Dance and buy on eBay

Extraordinarily cute campaign for eBay from GS&P. Nice to see one of the big internet brands doing fun ads rather than those pretentious manifesto pieces beloved of the likes of Air BnB etc.

Faris Yakob says;

The app effect

From 500 apps to a million in just seven years. That's some serious growth right there. 

The modern world

Used to be when I was young a creative team showed their work to their CD or Group Head and that was pretty much it.

Yes of course the account service people needed to see the work. But the CD was the only opinion that mattered.

The CD offered their opinion. And the team acted upon it.

This ensured ideas were clear, strong and very single minded.

Try showing the exact same piece of work to multiple stakeholders and you'll end up with multiple opinions.

Which results in confused and frustrated creatives.

And watered down wallpaper ideas.

Such is the modern world... 

Bloody fragrance ads!

Seriously who on earth dreams up fragrance ad ideas. That's if they actually are ideas?

Johnny Depp in front of the camera. Jean Baptiste Mondino behind it. Plus Ry Cooder on the tunes.

Shudder to think what this must've cost!

Don't hold back

Honda Paper

Six decades of innovations. Thousands of illustrations. One pretty damn sweet stop-motion ad for Honda.

Oh and there's a making of too!

Note to clients

Wisdom of Jan Tschichold via Karen. 

Blocking ad-blockers

Advertising on the internet is annoying.

That's why I have an ad-blocker installed.

It's not that I don't like ads. I do work in advertising after all.

But I hate the annoyingly shouty totally invasive way that ads are used on the web.

If the ads were better and there were less of them I'd un-install my blocker.

So where do we go from here?

Well this week the Washington Post started blocking people who use ad-blockers from accessing their content.

And who can blame them?

Advertising essentially pays for the content you wish to view.

But as long as the ads are so bad I won't be making any changes at my end any time soon.

So for now we the people are in a stalemate situation with them the media.

Wonder who'll win out? 

Combined photography

Came across a fantastic Instagram account on the weekend.

It's the work of Stephen McMennamy.

Don't know if he's a retoucher, finished artist or photographer.

But I do know I love his combined photos.

Wonder how long it'll be before an advertising creative gets in touch to 'borrow' his idea.

How to storyboard an idea

I find a lot of young creatives really struggle with putting a storyboard together.

Not because they can't do it.

But because they can never figure out what to leave out.

It's all about key frames and storytelling. 

Times have changed

There is absolutely no way whatsoever an ad like this would run today.

No client would have the guts to approve it.

And no media outlet would be brave enough to run it.

If you're not familiar with The Last Poets check 'em out.

They don't make angry black music like that anymore.

Ikea vs Apple

Brilliant work by IKEA to capitalise on the launch of the Apple Pencil.

Not sure what Steve Jobs would say about the introduction of a pencil.

But I reckon he would've loved this neat little piss take. 

Ever wondered how ink is made?

No. Me either.

But an old art-director friend of mine sent me a link to this video yesterday.

And all I can say is who would've though the ink manufacturing process would be so interesting. 

Clients damn clients

A friend shared this on Facebook. It's originally from Design Taxi.

Sums up beautifully what it's like working for any creative person working with clients.

And it gives great weight to Jim Coudal's vision of an agency with no clients but themselves.  

Honda stepping

Beautifully executed new spot for Honda.

What really impresses though is that the choreographed walking is exactly that.

Choreographed walking.

No CGI at all.

Apparently the walkers spent six weeks practicing their moves.

Time well spent if you ask me. 

Funny or punny?

These ads for an affordable alternative to Viagra are trying very hard to be funny.

And they're very obviously punny.

But seriously.

Any half-decent Creative Director would've said nice work boys. Now what else have you got?

Google follows fashion

Lot of talk over the last few days about the update to the Google logo.

Much ado about nothing if you ask me. Guess some people are resistant to change?

I kinda like th clean simple lines of the new logo myself.

What I don't like however is it's a fashionable logo and the pic above clearly shows.

Following trends is either lazy or smart design.

I'd say it's lazy. And uninspired.

What say you? 

Amazon v Alphabet

Lot of talk recently about Google and the launch of Alphabet.

Love the thinking behind it.

But did anyone notice that Amzon already did the whole A-Z thing in their logo?

Please buy an ad

Came across this banner on the independent political journal New Matilda.

For non-Australian readers that's our non-illustrious prime minister Tony Abbott is his infamous budgie smugglers.

Being independent mean New Matilda is always on the lookout for funds.

So do us all a favour and click here to buy an ad and get Tony of the front page!

Our past was once the future

What with the flares, big hair and seriously cool design, the 1970s appeared at the time like what the future would look like.

I think that's why so much stuff from that once derided decade now looks and feels so cool.

They designed for the future. But sadly that future never eventuated.

Technologically it has.

But culturally this decade is far less culturally rich than I felt as a child of the 70s.

A great example of how forward looking those times were is the NASA logo from 1974 by Danne & Blackburn.

It fluidity. Its lack of cross lines in the A. It just looks and feels like the future.

Of course in 'the future' the current retro obsessed generation decided to revert to the old 'meatball' NASA logo.

Which pretty much sums up our times.

It's the future. But not as they promised it.

Type by Schwitters

You're probably wondering why on earth I'm writing a post about a ticket.

Thing is that's not just any old ticket.

It was designed/typeset by the great dada artist and sometime typographer Kurt Schwitters in 1930.

That's 85 years ago!

Spend a moment looking at the type and layout though and you'd think it was done quite recently.

It very contemporary don't you think?

The font Schwitters used was Venus Grotesk.

You can read all about Kurt Schwitters on Wikipedia. Of course.