Bringing art to life

I really love this campaign for Deserres art supplies in Canada by Nolin BBDO.

The idea of using iconic and graphically strong artworks is kinda obvious to be honest.

But creating the visuals out of crayons or pastels definitely isn't.

Here's a close up of the Keith Haring pic to give you an idea of what I'm talking about.

Eames Aluminium

I stumpled across this Eames promo piece while surfing the net today.

Simple. Stylish. Timeless.

No idea who did it. But if you do be sure and let me know.

What's your Ikea name?

Finding out your porn star name is fun but nowhere near as much fun as discovering your Ikea furniture name.

Don't believe me? Click here and give it a go. Oh and if your name's a good one be sure to come back here and share it via the comments.

Piss take or rip off?

There's no one who loves a tongue-in-cheek a homage quite like me.

But surely the people behind the slacker label South Butt must have known that they were playing with fire when they decided to give their label a name that is sooo obviously derived from North Face?

You only need to look at the logos side by side to see what I'm talking about.

Of course South Butt is all about laying around doing nothing. The exact opposite of North Face.

I'm really not surprised to hear that North Face are taking legal action. What about you?

Whatever happened to?

A hell of a lot of interesting blogs have come and gone during the almost four years that BrandDNA has been around.

While clearing out my inbox over the weeked a rediscovered one of my old favourites - David & Phoebe's What if?



David & Phobe were an aspiring creative duo in London.

As you can see from the pics they were never short of a great idea.


They managed to snare a gig around two years ago. Following which their blog began to gather dust.

I imagine they've got a few awards on their shelf by now. Probably gathering just as much dust as their old blog.

Click here to sample some more of their brilliant thinking.

Starwalking Tuna

I am one of those people who really doesn't understand the enduring popularity and appeal of Star Wars.

I am a big fan of tuna though. And Japan.

So this ad ticks two out of my three success boxes!

Agitation alert

Think I need to get me a jar of Thorazine and keep it in my drawer at work. For emergency use only. Obviously!

Prize or exploitation?

Remember those great Benetton ads of the 90's?

Sure they may have been controversial but at least they had something to say.

Sadly these days (at least in Australia) we rarely see Benetton ads.

Or are their ads so bland and politically correct we don't notice them?

I suspect it may be.

Their advertising these days tends to feature clean cut people of many races. And not much else.

To ensure they have a constant supply of these cute 'n clean types they're currently running a global casting call competition.

Sounds like fun. Or is it?

Well of course it is but the cynic in me says it's tantamount to exploitation.

In the words of Benetton, "It's not about catwalk cliches and model attitude. We’re looking for natural beauty and fresh faces."

Sounds good. But...

"The 100 highest voted entries get featured in our new book on global style and win 200 euro to spend in Benetton."

200 euro! That's about $300. and a fraction of what they'd pay someone with "model attitude".

But it's not even 200 euro really. It's 200 euro to spend at Benetton.

Call me a grumpy old git, but how much longer are young people going to fall victim to the lures of crowdsourcing?

You might think it sounds good but the only people making any real money from it are the people organising it.

Marvelous letterheads

Email has pretty much taken over from letter writing theses days. Which is a bit of a shame really as there's nothing quite like the feeling of receiving and opening personal mail.


In the same way that email has taken the place of the letter so too has the email signature taken the place of the letterhead. Which is another great shame as a great letterhead beats a dodgy old email signature hands down.


To see for yourself how good a letterhead can be click here and go see some genuine classics.

I'll be brief

How hard can it be to write a creative brief?

Pretty easy I'd have thought.

In fact when I wrote briefs for student projects at RMIT they were no longer than four key points.

Obviously a realworld environment requires a bit more info than that. But not too much.

So let's get back to my question - How hard is it to write a creative brief?

Certainy not hard enough to warrant a 66 page powerpoint presentation to teach you how to do it.

Which may well explain why a 66 page JWT presentation on writing a brief was mysteriously taken down from Slideshare.

Click here to see for yourself.

Bonds Hipsters turn 10

I'm not exactly sure what my idea of a dream job would be, but going on this shoot would certainly be up there.

No work in progress

I'm sure you've heard by now about the agencies of Belgium going on virtual strike to protest the way that companies there handle the pitch process.

Agencies involved replaced their website with a letter explaining why the action had been taken.

Honestly what is the point? I mean, how often do clients look at agency websites? Not very I'd imagine.

The whole "strike" just seems a bit lame to me. In fact if they hadn't PR'ed the stunt I very much doubt that anyone would have noticed.

What's the difference?

A taste of FIG JAM

If there's one thing that bugs me about so many bloggers in our industry it's their stereotyping of agency people as self important FIG JAM types.

