This Pretty Much Sums It Up

Typography often goes unnoticed and I think that's a shame. One sits there for hours picking a font and then trying to craft that font by way of letter spacing, word spacing, leading, layout, and all that jazz and no one seems to care. It's just like poker--you only remember the bad beats (the bad typography) and never seem to dwell or notice big-pot victories (good typography). Anyways, this is a pretty cool poster that emphasizes that point. I, too, am guilty of this because all I do is try to notice the crappy crafting of type, however, whenever I do see something that is easily readable, I also remember to take the time to appreciate the kerning, leading, spacing, and all that goes into making a successful layout.
















"Good typography is invisible/Bad typography is everywhere"

Vote!

Please get out and vote. Starbucks and Krispy Kreme are encouraging people with this campaign!




















Starbucks will give voters a free cup of coffee today.














Krispy Kreme will give you a free star-shaped doughnut as long as you have the "I Voted" sticker on you.

Nifty idea? You bet.

Humor Works

Well, I really like this one website, http://pzrservices.typepad.com, and how humor can really play a part in advertising. For one, it immediately grabs our attention and gets us to think outside of the box in a more relaxed manner rather than a rational or irrational manner. In order to maintain a "fresh idea" outlook, one must constantly scan their surroundings and question everything. One must try to visualize from another persons perspective or that of a 4-year olds, you know? Being simplistically clever is not always an easy thing because there are so many bad ideas in our brains that we need to release from time to time. Taking a stroll through a park or walking through busy intersections at night might bring forth some ambiguous ideas. I don't know, don't stand in one spot--navigate everywhere.

Stay Original and Relevant

Bob Isherwood, a creative director for Saatchi & Saatchi, maintains his theory that all ideas must be original, relevant, and should have an emotional connection, otherwise the ad simply won't work. Did you know a survey was done in China and about 84% of television viewers immediately channel-surfed during a commercial break, and only 11% stayed on the channel for a couple of seconds. What does that tell you? Revise, revise, revise. In today's world, there is too much competition for any one of us to be oridinary. For instance, look at this Wrigley pack. Whatever happened to the traditional packaging? Well, apparently they weren't working so they re-emphasized their product by switching their identity. For Bob Isherwood, "ideas are the currency of the future."

Keep it clear...and ethical.

Sometimes we forget that we must be clear, concise, and appropriate with our fonts and colors. Sal DeVito has a checklist for us during our method of creating fresh advertisements. In Robin Landa's "Advertising by Design", DeVito says one must be brutally honest about one's work. If you fall into certain figurative categories (Sounds like advertising, too damn cute, sounds like bullshit, I've heard it before, dull, good idea but needs a stronger execution) then the chances are that you are not on the right path and you must rethink and redo your brainstorm. Ads are a phenomenal thing because they draw our attention and make us emotional, regardless of how crappy or great it is, it HAS our attention and that's power within itself. Of course, one must try to maintain ethical standards...

So...

I really enjoyed the reading. It was pretty informative because a couple of ads really got their point across. Boy, am I glad I quit smoking. The one Scottish ad that showed a pack of cigarettes as a coffin really got to me. It was like a trip down memory lane because I was thinking "Wow, when was the last time I saw 'Smokey the Bear' anywhere?" I thought the page of "A Few Noteworthy American Advertising Slogans" was pretty interesting because it shows how long vintage slogans have been around for. For instance, Morton Salt has been using the very same campaign for almost 100 years! I'm kind of surprised that there was only one "noteworthy" McDonald's slogan. The most humorous ad by far was the one for vodka by Papert, Koenig, and Lois. What got my attention was that the bottle and the fruit of choice, whether it be a tomato or an orange, exchanged words of lust with one another and it was obvious that the vodka was the male and the orange/tomato was the female. Robin Landa seems like a pretty interesting and down to earth person as well because she asks her family for visual and conceptual support, so I thought that was pretty cool. I look forward into seeing more ads because it opens up the train of thought.

Check It Out!

So, Graphic Design is good for something after all...Apparently, designers were credited with the historic "peace" symbol. Jimmy sent this article out to us on March 20th, but I think it's so cool that I've decided to circulate it again because of its importance. It is true that it is highly regarded as one of the most popular protest symbols and it is true that letterforms are the carbon copy of human gestures. Thus, we have...



The "N" is for Nuclear and the "D" is for Disarmament, put them together and voila!

For more on this article, click here.

Survey THIS!

McDonald's is kid friendly: a) Ronald McDonald b) "Play Place" c) "Happy Meal". They are now focusing on health and fitness via their healthy replacements i.e. a bottle of water and salad instead of fries and a coke. Jack in the Box is more on the "we're going to stuff your stomach" while at the same time promoting freshness i.e. "We don't make it until you order it." They differ by marketing strategies in that Jack focuses on humor i.e. Mr. Jack and his crowd of adolescent to older men. McDonald's focuses on family togetherness and community aspects of a fast food chain.

