SMRT BT WTF!

The marketing guys behing the WB show Gossip Girls did a damn good job getting Gossip Girls some PR and awareness, now they have to deal with the fall out. For those of you haven't seen the Ads take a look at the thumbnails. There has been a lot of negative buzz about this Ad Campaign and very little positive. My take on this is a little gray so bear with me.

The positive. The campaign has done a really good job targeting the teens. OMG, OMFG or :-o are all texting abbreviations and combined with the soft porn imagery it can walk the fine line.


The negative. The visuals are soft porn, they don't even try to hide it. There's no subtelty or intelligence behind it. The inside joke is for teens only so anybody with children or over 40 will immediately dislike it. I have a seven year old girl that has loves Hannah Montanna. As a role model HM is too old and already she's getting a lot of flack for showing her back in the Annie Liebowitz photoshoot. I want my daughter to be preoccupied by things that are age appropriate to her. But I know things are going to sneak past me and she might see HM in the semi-risque photo. I can't shelter her, but at the same time I think she needs to focus on being a girl first, boys can come later. Which brings me back to Gossip Girls, this campaign is everywhere, internet, ads and most open to the world…billboards. This whole contrabversy started when the billboard went up, up until then nobody paid attention to it. (On another note it shows you the power of outdoor.) Everybody under the sun has seen it in LA, especially children. So I'm not happy that little girls are going to see this on their way too and from school. I think they should have shown a little more tact.

Europe vs US: Having grown up in Holland I have to say I saw things as risque as this at an early age. I have only a boys perspective so I always found them exciting and eye catching of course. I'd like to know what a womans perspective would be if they too grew up in Holland. The thing is that in Europe is somewhat the norm and because it's the norm it gets tuned out easier. They have to resort to being clever with their advertising. Here we hold our marales high and become easily outraged when children see ads like the Gossip Girls. Of course it's incredibly hypacrytical when the US is the porn capital of the world. I can only look at it from my seven year old daughter's eyes and I wish they hadn't placed it on a billboard. But I have to commend them on figuring out a way to get some crude attention to a crap show.

Beneath the Surface

The photographer Gregory Credson was featured on the CBS Sunday Morning Show this weekend and I had to put some of his pics up for you to see. I'll be brief because his picture explain it better than I can. Simply put, he takes a thought provoking snap shot into a persons life. On the surface it appears as one thing, then as you look deeper it becomes something slightly different.












To get this moment in camera he will go to very elaborate and expensive means. Building sets, shutting down streets, everything and anything to get his vague and abstract message across to us. The one consistency in all of his pictures is that he'll typically shoot when it's dusk or recreate it in the studio. That time and moment when natural light is quickly leaving us and it's beginning to mix with the florescent light, when reality is being distorted by fiction. It creates a sense of dread, something is going to happen and we have to use our imaginations to figure out what it's going to be.












Click here on the CBS Sunday Morning Show to see the expose on him or go to Aperture 190 to see more of his photos. To really understand his photos better you'll want to see them big.

Wanted: Sexy SWF Looking 4 Fun

It's Friday and prime time for the studios to drop a new movie poster on the web. Aint It Cool News got the scoop and the winner is Wanted, a new flick with Angelina Jolie and James McAvoy by Timur Bekmambetov.

Before I comment on the new poster I just want to say that I'm tired of the typical Bad Boys action movie poster. It's gone way beyond the cliche at this point. I bring this up because on the right you'll another Wanted poster which came out earlier this week. It looks like they grabbed the city backdrop from Transformers and poorly tried to combine Angelina Jolie and James McAvoy. The positions of the two characters don't make any sense, he's about to shoot and she's just posing? No thought, just thrown together and voi-la...crap! What bothers me most of all is how generic they made it. Timur Bekmambetov is a visionary director. His other films Nightwatch and Daywatch are heavy on the CG, useless in parts, but complete eye candy. So here you have this guy, a visionary, with a very generic poster. What does that spell, poor returns. I just don't get it? Why would the studio sign off on this, they should be protecting their investment better. I won't even comment on the trailer.

So back to today's poster above. Similar key art as the Bad Boys one, but freakin' sweet! I'm glad they gave her a ton of desaturation and contrast to showcase her slender body, the gun and of course her killer tattoos. It's cropped really nice and I'm glad they didn't try to fill up the white space with logo and movie credits. I have to say that I think the artist did a really good job.

