Advertising

Apple Bulbs

By Delphine Hirasuna |

Last November Apple debuted a commercial for its new MacBook Pro. Created by Los Angeles-based ad agency, Media Labs, the commercial celebrates great inventions and discoveries that transformed the life of mankind. To the galloping pace of Rossini’s “William Tell Overture,” a path of illuminated light bulbs successively explode to mark civilization-advancing bright ideas over the millennia, from the discovery of fire and invention of the wheel to the steam engine, flying machine, eyeglasses, the zipper, paper clip, space rocket, robots, microscope, and toilet paper. The important contribution that each new invention made to civilization is indisputable. Certainly, Apple’s introduction of the Macintosh personal computer in 1984 was transformative too. Not sure that the MacBook Pro’s new Touch Bar falls into that category, or is deserving of being compared to the discovery of fire. The commercial is great, but implied analogy probably should be saved for Apple’s next big breakthrough.

Augmented Reality

Vivid Sydney: Music! Lights! More Lights!

By Delphine Hirasuna |

Move over Paris, you are no longer the “city of lights.” In the 21st century that title goes to Sydney, Australia. Its annual Vivid Sydney festival transforms the city into a magical wonderland of light art sculptures, cutting-edge light installations, and gargantuan projection mapping extravaganzas. Vivid Sydney engages lighting artists, designers and manufacturers from around Australia and the world to illuminate, interpret and transform Sydney’s urban spaces through their creative vision. A contemporary music program matches the mood of the surreal display. No need to paint buildings in psychedelic colors or shoot fireworks into the night sky. Light is a malleable art form that treats Sydney Harbor as an inviting canvas morphing, evolving and bursting into a kaleidoscope of hues that vanish with the dawn. The 2017 Vivid Sydney festival is slated for May 26 to June 17, and is the largest show of its kind in the world.
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Motion Graphics

An A++ for Canal+ Advertising

By Delphine Hirasuna |

We don’t know what the actual programming is like on the French premium cable channel Canal+ (meaning “channel plus more”) but if the entertainment value and production quality are half as good as its advertising, then sign us up. Made by French advertising agency BETC, the Canal+ commercials are engaging and fun. They are crafted like a feature film, no scrimping on budget here. The spots are cleverly conceived 60-second comedy sketches == worth searching on YouTube for other Canal+ commercials.
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Public Service

Don’t Walk. Dance.

By Delphine Hirasuna |

In every big city, more pedestrians run red lights than motorists. Impatient and confident that no driver would purposely run them over, they dart across the red lights or inch off the curb and into the intersection to get a head start when the light turns green. This doesn’t happen much in Los Angeles where automobiles are “king,” and pedestrians know that they have few rights.Cars speed down city streets, daring a walker to step into their path. On the other hand, San Francisco has always been more pedestrian lenient. Motorists get annoyed with “red light jumpers” and jaywalkers, but perhaps are more forgiving because they know how steep the hills are and recognize that trudging across a hill is an ordeal for the elderly, disabled, and anyone carrying a heavy bag.

In Lisbon, Portugal, the company behind the Smart car successfully tested a novel deterrence, and it didn’t do it by stationing traffic cops at every crosswalk, handing out fines, or constructing barricades. It used entertainment. Smart Company installed “dancing traffic lights” that projected moving pictographs of passersby dancing in real time in a specially designed booth. The dancing signal was so engaging that red-light jumping was reduced by 81%. Now the question is how to get pedestrians to move along and cross the street.

Publishing

The Curse of “The Great Omar”

By Delphine Hirasuna |

greatomar1

The luxurious but cursed Great Omar version of the “Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám.”

There once was a time when bookbinding was a craft and an art form, not a mechanized process at the end of a press run. This tale of such bookbinding is fraught with the unrelenting pursuit of perfection, passion, tragedy, perseverance, and plain old rotten luck.

Our story begins in 1901 with the renowned British bookbinders Sangorski and Sutcliffe, who resurrected the Medieval art of binding books with intricately inlaid multicolored leather set with real gold, jewels, and gems. As fortune would have it, their services were sought out by Sotheran’s Bookshop in London, who asked them to create opulent binding for the “Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam,” which soon became known as “The Great Omar.” The only instructions from Sotheran’s manager were that “it has to be the greatest example of bookbinding in the world…. put what you like into the binding, charge what you like for it, the greater the price, the more I shall be pleased; provided only that it is understood that what you do and what you charge will be justified by the result.” Read More »