Month: October 2015

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What To Do About Pets That Shed

By Delphine Hirasuna |

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Don’t worry, no pets were harmed in the making of this ad for 3M Lint Rollers. Created by Grey Group Singapore, this print poster campaign for 3M India provides a wildly exaggerated demonstration of how effectively the product picks up pet fur and other types of lint. The Grey Group team included chief creative officer, Ali Shabaz, with art direction by Ang Sheng Jin, photography by Jeremy Wong (Nemesis Pictures), and major retouching by Evan Lim (Magic 3).
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Quizzes

Quiz: Fashion Symbols with Animals

By Delphine Hirasuna |

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Even in the sophisticated fashion industry, companies occasionally adopt animals as brand mascots and feature them in their logos. This is probably more the case with sports and casual attire, especially for men. Often easier to remember than an abstract shape, many animals are recognizable as silhouettes and their admirable behavioral traits are widely known. Then again, the chosen animal may simply evoke an aspect of the company’s history or place of origin. Check out these animals and see if you can name the brands they represent.
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Brand Identity

Prague School of Design’s Morphing Identity

By Delphine Hirasuna |

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Moscow-based designer Anna Kulachek has been designing show identities for the Prague School of Design since 2012. Over that time, she has taken her original typographic styling and evolved it into a modular vocabulary of lines and curves that she has morphed into new forms. The breaks in the letterforms suggest that the pieces can be split apart and reassembled into different letters as well as purely decorative lines, half circles and squiggles that look like they are made up of letterform leftovers. The result is a graphic system that retains a consistent look that identifies it with the Prague School of Design, yet changes in surprising and playful ways.

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Viral Marketing

Funny Ad, Plus Sales Pitch

By Delphine Hirasuna |

Insurance companies are their own liability when it comes to describing the services they provide in advertising. Boring. This explains why the insurance giants resort to surreal humor, wild exaggerations, and CGI characters to keep viewers from immediately switching channels. Particularly memorable are Geico ads, which feature anthropomorphic animals such as its gecko mascot, created by Richmond, Virginia-based The Martin Agency. Geico ads have featured other animals too, including a talking duck, pig, squirrel, goat, kraken, and chihuahua. Lately, a smart-ass camel has a starring role. What’s interesting is that the 30-second commercials give viewers no clue what product or brand they are promoting until the last five second closing voiceover. “It you want to save 15% or more on car insurance, get Geico. It’s what we do.” It must work because viewers remember Geico’s tagline.
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Honda Stops Traffic with New Ad Campaign

By Delphine Hirasuna |

This commercial for Honda does not promote its products as much as it highlights how its “Power of Dreams” philosophy has informed the brand’s approach to innovation and engineering over the years. The animated video, created by stop-motion filmmaker PES, uses sketches drawn on paper as a metaphor for the birth and development of ideas. Combining low-tech and high-tech skills, PES assigned multiple artists to hand draw and color thousands of illustrations and then shot the sketches in-camera to form a continuous “flip-paper” journey through Honda’s 60 year history, from founder Soichiro Honda’s use of a radio generator to power his wife’s bicycle, to the development of motorcycles and outboard motors, to today’s planes and automobiles. Reflecting the passage of time, the paper changes from yellowed fine line drawings to more colorful mechanical renderings. Even as the scenes change with ever-greater speed, the human hand plays a role in every frame. Very thoughtfully conceived and executed.
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