It's funny, I did a poster competition for Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles using key art Fox studios provided and one of the images by Jill Greenberg was Sarah Connor in the exact same position. What does this mean? Well it's either a new/established trend; Jill Greenberg shot stills for Wanted also; or it's a plain old rip. I can imagine that coming up with a new and dynamic ways to showcase a lead in a movie must be difficult. So personally I'm okay with it. I love the photograph's composition and I think the posters above show us that a good composition can be ruined by a crappy treatment.

Art Of The Title Sequence

Before I explain myself let me just ask you to imagine this. You just payed a ton of money to go watch Juno. Your not entirely sure what it's all about, comedy, drame or for those that really don't want to go…horror? So you buy the expensive popcorn and your huge ice filled drink and wait for the movie to start. The trailers are over and not it's time to get the movie theater experience. The movie starts…I won't tell you how it starts because that would ruin the experience and your money's worth. But for those of you who have seen Juno then you know immediately what I'm talking about.

The beginning credits of a movie set the tone for what's to come. I know that's a little declarative but I'm starting to feel as though it's the truth. It's like the first paragraph in a book, if it doesn't pull you in immediately chances are it'll be like that the whole way.

Well enough about my opinions, go to http://www.artofthetitle.com and see for yourself. They don't have a ton of really well done title sequences, check out Carnivale, Juno, Catch Me if You can…

I know Staphan Sagmeister now

Last Monday I had the great privilege to to listen to Stephan Sagmeister speak at a Charlotte AIGA event. I walked away feeling inspired and the feeling that everything and anything is possible again. I wrote about him in a previous blog, here. Some of his work isn't for everyone; some of it makes no sense and some hits it right on the nail. Either way he is a brilliant man and I wish he had been my teacher.

He just came out with a new book called, "Things I have learned in my life so far". It's very much an autobiography of his work and how he came to it. It all started with a publication in Japan which gave him complete freedom to do whatever he wants on seven pages. Now I don't know about you but if that were me I'd just freeze up, what do you do? We concept, develop and create by limitations. Limitations help us think, helps us work because without them we don't know what to do. I distrust that statement, because there have been times in my life when I've been told that I have no limitations and by the end of it there were plenty. So it was interesting to hear that Stephan felt the same way. He told us how all his life he's writing in a journal and one day he was scanning though it and found a maxim that he wrote, "Everything I do comes back to me". A very profound statement. He decided to self indulgently use this maxim in the seven pages. Each word had a page and the content and form did not match. I wish I could show you because they were all very bizarre. But it had the right effect and people loved it. No changes, no approvals, it was right and the magazine published it. Since then the maxim has been done numerous times.

After this other organizations asked Stephan to do the same thing for them and slowly over the last eight years his maxims are everywhere around the world. I wish I could show you some examples but they aren't online, you'd have to purchase the book. By the end of it he asked each one of us to think of something they have learned and to put it up on his website, thingsihavelearnedinmylife.com. So I spent all last week and the one maxim that I think is true is my fathers maxim, "keep it simple". I'm going to submit it to his website and I'll post it when I'e completed it.

The one thing I took from listening to him is that I need to step away from my desk more and not listen to my own rules on how I can design. There are ideas everywhere and sometimes you can't force them to happen, they have to grow and I'll have to grow to find them.

The Real Jessica Rabbit

Ever wondered what Jessica Rabbit or Homer Simpson would look like in the flesh. Here you go!

Brilliant work by JaxPixeloo on making this happen, absaluely brilliant! Click on the main title above to see his 10 minute video on how he did it and his other work. You can also see a comparison below.

Using the illustration he basically and painstakingly photoshopped her together. What makes it really cool is how he manipulated the face to match the cartoonish feel the original has.

Makes you want to see a new movie or series done like this.

BTW. The Homer Simpson is really scary.

The "Spirit" Introduces Itself

Frank Miller is coming out with his next film post Sin City called, "The Spirit". In the last month the "Spirit" marketing guys have been posting teaser posters around the internet so as to generate some buzz.

