If you haven’t yet seen this video, you absolutely must. Right now. It will make you smile, it will make you happy, it just might renew your faith in the future of humanity.

It’s a student-made music video to Black Eyed Pea’s “I Gotta Feeling,” and it is all done in one long unbroken shot. 172 students at the University of Quebec at Montreal participated in this feat of organization, each one taking their place in front of the camera and passing it on to the next in perfect sequence, each with genuine smiles and coming together like a mosaic in perfect unity.

The amazing thing is, if you compare it to the original video done by professionals, the student-made video wins hands-down. The original video has a lot of skin and seems at least at the beginning, to show a group of dancers getting ready to take the stage at a strip club. It doesn’t reflect the happy, carefree mood that the song wants to express. Thank goodness for the freedom of expression of students!

Well done, bravo and all that. I hope this inspires more groups to take on self-made challenges like this.

So at this point, anyone who is a fan of Pepsi will have noticed the major overhaul that has been done. The old red white and blue “swash ball” logo with the sans serif block font has been replaced with a new, slimmed-down look with lower case thin lettering and a renovated swash on the ball. This change seemed to come out of nowhere to me, and I was surprised at first, and not really sure what I thought of the new look. 

Now, the more I see it, I’m thinking I agree with a lot of the commenters here. The new typeface is elegant, understated and clean; but the crooked white swash in the icon is really annoying. It’s not a smooth curve and one is left wondering what exactly that shape is meant to invoke. The old shape was a simple, even curve through a ball, but the new shape has a fat part and a thin part, and angles in such a way that one wonders if it’s supposed to be a sail, a ribbon, a road? Some have even compared it to a smirk, which is not a very positive association to make.

I discovered today on Pepsi’s website that the swash ball actually changes from can to can. Now that, to me, seems like a colossal branding mistake. Your icon is your image – why throw off your consumers by making it fluctuate? I think I see what they’re trying to do, by communicating “Pepsi Max” with a fatter swash and the low-cal options with a thinner swash. But the problem here is you probably wouldn’t notice the difference unless you were comparing the cans side-by-side, so they end up looking like they couldn’t decide between logo versions 1-4 during the design process and decided to just use them all. 

What do you think? Some have compared the icon to the Obama campaign logo or even Girl Scouts of America. Do you see any other similarities?

I’m a huge fan of the Sony Bravia commercials that feature brightly colored randomness in public places (San Francisco bouncy balls, exploding paint barrels on old apartment buildings, claymation bunnies in downtown New York City). I’ve even reported on an apparently local effort for the same effect, colored string on a pyramid. But a good advertiser should know when it’s been “done” and move on to newer things.

Unfortunately this doesn’t seem to be the case. A new TV spot goes back to the big “balls” success, now attempting to wow its audience with streets filled with soap foam. People play in the foam. They photograph the foam. They get hit in the face with foam. And overall, the spot comes across as a dry attempt to cash in on past success. 

It’s quite sad, really, but it’s a reminder to advertisers out there who are tempted to return to the same old ideas that worked before – a new idea only works when it’s new. Creativity doesn’t run out, people just get lazy. The last thing a client wants is an audience rolling its eyes and saying, “Next!”

Found on AdFreak.

Last year on this blog, while writing an article about ways that companies and agencies are trying to make a difference, I mentioned the amazing and inspiring results of Sydney, Australia’s effort to bring attention to climate change. For one hour, the city turned out the lights. 2.2 million people participated, and corporations got involved. Their goal was to reduce carbon emissions during that hour by 5%, but the enthusiasm for the attempt resulted in a 10.2% reduction.

This year, the Earth Hour movement has gone global. All across the world, cities and individuals are getting involved and turning out the lights on March 29 from 8-9 pm. Every person counts! Get involved in this event – have a candlelight dinner, watch the stars or have a “lights out” party with your neighborhood. Turn out the lights in your business’s building. Spread the word to everyone you know, and let’s make an impact: Lights Out on March 29!

