Good ideas are timeless

I love ideas as in creative ideas that are playful with the written word or art directed in a way that captures your eye. (Ideally both of these skill sets work even better in conjunction). Take these two examples which came up in my social media feed, they stopped me in my tracks, my thumb came to juddering halt, I wondered why? Both have charm in tone of voice, both are also informative. They treat the viewer with intelligence and there's no need to 'fill in the gaps' as many marketing director's these like to do. This is what great ideas do, it moves you to act. To buy product, ohh those dirty words that seems to be the trend these days, to avoid selling stuff, ironically at all costs. 'Brand purpose' is all the rage but these posters have a purpose and their purpose is to flog stuff. What is also of interest, these two posters must be at least 40 year's apart, the Tide poster was conceieved just after the end of WW2, when Britain was in rebuilding mode after her cities where bombed, this is my hometown, London, East London to be precise. I love the line, it even has the brands name in the headline. (Dave Trott would I'm sure be impressed) and if you look closely it even has a bit of a special build going on, the use of type and graphics is dated but somehow would look fresh now, it has that retro feel to it. The headline" Tide's in - Dirt's out! what a line - just 4 words and hits a home run and the product benifit pitched in a charming way. Fast-foward to the 90's and we have a poster van driving around selling a bedside cabient. Again what a headline this is, it made me smile and again just 4 words to sell the product. How many ads have you seen lately that can do that? B&Q is the only work out of Uncommon London I can recall that has acheived that lately. These are timeless and like all good ideas will be remembered and recalled, as for the 99.9%, they'll all go in the black hole of nothingness. Work to be done for all creatives to get noticed and sell stuff. Tick,tock.

Art from fabric - Just stunning.Truly.

Just look at this - no words needed apart from inspired fabric sculptor artist Benjamin Shine

Great art direction craft is truly an art form

This post is going back to old skool _well I'm listening to some old skool Soul so it seems quite fitting, but I wanted to share as I think it's vital for young art directors, designers or budding photographers the importance of craft. In an age where time is money and money is time and most people have neither this is a great case study in how to save money and time but still create something magically. Step forward Felix Hernandez Rodriguez who was commissioned by Audi to shoot their top of the range sports car retail price at a tidy $200,000 and what does he do? He shoots a toy $40 model of the car.

Now mere mortals would seriously struggle in making this look slick and something that could be used in print in fact even for online we would struggle, but this cat by using props, clever angles and lighting has produced something truly incredible. Now I don't know this photographer but looking at the shots this guy is highly trained and knows how to art direct, it's not just a job title. Not only is he talented but smart too. Could you imagine getting the real car on different locations? I know from experience of working on many car brands just getting the car on set is an issue and when you do, you have a time slot.

It reminded me of a shoot I did for Castrol the concept was a visual of one of those old fashioned chimney sweeps coming out of the exhaust. (Castrol stopped the build-up of soot in your engine apparently) So everything was signed-off and as a young art director everything was planned out, re-sizing my crops etc. But I had over looked one thing; the exhaust was too short so you couldn't fit the sweep in. Slight panic on my face started to appear as I wss in the studio that was charging 10K a day!! The photographer Kevin Summers at the time saw my face of horror and smiled, he went away and then 10 minutes later he returned with a cardboard tube sprayed black - he walked over to the BMW and whacked it on the back, at that point even more look of horror spread across my face, he smiled further and said he would light it and no one would know, I was nervous but he was right. No one ever knew till now. This was a great learning curve in my career, in you must really learn your trade to break the rules, this principle still applies today even in the tech world we live in You can see the full joyous piece here

Beautifully Sad

Solidarités International et BDDP Unlimited veulent faire couler de l'encre from ici Barbès on Vimeo.

I came across this on my feed and as I started to watch this film I was immediately transfixed. The choice of music really set the scene and the pace of the film was spot on in telling the harrowing story of millions of children who die each year drinking dirty water. Very sad to watch as it unfolded but at the same time watching the art direction coming to life was something else. Award-winning art direction in my view but more importantly it was a very clever way to dramatise the story and draw attention in spreading the word, and hopefully for all of us to give aid to Solidarites International