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Monthly archives

Smoking, It’s Not What It Use To Be

The other day I stumbled across this blog post of a collection of vintage cigarette ads on Quazen and knew I had to share it. It’s funny to see how far they took some of these ads. It makes me truly appreciate the excessive chain smoking on Mad Men.

Kassie Nappier is a native St. Louisan and an aspiring art director waiting for her big break in the advertising world. With over 3 years of graphic design experience she’s now working full time on scoring her first agency job.

WAL-MART’s New Logo

As the mother of all retail monoliths, Wal-Mart is one of those few entities in life that the depth and breadth of their proportion seems beyond staggering to comprehend or even try to wrap your head around.

MAD MEN – Episode 9

http://www.amctv.com/originals/madmen/episode209

The latest episode of Emmy-award winning drama series MAD MEN kicked off with everyone preoccupied with the news of Marilyn Monroe’s death. Remember this is August, 1962.

Roger Sterling comes into his office to find Joan Holloway lying down on his sofa, teary and moping about her death. Roger was only sad about the fact that Joan wasn’t there waiting for him and a little afternoon delight.

Don Draper and his wife Betty are still on the outs as a result of her kicking his lying, cheating ass to the curb. After Don’s daughter Sally calls the office to find out when…

The Economy and Me

A while back, I went on a spiel about politics and marketing. I did get a comment for that blog entry, and it gave me pause (and for that, I thank you, reader). The comment essentially spoke to how the wealthy are essential to fueling the economy and providing much-needed jobs. To some degree I agree, but the events that are unfolding before our very eyes do not allow me to believe that this is totally true. With various tax incentives, tax cuts, and tax loop holes, many in the upper tax bracket seem to have been able to pool their…

Graphic Duh-sign.

There is a home builder here in North Carolina by the name of Portrait Homes.  A lot of my family is in the real estate business and I’ve heard of so many contractors it’s ridiculous.  I don’t remember any of them except this one because of the most disgusting logo I’ve ever laid my eyes on.  Ready?

A good case of diarrhea looks better than this turd.  I’m just focusing on the actual icon, not the text.  The first time I saw this logo I drove past a sign and made a face to myself and asked “WTF was that?”  It…

MAD MEN Wins 6 Emmys: Best Drama on Television!

It seems really fitting that MAD MEN won a slew of creative Emmy Awards for Best Writing, Art Direction, Main Title Design, Outstanding Cinematography and Hairstyling. These are all a testament to the painstaking attention to detail that the creators of MAD MEN have invested in to present this period drama from an era, that most of it’s audience wasn’t even born yet.

You’re A PC? I Wouldn’t Brag About It!

I never heard anyone how uses a PC tell me how much smarter they’ve become using a PC, only how pissed off they are about the glitches in the operating systems, the fact that you need to do a lot to make it it do very little and most of all, how much PC users hate that PC are a magnet and haven for transmittable viruses.

Oh, You Are A Designer.

As owning my own business begins to be as much fun as swallowing my own tongue, I find myself looking for a change.  I’ve been looking for anything design related for the last 8 months and there isn’t a whole lot out there that doesn’t want some web knowledge.  So I’ve decided to go back to school for web design and see how the web/graphic designer degree combo works out.  All of the jobs I can’t get are asking for it so I’m crossing my fingers.

In the mean time trying to find any ol’ job as I make this move…

I Am Not a PC

Ever think you’d see this phrase: Crispin Porter + Bogusky just did a montage spot. On purpose.

Yeah, neither did I.

But a montage is exactly what they did for Round 2 of their $300 million campaign for Microsoft. See the spot below:

This spot comes on the heels of the two perplexing mini-movies featuring Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates. Personally, I thought these short films were fairly funny. They just had absolutely no marketing value whatsoever. I love wackiness. I own the url wackinessensues.com (it redirects to my bio, which is appropriately wacky). But wackiness for the sake of wackiness just doesn’t fly…

Affliction Clothing, Emo For Adults.