As a regular listener to a variety of NPR shows, I have heard a few from the series This American Life, though since they’re on the weekend it’s typically on a long car ride which is convenient considering the show lasts a full hour with a single theme but several linked stories that can ramble on a bit. Recently, the show made the leap to TV, producing artsy shorts with the same “real guy” rambling voice over linking it all together. Most of the shows are produced live-action but some even use animation, and I found this fantastic episode on Veer today. The quirky, simple animation style perfectly matches the style of the show, and takes the story to the next level of humor, poignancy and beauty without changing the audio a bit. It’s truly an amazing leap that some said couldn’t be done.

from www.veer.com posted with vodpod

In a keynote address at the School of Visual Arts, Milton Glaser discussed propaganda and art. Which is culturally necessary? Which can be identified or defined? His words are important for designers and advertisers, so often the purveyors of propoganda, as well as the people to whom this social artwork is directed. The thing that stands out the most for me is his comment: “Informing us makes us stronger. Persuading us robs us of our ability to observe things for ourselves.”

The ability to question the status quo, to educate oneself and then make decisions accordingly, those are the freedoms that can take us above the influence of propaganda. Propaganda only works if the public has no alternative, no dissenting voice, no method of researching truth. It’s not always the popular path but it can be the right one, if the choices are made for the right reasons.

We are expecting our first child in a couple of months, and we have spent a lot of time educating ourselves about how we’d like to bring this child into the world. Opinions about drugs, hospitals, doctors and tests have come from every direction, often unwanted and unsolicited. However, we have discovered an ugly truth: unless we act like the clueless first-time parents and step onto the obstetrics assembly line, we will be looked down upon and judged for our decisions. There are reams of literature out there that debate the usefulness, and sometimes even the safety, of certain established practices when it comes to having a child. But certain things are done because they’ve always be done that way, or because it makes the hospitals or drug companies more money, or because it allows the hospital to cover their rears legally, and to buck that tradition is to fly in the face of that scariest of authority, the Health Care System. They’ll call us bad parents, they’ll ridicule us for not understanding that this is a precious infant child of all things, and how could we possibly consider making a decision that opposes what is considered typical? We must be endangering our child to not blindly accept what the doctors and nurses push on us.

This kind of social propaganda, which relies on guilt and conformity to manipulate, can be even more dangerous than any other kind. I can choose to snicker at a fear-mongering political ad. I can avoid reading posters or ads that attempt to affect my opinion, or read them and choose to maintain my own beliefs. But when it comes to that face-to-face judgement, one human being to another, especially from a person like a doctor who, culturally, has always been touted as the purest of high authority on What Is Good And True And Right, it becomes a whole lot harder to ignore. The strength to resist this kind of propaganda comes from education, and the freedom to educate oneself must be the finest freedom there is.

“Propaganda is not necessarily a lie, but it affects our neurological system and brain in the same way. It undermines our ability to understand our own reality. It makes us more infantile and dependent. It substitutes an alien authority for our own perception.”

It is our responsibility to recognize the power it can have over us and equip ourselves to recognize it. In advertising, the ability to affect decisions is used freely, and considered to be the goal of any well-motivated designer. But advertise with conscience. 

In a great article on AIGA recently, Grant McCracken discusses the beauty of the un-designed, the things that just happen that spark a positive reaction. Specifically, he discusses sounds, like the one made by a plastic coke bottle as it works its way through the mysterious tunnels and slides to land – thunk – into the collection slot, ready for your cold drinking pleasure. This is an accidental noise, not one designed to advertise its product but simply the mechanical noise of delivering said product to you once you’ve chosen to buy it. One might debate that the internal workings of a Coke machine have already been harnessed for marketing efforts, as in the recent epic “Coke Side of Life” TV spots.

Are designed sounds effective as well? That’s debatable:

“This isn’t like the car door closing sound that Detroit builds into cars to persuade us that we have bought wisely, that our automobile is a paragon of quality and workmanship.” 

I can’t imagine that the particular sound of a car door closing would make me more likely to buy a particular car, especially since in order to hear that sound, I’d have to be getting into the actual car at the time, which would suggest that I have already decided at least to give it a test drive. However, if the rumbly growly engine noise passing me on the road is what convinces me that I need to have that car, there’s the good advertising. Honda Civic uses the “accidental” noises in a very ingenious way, with an amazing choir reproducing the noises and interspersing clips of the car going about its normal routine to emphasize the audio illusion. In that moment, the advertisers seem to recognize the beauty of the found sound, something that happens with their product that can’t be designed into being but just is, and can be recognized as a pleasurable sound by aligning their product with it in a companionable way.

