Madonna for Louis Vuitton

These are definately the best looking pictures I've seen of madonna in a few years. Highly airbrushed they might be but who cares. She looks much better airbrushed and the photographs are really stunning. They are for Louis Vuitton's latest campaign for their Autumn 2009 collection. I love how the Madonna appears to glow in vivid colours but the photos have just been made negative in places- an effect I don't think I've seen or appreciated before. It makes the images look quite surreal and dreamlike. I think they're look great as giant billboards if they are used for that purpose.

The MILK Carton

At first I thought this photograph was just a cool typographic ad for milk or an illustration for the work 'milk' but in fact it is real packaging and actually contains milk. When you look closley it makes sense that it wouls actually work and would probably stand up alright too. It was designed by Julien De Repentigny and Gabriel Lefebvre and has the same dimensions as a standard milk carton so it would sit nicely on the shelf next to other brands. The downside is, it would contain less milk and the increased surface area of the packaging would require more materials than a normal carton. Nice idea though..

Cool and Clever Doritos Packaging

I love, love, love Doritos and I love, love, love this new packaging concept by Peter Pavlov! The bendy box design uses the shape of the Doritos in it's structure and also the Doritos texture to decorate it. The packaging looks amazing on the shelf and just makes you want to have one of your own. It's almost like a work of art and would look great on a party spread. The best thing about it is that it stands up and acts like a bowl for easy nibbling and sharing and when you've finished, if (if) you still have some left you can close it with a simple fold and keep them fresh! Genius!

Another great thing about the packaging is, although it seems like a lot of packaging for some crisps, it must be better for the environment because the card would be recyclable, unlike the current foil bags. I hope they actually go into production and aren't just an idea. 

Another great use for Velcro

When researching the topic of Velcro for my latest project, i came accross this video about an ad for Coca-cola. The ad used velcro to demonstrate the new bottle's extra grip. They were placed in bus shelters when people are likely to touch and lean on the ads. Cleverly running the ads in winter, meant that people's winter knit-wear stuck to the ads and grabbed their attention and comunicated the message with impact. I think it's a really clever idea, literally gripping the audience to demonstrate the grip of the bottles, and adds to the long list of uses for velcro.

How to get people to use stairs

When given the choice, people usually take the convenient option for anything. It's a natural thing to do and these days there's almost always a more convenient option to what we have used for decades or centuries without trouble. Stairs for example- when given the choice to use an escalator instead, naturally we choose the escalator, unless for some reason the stairs would be quicker. 

Perhaps if stairs were more fun, more people would choose to take the stairs? As this video demonstrates, a lot more people would. 

 

Maybe a bit of curiosity was also involved!

This was done an 'Initiative of Volkswagon' and I think, similarly to the Cadbury's Gorilla and Eyebrow ads, it is an advert for Volkswagon, without actually saying anything about Volkswagon. It just adds to their brand image. It makes you think that they are concerned with making everyday things more fun, making life more pleasurable and being creative. I think it was a brilliant idea and a very interesting observation of human behaviour.

Logo's through time

I find it really interesting to see how logos have evolved over time. In the case of Shell, their logo has always been simply a shell but has got more and more stylized over time until the current logo which is very clean and simple. The name and the brand colours werent added until 1948 for some reason. Perhaps the colours weren't added until then because colour couldn't easily be reproduced until that time.

  

I came across these logos for Lego that feature in a new Lego book. The logo has changed a lot more than the Shell logo. It started as a 3d looking logo with the letters almost like building blocks. 

Next came this logo which looks somewhat like a car brand logo and doesn't look very fun. 

Then came this one which is more childish and fun looking and isn't far off the modern logo. I think it's the one i remember from my childhood too.

The most recent and best is this one in bright red and yellow, black and white. It's much more fun and jumps out at you. It's interesting that the letters are rounded but still suit lego really well despite it being famously square. 

Bert Simon's Paper Sculptures

These amazing portrait sculptures by Bert Simon's are made entirely from folded paper. They are made by first of all modelling the head's in 3d on an open source cad programme like Blender. They're then printed out as a net and stuck together to made 3d sculptures. I think they're really cool and look just like 3d computer game characters from the 80s. They particularly remind me of the film Back to the Future 2 when it features some 3d talking characters on a screen which are supposed to look futuristic but now look exprememly dated. At the same time as looking like computer graphics though, they kind of also look like they are carved from wood. I'd like to see how I would look as a 3d paper sculpture. 

Baggage Belt Ambient Advertising

I'm not wound up easily but if there's one thing that really really winds me up, it's when people crowd round the luggage belts at the aiport as soon as they get there and act crazy, standing too close to the belt like the world is going to end if they don't get their baggage as soon as it comes out! If they jsut stood back and relaxed it would come out just as quick! Anyway, my pet hate makes me particularly like this ad which uses a luggage belt to advertise the Beau Rivage Resort & Casino.