I’m going to start off by just saying it.  I do not like Affliction Clothing.  I’m an entrepreneur myself and I’m happy they are successful.  Anyone in the business world that hits on something is to be commended.  I congratulate the 4 owners for finding a mark.  I just feel the style and mentality is ridiculous.  The definition of “affliction” is a state of pain, grief and distress.  Everybody wants to be a tragic hero these days.  In our society in 2008 there are no Macbeths or Hamlets.  Maybe an Anakin Skywalker here or there though.  I’m going to cover…

This Is How You Do This!

Very often design people tend to think that if you are designing a something tropical, adopting a coconut tree mentality is the only thought space to possess. The typical response that creative people have is that everything that came before is a cliche that has been beaten to death with a stick.

Yee Ha.

By the title, I’m not excited.  I can’t go anywhere without seeing this font.  Cowboys is the new Cooper.  I’ve seen it on billboards here in NC promoting some haunted houses coming up for October.  It’s on shirts, and since it’s on the same level as that Affliction Clothing crap…which will be my next blog…I understand.  I even logged into hotmail today and saw an ad with it.  The first time I saw Cowboys I said “hey thats kind of neat”.  It is different and to my knowledge it was the first of it’s kind.  I’ve been watching free fonts…

Busch Gardens vs Universal Studios

Who do you think will win in this contest of amusement park giants? Well, if you answer “Universal Studios”…you’re WRONG.

To put this into context, these two Florida-based parks (I’m sure others do it too) do a Halloween-themed opening every year, starting in the later evening, and providing numerous areas throughout the existing park where haunted houses, shows, and scarezones can be endured. It has become a tradition for my friends and I to get together every year and experience the horrors and laugh at each other as we jump and scream.

The marketing advertising campaigns for these events seem to grow…

Out-Of-Home 2

Many say that beer and liquor companies have an unfair advantage because they have massive budgets to work with. I say they do have an unfair adavantage to do standout work because they have the will to do what other brands only pay lip service to do.

MAD MEN – Episode 8

I hate to see a couple get divorced, especially over an end-aisle display for beer. That was the catalyst for the very surprising Betty Draper reaching her breaking point that made her kick hubby Don Draper’s lying, cheating ass to the curb in this past weekend’s enstalment of MAD MEN. Their positioning statement of “Where The Truth Lies” was never more evident as the second season really heats up this fall.

Duck Phillips is apparently on a roll and he enlists Don’s help in getting Heineken Beer, thanks to stealth thinking to set up some in-store retail, end-aisle displays for the beer…

When will it end?

Seems like Microsoft is going to bludgeon us into a state of nebulous submission with these laborious and obtuse TV commercials that we’ll actually get into a state of “Seinfeldian” satisfaction over the fact that we didn’t hate them as much as we expected to, and that’s a good thing.

Lame-err…Microsoft: New Family

As fellow blogger Joel Kirstein pointed out, the new Microsoft commercial featuring Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld in the shoe store was a real disappointment – I too expected more from Crispin Porter + Bogusky. The latest spot, which I saw on creativity-online does a slightly better job – there’s some funny bits in this almost five minute commercial, but I think it fails in actually giving me any reason to buy a PC. And isn’t that the point after all? (Click here to view on youtube.com) Actually, I think it rips off something Seinfeld did for American Express back…

The New Facebook

I have debated on writing about this for the last few days since I was not sure it really fits into the theme of this blog. For those of you who are Facebook users you are most likely aware that the site is getting ready to change the layout of their website. Since this essentially is about web design I decided it is within the 12point realm.

A friend of mine sent me an invitation to join a group “Please Keep The Old Facebook, The New Version Is A Disaster”. There are 205,000 members in that group and I’m amazed. There is…

Wallace & Gromit Ads

Gromit on the other hand has that Miles Davis vibe going for him. Anything he touches, he instantly makes better and his own. Following in the footsteps (or his case, paw prints) of other British style icons like David Bowie, I see our sartorial superb, four-footed friend having a lengthy career at the vanguard of fashion and style that will run for a dog’s age.

Thank You Sound

Music. I forgot how much I love it and I forgot how much it helps my creativity. I never took too much time to build an mp3′ collection until about a month ago. I went from 565 songs to 2226 in just over 4 days and I’m not telling you how (mostly because you can figure it out). I always work with music on and I often find myself looking up at the clock not realizing two hours have gone by.