The author of the article sums up by saying that some of the most important meaning in sound means nothing, except perhaps the meaning that we ourselves attach to it. In recognizing that not everything has to have some kind of deep truth attached to it, perhaps advertisers can step back and let their customers find meaning of their own, which is a whole lot more significant and lasting.

In a new spot for Schweppes, something as simple as a bursting water balloon becomes a ballet of exquisite beauty. Using high-speed cameras and actors, and almost no visual effects, director Garth Davis creates a stillness filled with potential, capturing tiny moments of time that could be chaotic but in his hands become crackling, magical pockets of unreleased energy. The soundtrack couldn’t be more perfect (“To Build a Home” by The Cinematic Orchestra), easing into the sound with naked piano chords that elevate in tempo and intensity as the balloons begin to explode.

The mesmerizing quality of the spot leads to the brand reveal at the end, which disrupts the flow somewhat – the viewer must reach for the connection to a company that makes tonic water – but it’s easy to reason that away by simplifying the message to fizz-bubbles-popping balloons. If one goes further it becomes a bit more complicated – are we talking about refreshing? Celebratory? Childlike? Perhaps, but for a product that is normally mixed with booze, maybe those aren’t the connections we are looking for.

A great interview with the director is featured on Creativity Online today. It’s wonderful insight into the work that goes into making this work of beauty.

Posted on Veer yesterday, a fantastic student project hypothesizing what the Star Wars titles would have looked like if the fabulous Saul Bass had done them. Complete with jazzy soundtrack and spot-on for the distinctive Bass style. There’s also a link in the video responses where someone took the titles and “remastered” them á la the “improved” version of the original classic movie. Absolutely fantastic, and an especial pleasure for those film/design geeks out there.

Also on Veer, an intriguing series of art pieces has been created by distilling the pages of certain magazines down to specific elements (advertising logos or headlines, for example) and then combining them on a single black and white page. It’s a fascinating look at the style of certain magazines, either quite restrained and clean (National Geographic) or in-your-face advertising hurricane (Vogue). They are also very pretty, from a stark graphic point of view.

I read an interesting article this morning that sparked a great discussion between a variety of designers offering their opinions and personal experiences on a polarizing topic in the design world: team or solo? This is something I’ve grappled with since design school, sitting through four years of critiques where the personalities in the room may be more interested in shredding any possibility of personal style rather than offering constructive observations on one’s work. Trying to convince myself that I shouldn’t take the criticism personally proved to be an almost impossible task when I felt that my best work came when I poured my heart into it. Discovering that for the most part my style didn’t fit the mold of what was considered “high design,” or what I called “design for designers,” to some degree I was able to distance myself from the critique process, take what I felt helped my design and push on with what I felt was right – after all, the world doesn’t need a bunch of designers making the same thing, right?

Then at my first agency job, I discovered a whole new edge to the critique process. A job comes in the door, and the team of 6 designers all take a creative brief and make comps. Then in some of the most painful, grueling meetings I can remember, we’d gather at the conference table and review the comps with the creative director, choose the best ones to show the client, and trash the rest. Then the client had the opportunity to “cut & paste” the resulting group of designs into an often bizarre montage of styles, and the project would get tossed to one of the designers for completion, regardless of how much input they had on the original design. As a result, a tense and often nasty competitiveness existed within the group, and everyone knew that their brainchild would likely be modified to the point of oblivion by the end anyway.

Since then I’ve worked for other agencies and now I work for myself, with no peer critiques and only myself to answer to. I find that the freedom to develop my style has improved the quality of my work, and the responsibility is refreshing. But at the same time, I miss having a creative professional sitting feet away that I can bounce ideas off of, take an idea to the next step, or work through a block with.

For the most part I think agencies tend to drift toward the negative kind of group design, but they don’t have to. In the design world often “agency” becomes a bad word for designers who have had these kinds of negative experiences, myself included. But it doesn’t have to be that way. An agency can be a creative think tank, a group of like-minded but unique creative professionals working individually and together to produce a wide range of great work. A client may not look at the portfolio and say that it all looks like it comes from the same agency, but they know that they are going to receive a unique approach to any challenge they bring in the door. And of course, the designer coming to join the team knows that they will be given the freedom to improve and develop a unique style and craft, while being nurtured in an environment of trust and positive feedback.

In a perfect world.

 Found on Veer