Frank Miller is obviously a talented writer and artist with a signature style. His work on the Batman and 300 graphic Novels and movies are just amazing. The talented directors which became inspired by his work have done very successful adaptations and he should be very in debt to these guys. But the one we think of when you hear the name Frank Miller is "Sin City". A panel by panel adaptation and a movie he co-directed. I try not to critique movies and only the promotional material, but since in this case it's one and the same I feel as though I must. I love the first half, but the second bored me. The movie was alive in the first part because it felt like a action flick with great set pieces. I attribute this to Robert Rodrigues and his sense of pacing and music. The minute you began to follow Frank Miller's world and story it became too much.

Now I have to comment on the style of his work which was successfully translated to film. You have to love the noir feel and the solid blacks and whites. Graphically it's incredibly engaging. In the book it always works well with the story but on film it's very distracting.

Now back to the "Spirit", take a look at the first teaser poster. This is Frank Miller's big step into the movie world without Robert Rodriguez to keep him on the straight and narrow. All kudos and criticism fall directly onto him. The story he is focusing on is a book he did called "The Spirit". I guess I should be very excited by the look of this teaser poster, but right off the bat I think it sucks. The guy/hero looks like he's in some sort of ribbed suit wearing a dumb hat with a stupid mask. Yeah, I'm very scared of him. In this day and age should we really get excited by a guy in a business suit. Suits are the Enron bad guys! Look at all the hero flicks in the last five years, they dress in slick looking outfits that don't stray too far from popular culture. As for the art…its sloppy. Looks like they just pulled a frame from his graphic novel. The one thing you can expect is more "Sin City".










Next we have this the three part movie poster. I like it a heck of a lot more. The large scale of empty space really catches your eye. Especially the brilliant red on the black. I guess it does what you expect it to do and just stylistically grab you. It definatly suits a movie theater where you want something big to grab attention from a distance. It also successfully stands out from everything else you might expect in a theater. I still don't like the idea of the the hero with a silly hat and tie. But in this instance it doesn't matter.

Lastly the teaser poster which was just released on the web. Little by little we see more of the Frank Miller world. It still has that Sin City'esque style which is what we've come to expect from Frank Miller.

My likes: I love the the city type. It certainly tells you that the city will be a character as well. The layout is very dynamic with the sharp angles and big type. The hero is nicely silhouetted at the top so it's not revealing to much. The poster feels old and decayed, reminds me of the old decayed feeling when you see old circus or boxing posters.

My dislikes: Same stupid outfit. The title is the same brushed approach from 300 and Sin City. In those cases it was unique and very cool, boring here. The brushed approach worked well in 300 because of all the blood. In Sin City it was cool because it was the first time we saw it. I'm not crazy about this, it doesn't tell us a story, just more Frank Miller.

So expect to see some character posters next. I'm hoping for something more contemporary with more uses of flashy color other than red. I hope they continue this city is a character thing. I also hope the style of the main hero starts to look cooler because if this is it, I think it's blah! It makes you wonder if Frank Miller can do anything else. When I heard they were going to do another Sin City I knew it'd be done in the same style. But doing the Spirit like this is just carrying on a fad. I would of hoped he would of done something stylistically different like he did on 300. We'll just have to wait and see.

Who the f@#& is Sagmeister

Here's a glimpse:

Stefan Sagmeister, from Vienna, has designed for clients like Rolling Stones, HBO, and the Guggenheim Museum. He's been nominated five times for the Grammies he finally won one for the Talking Heads boxed set. He also earned practically every important international design award. His shows have been mounted in Zurich, Vienna, New York, Berlin, Tokyo, Osaka, Prague, Cologne, Seoul and Miami. He teaches in the graduate department of the School of Visual Art in New York and lectures extensively on all continents.

The guy knows how to get attention. I don't know the full story behind this AIGA poster. But I can tell you that it's a picture of himself and the writing is his own using a razor blade, ouch. No room for typos or date changes.

So the Sagmiester is coming to Charlotte April 21st to speak to us, your's truly will be there, stay tuned for a report.

Up, up and away we go!

I'm a father of three girls under the age of seven (for now) so I watch all the kid flicks. I just watched a new Barbie film on some island and I could feel the brain cells ooze out of me. But I have to admit that when Pixar comes out with a new film I typically enjoy it. These guys have an interesting habit of coming with a good concept and working it in to everything. Case and point, Pixar's "Up".