Target is perceived as fun, colorful, and welcoming with great discounts on not only the Target brand, but big-time vendors. Wal-Mart is perceived as an All-American store with ridiculous discounted merchandise within a wide array of product, however, with my personal experience I believe Wal-Mart focuses on the older crowd i.e. retired All-American citizens, per se, whereas Target is easily more culturally diverse and is geared towards the younger crowd. I would rather buy my clothing from Target rather than Wal-Mart. In the end, Wal-Mart takes the cake as far as prices, but to me it seems it is a ghetto-type of a Target.

Verizon is all about service management and customer satisfaction. After all, they are "the most reliable network". Cingular also has a pretty solidified line service, but their services are not guaranteed and their fees are somewhat ridiculous, given my personal experience. Cingular and Verizon always do battle with their phones and service plans i.e. the iPhone, compared to Verizon's enV. Now that phones are pretty much ruling everyone's life, plans are now geared to suit one's usage of minutes i.e. the great marketing strategies that suggest "Hey, you NEED a phone!"

What matters to me? I'll tell you what matters to me: honest, integrity, and intelligence. My friends would describe me as humorous, meticulous, and "super" laid back. My family thinks I am lazy, quiet, self-centered. People with first impressions believe I am charasmatic, humble, and funny.

I would definitely have to say that I am patient, mellow, and loyal.

Official Language

In chapter five of David Crow's Visible Signs I turned to page 93 and noticed a noteworthy thing: "Any value or 'capital' awarded to individuals always arises from a deviation from the most common usage. Commonplace usage is seen as trivial or vulgar."--basically one must strive for better usage of words that are for more scholarly and less general in society. We play this word game because we need to separate the powers, thus we can seek a hierarchy of social groups within our nation(s), or so the story goes. My favorite example of screwing with the system is on page 99. On that page you will find an extraordinary piece from Katy Dawkins. The piece is a plaque and it says "Liverpool City Council/Fuck You/By Order". I thought it was sheer genius because she took the foul language and fit it in accordance with the "official language" rules/laws. Another interesting set were the works of Joe Magee. On page 102 his "Renationalise" piece was supposed to be a column about winter coats, but instead he placed the winter coat ad along with a braille coding that read "renationalise" and when the editor finally figured it out, his contract was cut, hahaha, nice. Another one of Joe Magee's work had to do with an ad about hair conditioner. So he placed the image and once again used braille coding. This time it read "Thatcher Fucked Us". I really enjoy artists who push the envelope and bother editors/critics--good times.

Posters

In chapter four of David Crow's Visible Signs, I received punctual information on page 74. Crow talks about Frank Jefkins and his three basic principles of effective advertisement writing. The first is that the advertisement should be of interest and value to the reader. The second asset it should have is that it should be precise and as quick to the point as possible. The third is that it not only has to be precise, but it also has to be concise, meaning that one should only say what needs to be said in the fewest necessary words. Less is more. Also, the whole anchorage versus relay series helped me understand posters that use text to draw away from the image and posters that use images and very little text to draw one in and help them to further examine the poster in awe. I specifically liked the 77th Black Dawn Disaster by Alan Murphy because of the many series of faces and text--it kept one guessing as to what the heck was going on in that very "scene" of action.

Modern Myths

Okay, so I'm reading chapter 3 in David Crow's "Visible Signs" book and came across something that caught my eye. On page 62 and 62 Crow discusses myth and how there are too many misconceptions in society and how the public has falsely associated themselves with the images of certain things around our communities. He talks of the media and how they manipulate our senses by controlling language and media, thus signs are misleading or hidden subliminally to further draw the average Jane or John Doe. He states, "In today's society the modern myths are built around things like notions of masculinity and femininity, the signs of success and failure, what signifies good health and what does not." I thought that was very true of our weary-eyed culture in the United States, but it is what it is.

David Crow

So, Visible Signs by David Crow is kind of an interesting read, but I think one has to be in the mood to read through some of his stuff. Not everything he says catches me off guard, so it's like reading a hit or miss tutorial. Anyway, what I did like was the whole firstness, secondness, and thirdness aspect, on page 38, and how one goes about brainstorming and completing a production. Firstness deals with an overall sense of what you want to do, secondness is based on factual criteria, and thirdness is the relationship and association of it all--basically 1 + 2 should equal three. I also enjoyed one of his portfolio pieces on 48 and 49 titled "Stylorouge". That piece just goes to show that things aren't what they appear if you step back 4 frames from reality and observe the whole makeup and atmosphere of what's really taking place--kitsch motive at its finest.

Visible Signs

So I was reading Visible Signs and noticed that each chapter has a portfolio section in which the paper is nice and clean, like a finished product. Is anyone else wondering why he chose to do this? The first part of chapter one is on some draft-paper-like material with the transparent and faded guidelines for the writing. I thought it was a pretty cool idea and some of the stuff David Crow states is interesting and straight to the point. Also, free stickers? What's that about? It's odd and appealing at the same time.