Archive for the 'print design' category.
Jun 27 | Posted by Dave Fletcher | 2 comments
At the Creative Bunker in NYC, we occasionally receive a bit of spam-enhanced snail mail that tickles our funny shins to a higher degree than Josh’s (frequently made-up on the spot) silly tales.
I’m not necessarily a long-term fan of the “Hippy” (though I would have likely been one back in the 60’s primarily because of my profound love of Patchouli and hopping about), but in this latest piece of poorly designed rubbish that came across my desk, the “Hippy” in question is not really a participant in the subgroup of the counterculture that began in the United States during the early 1960’s at all – but likely the owner of this delivery service wearing a Rastafari Crown with fake dreadlocks flashing a half-assed peace sign.
As a result, we will never use this delivery service, not based entirely on the fact that we appreciate good design as opposed to this nonsense, but because we don’t like seeing the “Hippy” getting any more attention for being a dumb-ass than the Gieco Cavemen or Potsie from Happy Days.
Just because you have a beard and a dream, and your Uncle Cleatus claims he can write some “bad-ass” copy doesn’t mean it’s a good idea. Stick that in your pipe and smoke it… Hippy Delivery Man.
May 23 | Posted by Dave Fletcher | Add a Comment
According to this report from News of the World, Ann Summers (Google it…) has released a “naughty thing” for the iPod, called an iGasm. The interesting point here is that Apple isn’t denouncing the device itself. They are threatening to sue over the ads. By the looks of the press, traffic (and most likely warm, hard cash) that Ann Summers is reaping from the immediate backlash, this iPod-toting Neanderthal wonders what type of message this sends to young designers for seeking originality in your final branding solutions.
Surely (if this becomes a successful product, which you know it will…), the debate goes on for stressing the power of originality in our fine profession vs. the incessant lust for controversy to create profitability in new product launches.
Sue me, I win? Perhaps.
Feb 23 | Posted by Dave Fletcher | 1 Comment
I am consistently left with my yapper agape by what our fellow professionals and creative types will do to earn some extra “green” at the cost of their hard-built identity. Brands take serious effort to build, and only through time (and with enough money to help get the name out there), will the client see the fruits of their labor pay off with recognition. Personally, I’m the sort of humanoid that is happy to present myself to the world through the best work possible, and would never stoop to the level of off-shooting a company called “theCheapanism” for example, that would hock pre-made web templates or visual solutions for modest prices.
However, such was the case with a Master Chef that I admired from afar named Wolfgang Puck, who apparently has the free time to create pre-wrapped lunchtime yummies for the masses at the Jacksonville International Airport. Now keep in mind that I’m not foolishly believing that the “Almighty Wolf” Himself prepared these sandwiches for me all by himself (I’m sure spends his free time hocking his knives and spices on The Shopping Network), but he’s certainly not shy about plastering his most important asset — his name and his brand — on a chilled kiosk, and poorly saran-wrapped sandwiches by which his foul foodstuffs were being pedaled for 9 bucks a piece. While I realize that simply the name “Wolfgang Puck” itself should aurally emphasize the quality of the famous chef, I would expect that with one of the most powerful names in “Chef-Ville,” the food would at least be magical if not euphoric in both presentation and flavor. I was unpleasantly surprised to learn that my pre-wrapped feast of a chicken sandwich with mayo, lettuce and focaccia bread tasted no better than a generic sandwich with the same ingredients sold for 4 bucks two kiosks past the airport CD peddler.
It begins to beg the question of what branding really means to someone like Puck and his marketing minions. When you combine tasteless presentation with equally tasteless food, does it defile the very essence of the brand it took years to build? Does it hurt the ambitions of future superstar-turned cash machines like Paris Hilton or Emeril? Or will it simply inspire folks like David Carson and Stefan Sagmeister to pedal pre-made graphic design work to an audience of new time-fearing and hungry clients? If Puck can do it with his reputation firmly etched in our psyche, why not?
