the Dangerous album cover. The members of Empire of the Sun are also wearing regal/military clothing in the style of Michael Jackson and Adam Ant in the 80's. The Dangerous cover features crowns and animals wearing regal clothing. Both covers are beautiful pieces of art that you could look at for ages and not see all the details.

Another artist taking inspiration from the 80s in her image, Album artwork and music videos is Ladyhawke. As I mentioned earlier Dan Struzen deisgned the poster for the 80's film 'Ladyhawke', from which Ladyhawke took her stage name. Her music also sounds really 80's: a sort of mix of electro and rock.

Ladyhawke movie poster by Dan Struzan

Ladyhawke'e album cover is done in a very 80's style with a watercolour painting/coloured pencil drawing and handwritten type and clashing colours. 

I love the dreamy music video for My Delirium which is animated in watercolour paintings and looks beautiful, like a storybook illustration coming to life. 

Stills from Ladyhawke's My Delirium music video.

It reminded me of the well known video for A-HA's Take on Me in which a comic book character comes to life. They both appear s to be animated using the stop-start technique which is very 80's.

I hope music artists continue to be inspired by the 80's in their music and in their artwork and music videos.

Good thing clearex doesn't do herpes

This pimple climbing wall in Isreal is designed to get teenage boys thinking about spots in a different way. The brief was to expose teenagers to Clearex acne treatment during their summer break and this does the job, exposing itself to 8,000 teenagers a month. The climbing grips were placed in places on the face where acne would usually occur and the image is quite shocking or I might say, gross. It looks a little more like the boy missed his mouth when eating his cheerios for breakfast to me. It certainly made me think about how unnattractive and disctracting spots are though as you hardly notice the good looking airbrshed model underneath, and focus mainly on the "zits". If i was unfortunate enough to suffer from acne this ad would certainly make me think about getting some Clearex! 

Some ambient media to look down on...

These clever ambient ads I came across use the floor as their canvas and when looked down on, have a lot of impact. The idea of using people as the fleas in this ad for Frontline Flea and Tick Spray is absolutely genius and when busy with people and viewed from above like this, it would really bring the problem of fleas alive. It almost makes you're skin crawl. 

If you don't like heights, this ad for Swiss Skydive Parachute school could also make you're skin crawl. The elevator floor covering creates the illusion that you are hundreds of metres above a city scape in a glass bottomed elevator. If it happens to excite you on the other hand you may be enticed to attend the parachute school and experience the height for real, in the open air. Putting the audience in this position forces them to consider the possibility of the huge drop and whether it excites them or makes their stomach turn.