This is a sample of our client christmas card. This year's theme was multi-purpose wrapping paper that can either be used either to wrap a loved one's gift or to be hung on the wall thanks to the inspirational message on the inside. Either way, a great gift for all.
From all of us at Leo Burnett, have a very Happy Holidays. We're out now until January 4th.
Hugs,
Brent & Angus
For anyone watching the green branding space (is anyone not?), the past few months have been breathtaking. Even for us jaded ad folk who can work phrases like "tipping point" and "unprecedented rate of change" into any sentence (just try me), the sheer velocity at which things have started moving is pretty freaking crazy.
For years, the green movement crawled along, slowly gaining steam but always finding mainstream credibility slightly elusive. And then all of a sudden in the past year, and especially the past six months, things are moving exponentially. Food miles, air travel, carbon calories, getting rid of plastic bags, and now bottled water: it seems every month a new target comes into focus. 
Just how far have we come? Look at shopping bags. By now you've no doubt heard of the canvas shopping bag fracas started by designer Anya Hindmarch. Her canvas bag, designed in partnership with We Are What We Do and bearing the phrase "I'm not a plastic bag", was sold as a $15/£5 limited edition last spring in places like Whole Foods and Sainsbury's. It quickly became a craze. Celebrities were seen with them. Lines formed around the block. Bags are sold on eBay at huge mark-ups.
Then we got the inevitable backlash. All this fuss over a canvas bag? And now counter-bags are coming out. Some are
subversive canvas bags saying things like "I'm not a smug twat" or "I'm not a douche bag." The plastic bag industry has even launched a campaign to reuse plastic bags, stencilling them with "I AM a Plastic Bag AND I’m 100% Recyclable."
But here's what's cool about all of this: you know that a trend has landed when the conversation gets all meta. After all, no one's seriously debating whether plastic bags suck anymore. We've moved onto spoofs and commentary. We have arrived.
All of this is by means of saying: can any brand, in any category, afford to not have a green strategy now? Given how many brands and categories have wasteful practices, and given quickly the pressure has been applied to plastic bags and bottled water, who's to say your category won't be next?
image via sagebrushgis
There's a great article in Sunday's NY Times Magazine on a font. Well, two fonts.
Clearview is a new typeface that will be replacing the classic 'Highway Gothic' font on all the iconic green & white highway signage across the US. The existing typeface has been around for 50 years, but it was chosen without any thought during the rush in the 1950s to expand the American interstate system (it was also adopted as the predominant Canadian highway font). The problem is it has several problems with blurriness and illegibility, especially at night, and that's only becoming a bigger issue as the population ages. Clearview, by making subtle changes, is massively improved. US states are slowly adopting it, and Canadians can also see it popping up on new highway and road signs around Toronto.
The article is a good read on using design thinking, exploration and experimentation to address a complex web of issues (the type needed to be more legible, but couldn't be too different: you don't want a font calling attention to itself when people are speeding down the highway). It also gets into the relationship
between public typography, sense of place, and national psyche. And, of
course, it provides a reminder that marketers rarely miss an
opportunity: Clearview is already AT&T's new corporate font.
But whenever I read articles like this I'm struck by how little you hear this kind of serious design thinking in agencies anymore. I think many of us agency folk have forgotten how to speak about design intelligently. We may have a good intuitive sense of what works, but when pressed on a rationale for our creative choices (typography, colours, layouts), we often can't back it up very well, and the conversation turns to subjective likes and dislikes. No wonder agencies are commodities these days: we've forgotten how to be experts.
So recently we've been taking part in the global D&AD flag project. As you may have heard, the D&AD sent a flag bearing their iconic black & yellow logo out to 500 creatives around the world. The brief was to do something with it that "reflects your relationship to creativity," and photograph it for inclusion in an exhibit and in the 2007 D&AD annual.
We're a bit slow - the deadline was earlier this week. And it's kind of a fear-inducing brief. But we finally got our act together. More and more, creativity is about giving up control and letting go of ideas, so here's what we ended up doing. We're really excited to see what happens.
You should also check out what Ben's done with his flag - it's typically different and smart and wry, and he's the only other person we could find doing this online.
There's been a big trend around for a while towards all things arts & crafty: knitting, scrapbooking, deconstructed textiles, and sites like etsy.com where you can buy and sell anything handmade. But over the last little while it also seems to have crossed over into world of 
professional design, film, video, and advertising.
After years of reliance on Photoshop and CGI animation, all of a sudden there seems to be a counter-trend going on recently towards the rough instead of the slick.
The nice folks over at Influx posted on a similar thought a few days ago.
For example the cover of Esquire magazine this month features this hand-written cover.
Michel Gondry started playing with cool handmade stop-motion techniques a while ago (including my favourite video ever), but it's gone more mainstream of late. Like this video by the Pocket Dwellers from earlier this year with lots of interesting design using ink and paper.
And for the promotional campaign to his upcoming film Bee Movie, Jerry Seinfeld deconstructs the whole animation process with live actors in bad costumes (what's funny is apparently the movie itself actually will be full CGI animation, this film was only made as a trailer).
As they note at Influx (where they have some other great examples), the idea seems to stem from a desire "to demonstrate that human beings were involved in the creative process.
It is interesting that this happening at the same time as creativity is
becoming more democratic."
So it seems like all the "unprofessional" creativity expressed by people on MySpace and flickr and YouTube - all the webcam films and picture-a-day videos - has seeped into the collective design consciousness, and is starting to change our expectation of what professional creativity can look like. Which seems to me to be a good thing.
I absolutely love this wallpaper from Duncan Wilson & Sirkka Hammer called PixelNotes. It's made of several layers of sticky notes in progressively darker shades of grey, with solid red at the bottom. As you take notes off the wall, you create various pixellated patterns. So you participate in designing your space as you work. This would definitely be part of my own perfectly designed office.
via Digital Agency
Recent Comments