In the end, I got a free bag of jalapeño-flavored chips for my 9 bucks wasted. Crunching the spicy treats actually helped eradicate the foul taste of the chicken crapwich from my taste buds. So, things could always be worse…
Aug 31 | Posted by Dave Fletcher | Add a Comment
I’m going to bemoan a well-known, yet half-witted deception in our glamor profession. It’s always fished out of some ol’ art directors “bag o’ tricks” when their feeble minds have really lost touch with today’s changing audience. The trick — which I reckon you guessed from the title — is the placement of sunglasses on a tired or new brand in order to make it seem (to regurgitate the antiquated slang slung around creative meetings that produce this drivel) “hipster” and “with it”. Recently, I’ve witnessed sunglasses added to my beloved Pepperidge Farm Goldfish®, who’s crack advertising group has ridiculously renamed Finn™ on the “Xplosive Pizza” flavor (note: changing “ex” to “x” for added “zip” is another mark of idiocy in the field, but we’ll bait n’ tackle that another time). It’s clear that sunglasses are being used as pawns in audacious attempts to revive old weathered brands — from The Muppets™, adding a little “edge” to their otherwise dismal puppet lives, to giving a little “kick” to Fruity Pebbles™ by adding shaded eye-googler covers to aged toons Fred and Barney, turning them into a couple of “cool cats”, right? Wrong!
In this age of obviously poor judgement from rock stars and politicians alike, do we creatives really have to follow suit with this hocus pocus? Isn’t there anything else that can be used to revive a tired brand or enliven a new one? Every time you see a Ray-Ban™ donning cheetah hocking cheese snacks at the local grocery store, I advise you to punch it squarely in the snout on principle alone. How far from the tree of greatness has the mighty graphic designer fallen to continually unleash this tired cliché on a clearly “suspecting” audience?
What is it that makes sunglasses look cool? It wasn’t Corey Hart. According to Wikipedia, the global source for highly accurate (suspect) and 99.999% truthful (mis)information, sunglasses have “been associated with celebrities and film actors primarily due to the desire to mask identity, but in part due to the lighting involved in production being typically stronger than natural light and uncomfortable to the naked eye.”
So, then one must assume, what insolent designers are attempting to accomplish by adding sunglasses to cartoon rodents, rabbits and bears, is to ultimately brainwash unsuspecting children into thinking that these beasts are celebrities? I’ve got a news-flash for you — kids aren’t stupid anymore, and aren’t buying that these bloodthirsty creatures are celebrities. It didn’t work in the long run for “Salisbury’s Camel“, and it’s not working for anyone else. Mike Salisbury either created or abused the stupidest cliché in our biz by not only creating a phallic-faced, smiling creature that kids would be attracted to like rats to a pipe(r) — but to add insult to injury, he also slapped sunglasses on it! That statement alone demands that he be ousted from any Art Director’s Club immediately with surfboard and smokes firmly in hand.
I’ve also been privy to this nonsense first-hand. Back in 1991, as an intern for a long defunct advertising agency in Buffalo, New York, I witnessed a rotund (and usually hung over), art director adding sunglasses to the mascot of a local amusement park for a series of billboards welcoming 2 months of summer to the region before our 10 months of miserable Arctic temperatures that could only be compared to the chill of being dropped at at the midpoint between earth and the moon in a wet bathing suit. Thankfully, his aesthetic rubbed me the wrong way — not only because he was applying sunglasses to the mascot, but because the mascot for the amusement park was indeed, a smirking sun!
If you’re a designer, I implore that before you apply a pair of sunglasses to your cute little snail mascot you’ve whipped up for your next project, rationalize that the problem with the design might not be the fact that you’re appealing to an audience by anthropomorphizing a slimy garden pest in protective eyewear — it’s possible that you’ve begun to run out of ideas. With God as my witness, last Tuesday I saw sunglasses on Barney® the dinosaur…
It’s like slathering Rite-Guard® on a dead skunk.
Dave Fletcher is a Founder and Creative Director of theMechanism, a maxi-media firm in New York City and London. While he’s been known to wear a pair of orange-tinted sunglasses to block out the rays of Mr. Sun, he insists that he is neither a tired brand or anthropomorphized bird or beer can, so it’s ok.