The strategy was based on a key insight, that travellers arriving at the airport welcome a bit of calm (unless they are the crazy ones). The belt was transformed into a swimming pool complete with swimmers, to represent the  tropical pool at the resort. Apparantly it totally changed the way people acted around the luggage belts which sounds like a great result to me. The only bad thing about it is the fact that a lot of it would be covered up when the luggage comes out.

myPANTONE app for iPHONE and iPOD Touch

Now apparently there's no need for a PANTONE swatch booklet when you can have one built into your phone. With myPANTONE a new app for iPhone and iPod Touch, users have access to a variety of PANTONE color libraries and the ability to build color palettes and share them with colleagues and clients. Sounds like a great idea but as many people have commented about it: how can it possibly work if all monitors, screens and printers are calibrated differently? This is the reason we use the printed PANTONE swatch booklets in the first place. I'm not sure it will be of much use really but some of the features sound quite nice like being able to take a photo and colour pick from it to create pallettes etc.

The Lovely Bones

The Lovely Bones is a story about the afterlife. It's the story of a young girl, Susie Salmon, who is brutally raped and murdered by her neighbour and then watches her family deal with her death from heaven, and also comes to terms with her death herself. It's an unusual story because the person telling it is dead- something i've not come accross before. It makes it more sad because you get to hear how she is not only missed but misses people herself. It's usually the family you feel sorry for, but she has been taken away from them too.

  Although the murderer is known to the reader from the beginning, the book is almost like a murder mystery/crime novel as it follows the investigation into finding the killer and how her father tries to uncover the truth. Rather than wanting to find out who the murderer is you're desperate for him to be caught before he gets away.

 Another interesting thing about the book is the description of heaven. Its not a religious heaven- there's no god and Susie's heaven is different to everyone else's heaven. There are other people there so it's not an individual heaven but certain things change as to how Susie wants them to. She can also move up into a larger heaven, like a promotion, as she grows.

A film version of the novel is coming out soon and I'm really looking forward to seeing it to compare how I saw the book to how the film makers percieved it. From the trailer I think the heaven is quite similar to what I envisioned but teh characters look quite different. It's not a book I thought of as havig potential for a movie but I will be interested to see how well it works.

Barcelona Architecture

I loved these buildings in Barcelona, covered in decorative details. The cherubs and floral decorations are so beautiful and make the outside of the buildings look so much more interesting. It seems strange that I havn't seen buildings with these kind of details before because I think they're so lovely and much more interesting than plain panels of colour or brick. It almost makes the front of the building into a work of art. Why should buildings always be plain and boring? We're surrounded by them all the time and the walls are always so dull. Obviously these days buildings are deigned to be quick to build and decoration is not a priority. At least there are still building left like this in the world for us to see. 

Light House Cinema- Dublin

I came accross photos of this cinema in Dublin and i think it looks amazing. Alhough you don't go to the cinema to look at the deats of the decor nad spend most of the time in the dark- it's nice to arrive into a good looking theatre room- and these ones look particularly stylish and glamourous. Why not make make the cinema as sophisticated and well designed as the films shown are. 

I always prefer to travel to a particular cinema out of town than go to my local, just because it's big and glamourous with neon signs outside and seems to make the experience more exciting- like going to a hollywood theatre. The lok and feel of the cinema makes it more enjoyable for me. Unfortunatly, the lack of comfort in the seats at my favourite cinema ruin it a bit. 

I think this cinema would definatly make for a better movie viewing experience and you wouldn't be greeted by a depressing dull room when the movie ends and the lights come up.

Vitamin Water Flavour Creator

Vitaminwater is letting the fans decide its next flavour through the launch of their Flavorcreator application on Facebook. Its the first time that fans of Vitaminwater can come together to create the next flavour by voting for their favourite on facebook. The application also lets fans choose what vitamins they'd like the drink to have, and to help them decide there's a series of games that involve vitamins.

Vitaminwater enthusiasts will have the opportunity to name the flavour, write the bottle copy and design the label via a contest with the winner or winning team receiving a $5,000 prize from Vitaminwater.

This is just one if the increasing number of advertising campaigns that use facebook to reach consumers. I think it's a good idea getting the fans involved but the application was quite complicated to use and I got bored very quickly. Perhaps if I was a vitamin water fan id have had more patience. With nearly 200,000 users and many discussion boards it's definately got a lot of people talking. I think the idea of it is a good one (very similar to Walkers crisps recent campaign but online) but it could have been done a lot better.