It's just not true. Well not completely!

Most creatives I've met are friendly and happy to help you.

Suits and planners too.

Sure there will always be egos in agencies but I've only ever met one person who really thought they were superior to everyone else.

Sadly I don't think the same can be said for bloggers or blog commenters.

It's easy to slag off or put down agencies/brands/marketers on a blog.

And it's even easier to make grand pronouncements about how good you are and how much better you are than all those tired old has-beens working in adland.

But guess what - Nobody cares.

So stop eating the FIG JAM and try a little humble pie instead.

Who knows. You may even get a taste for it.

Coca Cola Robot

I love Japan. And I love the Japanese obsession with both vending machines and robots. So as you can imagine I really love this crazy idea that only the Japanese could pull off - A Coca Cola robot vending machine. Brilliant!

Scent of perfection

I stumbled on a great collection of vintage perfume ads today.

Although if truth be told most of them were far from great.

Which is quite surprising considering the fashion/design connections with fragrances.

One ad really caught my eye. The one above for Mitsouko.

It's quite striking don't you think.

Apparently it dates from the 1960's. Although judging by the model's eye make-up I suspect it may come from the early 70's.

The only othe perfume ad I know that comes close to it is this Chanel poster by Andy Warhol.


This ad dates from 1997 and the original poster can often be found at vintage poster outlets.

Warhol actually created this design in the 1980's but because of his death the images were not used until much later.

That's two utterly iconic fragrance ads. What a pity I couldn't recall any others. Can you?

Mags are important

Print is a medium under threat.

The introduction of the likes of the iPad may help reinvent and rejuvenate magazines but not the actual medium of print.

Yet many of those predicting the death of print perhaps underestimate its power.

Stand in a supermarket queue and see how magazine covers draw people to pick them up and flick through them.

Nowhere is the power of the printed magazine better demonstrated than in this collection of covers looking at the Iraq war.

Latest Blogosphere is up

I've just posted my column from last month's Marketing magazine to my dedicated Around The Blogosphere blog.

This month I look back at the creation of our agency blog Wunderings. It's well worth a read especially if you're contemplating setting up a work blog yourself.

Click here to go take a look. Feedback and comments greatly appreciated.

Scent of creativity

I can't believe I missed this when it was released late last year.

A USB drive that scents the air with a Jean Paul Gaultier fragrance as you work.

So clever. Yet so obvious you wonder why it hasn't been done before.

This USB was given away as a gift with purchase.

Wonder how long before we see a few more of these?

Especially for a coffee brand.

Book type

I love great typography. And these book cover designs by David Pearson are top notch.

They have a real letterpress feel about them. Don't you think?

Best of all they really capture the "maleness" of Cormac McCarthy's work.

Click here to check out the full set.

For info on the upcoming film of McCarthy's The Road click here.

Prepare for battle

Trust the Japanese to find a way to turn a simple promotion into an excuse to make a Transformer style robot contest.

Using USB sticks and recordable DVDs you create your own Verbatim monster. Who then does battle with other monsters.

It's heaps of fun. Although I'm not sure it'll make me buy Verbatim CDs next time I visit JB-HiFi.

Click here and get ready to do battle.

Just one small change....

Ask any creative person and they'll tell you that client comments are often hard to stomach.

They infuriate you. They perplex you. And quite often leave you wondering if you and the client are talking about the same piece of work.

They are however an occupational hazard.

If you let these innane comments get to you then you'll end up prematurely grey haired. Trust me I know!

Brighten The Corners are a London agency who've taken their frustrating feedback and turned it into lovely posters.

They're even selling them if you want one for your office wall.

Pretty good idea I reckon. Because when those comments start to wear you down you can look at your poster and draw strength from the fact that you are not alone.

Hat tip to Hayes.

Thank god for Roger

Late Sunday night Melbourne time I suspect the entire marketing and sponsorship team at Gillette raised their glasses and drank a toast to Roger Federer.

Not because he won the Australian Open.

But because he won the Open without even the slightest besmirching of his clean cut top bloke image.

Much has been written about Gillette's sponsorship of the high profile trio of Thiery Henry, Tiger Woods & Roger Federer.

Even more has been written about the fall from grace of two out of the three.

So me thinks that Roger's triumphant Oz Open campaign may well have won him a seriously large pay rise as the one and only face of Gillette.

Because Federer is the best man Gillette could get.

Get what's yours!!!

We get more than our fair share of dodgy "Car City" meets "Fussy Furniture" style ads on Australian TV. But I don't think we have anything quite like Berger & Green. I'm surprised they don't have a tagline that says Explosions-R-Us.