Whether you love or hate the world environmental organization Greenpeace, they certainly do come up with some clever, attractive and maybe even effective advertising campaigns. Part of a new initiative, these beautiful black and white illustrations see a tiny, inflatable boat born figure battling against gigantic monster like environmental problems. The daunting manifestations of oil rigs, overfishing, deforestation and air pollution are all confronted by the activist David wielding a tiny slingshot… and from the story it’s based upon, we know he will be triumphant. [Read more...]
Talk to Your Kids About Art
This is your brain on art. Michigan-based agency Team Detroit came up with a hilarious print ad campaign that satirizes the “Talk to your kids about drugs” movement. [Read more...]
A Solar Report With Images Revealed by the Sun
You don’t get a much more appropriate use of technology than this booklet for Austria Solar. Using ink that remains invisible until sunlight touches it, this crisp design by Mathias Nösel and Matthäus Frost of Serviceplan, comes in a foil envelope only revealing its imagery when opened to the rays of the sun. It’s a lot like those 1990s shirts that exposed their sweet prints as you strolled outside… only this is a whole lot less cheesy. [Read more...]
Ad Ethics: When to Take Leo Burnett’s Name Off the Door
Just what exactly makes a company “good,” especially when that company is an advertising agency? Leo Burnett, founder of the eponymous ad agency, had a pretty good handle on the answer to that question back in 1967 when he made his retirement speech titled “When to take my name off the door.” Now, on the 75th anniversary of the firms beginning, a Brazilian design studio has made a stylish retro animation to celebrate the executive behind such iconic advertising campaigns as the Pillsbury Doughboy, Tony the Tiger and the Marlboro Man. If you’re addicted to watching Mad Men like so many others, this fellow is the real deal. [Read more...]
Fast Food: Advertisements vs. Reality
If you ever wanted an in-depth look at false advertising… Dario D’s your guy. He has a really engaging and entertaining way of laying out all the details in the many thoughtful articles and exposés he puts together on his site Alphaila.com… from digging into the reasons he thinks Windows 7 is a failure, to Apple’s problem with spreading Macs and this: his photographic revealing of what you really get inside those cardboard fast food boxes. [Read more...]
A London Underground “Tube” Map From Kyle Bean
Now this is taking the idea of London’s famous ‘Tube‘ quite literally: Kyle Bean, designer, model maker and all around advertising re-thinker has created the London metro map using colored drinking straws. His map uses the colorful tubes in a playful, elementary school craft-time like fashion, which when finished appears completely to scale and quite grown up… that’s because he’s built the design over a large poster of the actual map. His final design, lacking the station labels needed to navigate the system, is still highly recognizable for what it is, a truly iconic design tribute. [Read more...]
A QR Code Built From Everyday Objects
QR codes seem to be cropping up everywhere you look, from tags in electronics stores to flyers stapled to telephone poles… so it’s really nice to see this completely original project from David Sykes. To promote his newly launched website, Sykes created an 8 foot square model of a QR code using objects sourced directly from his studio. He then photographed the ‘cityscape’ of stuff from above and made 8×10 prints retaining the full frame of the shot. By including the studio floor and rebates in the image, he gave the whole piece a further sense of depth. Possibly my favorite aspect of the project was the mysterious way each print arrived at it’s recipient: in an anonymous photograph mailer with no mention of who it was from. Brilliant! [Read more...]
Just A Few Years Before Facebook
“What the heck it electronic mail!?” Before the computer world was connecting every few seconds, the idea of email and online shopping was a concept that had to be communicated to customers. This roundup of vintage computer ads, explores some of the stranger ways companies like Apple and IBM brought us into the information age… be sure to see the last ad in this article, it’s a sight of things to come [Read more...]
Now Classic: Errol Morris Lives the High Life
Roger Ebert once said, “After twenty years of reviewing films, I haven’t found another filmmaker who intrigues me more… Errol Morris is like a magician, and as great a filmmaker as Hitchcock or Fellini.” Perhaps best known for his documentary films such as The Fog of War and The Thin Blue Line, Morris has been honored with shelves worth of awards, including an Oscar. He has also directed a large collection of advertisements: here we bring you a sampling of what he considers his most impressive television achievement: over 100 retro-themed commercials for Miller Hi-Life. It’s a tribute to the classic American man [Read more...]
Long Banned Tobacco Ads
Different brands and types of tobacco; lots of competition. One has this feature or that selling point… but all with the same goal: Attract the consuming public to want mine and not yours. [Read more...]