Yesterday I was doing some designs for an apparel company. They are doing a run of black hoodys for the…

MAD MEN – Episode 7

Roger Sterling on the other hand is obviously more interested in narrow casting his socializing to be exclusively chasing skirts.

In Between the Donkey and the Elephant

I was debating/playing devil’s advocate with my best friend the other day, and she brought up the “third largest political body” after the Republicans and the Democrats–the Libertarians (apparently it’s the fifth, ranking after the Constitution and Green parties).

Who?

Now here’s where Marketing and Advertising is badly needed. It’s bad enough that a good chunk of the United States population isn’t digging and researching these presidential candidates as much as they should–only a select few actually pay heed to all of the political goings-on, and vote to make a change, while the rest (myself included) don’t even think the “smaller stuff”…

LAME: The Bill & Jerry Show

the 90 second spot should do wonders for increasing sales of churros at the mall food court.

Sticky Sweet Nectar of the Midwest Gods

So my wife and I celebrated our five-year anniversary last night just as you might expect – by watching TV through half-closed eyes minutes after putting the twins down for the evening. Having burned through all of our DVR’ed shows, we were forced to watch television in real time. Suddenly, it was 2004 all over again. Only without the bitter presidential…oh, never mind.

Then, as we watched a truly odd ballet-teaching couple search for a vacation home in Aruba on “House Hunters International,” the following word from a sponsor appeared to confuse our eyeballs:

Yes, you saw that correctly. The Corn Refiners…

Freelance vs. Working for a Company

A fellow blogger was writing about freelance, and it struck a cord. It’s really an issue of greener pastures. When I was in art college, I was admittedly a bit aimless. My “suggested” and chosen major was Illustration. I didn’t even know that I was truly going to art school until Ringling College of Art and Design accepted me. And even in that moment, I had no clue what I would do with my creative skills to practically make a living.

There are some artists, that can paint and draw, and make a living at it. But that’s a niche market–not…

“Waiting All Day for Sunday Night”

Sorry for being out of the game these last couple of weeks – I know my loyal readers have been seriously jonesing for my blog posts. :-) But you know this crazy world of advertising sucks the life right out of you sometimes – from pitches to client meetings out of town and everything in between (including throwing my neck out), I’ve been out of the game. But now I’m back. And just in time for football!

Speaking of football – looks like Faith Hill will be singing the theme song for Sunday Night Football again (the original score by John Williams…

The Most Hated Font

The Comic Sans debate has been going on for about 10 years. Love it or hate it, Comic Sans exists. Since being out of school I really haven’t thought of it much. I remember when I was there my typography teacher said the main reason people hate it is because people think it’s “cool” and it gets used everywhere. I never thought twice about it. I just said “hmm, ok” and moved on. If you are untrained in type and you come across your basic font in Word, yes it does stand out so I understand why it gets picked.…

OKLAHOMA, OK?

I didn’t expect a very literal interpretation of the OKC team nickname “THUNDER” but when you launch a new new brand, the last thing you want to be is understated or look unprepared. Basically the logo seems rushed and under-developed. Two months isn’t a wealth of time in all fairness, to sink a winning shot before the buzzer when it comes to these situations.

MAD MEN: Episode 6

This week’s episode of MAD MEN was one of the most annoying episodes of any TV show I have seen in quite some time. The Sopranos used to pull this stuff all the time which comes as no surprise considering a few of the writers from The Sopranos are amongst the principals behind MAD MEN. So if a show can provoke their fans to run the gamut of feelings, thoughts and responses, it’s doing a good job!

Once again, too much Pete Campbell and Peggy Olsen and nor enough Roger Sterling and Joan! I hope Pete and Peggy find their way back to…

I Don’t Get This?

The University of Pittsburgh football team, affectionately known as the PITT Panthers is supposedly returning back to their old Panther logo. Why? Is there a ground swell on campus and a movement gaining alumni support that PITT’s athletic teams return to this? I don’t get this? This panther looks like the creature that ran amok in Dana Barrett’s apartment in the movie “Ghostbusters”. Where’s Beeno Cook to stop this from happening?

The current PITT Panther is a typical graphic rendering in the current style that has become “de rigeur” in college sports. I’m not crazy about it, but at least it is more distinguishable…