Pop of ‘Puffs

Need a pop of colour in your spring wardrobe? How about a Pop of ‘Puffs?! I was very excited to open my email recently and see the newest release of a Creampuffs photo shoot prominently displayed!

As amateur set designer and accessory assistant I had a lot of fun with this one. GG’s wonderfully playful mind wanted some spunky Rihanna-esque style to this shoot and I had this awesome vision of our model floating on a cloud of balloons. We were blowing up balloons (thankfully with the help of a machine) and I kept thinking more, we need more! I’m not sure anyone agreed with me until we trying attaching them together in a “cloud” shape. What a mess that was! Eventually they were strung together and laid out around a table. The table was draped in white to blend in and piled high with balloons. I gotta say I was not entirely impressed with the floral background but you gotta work with what you have, and I am pleasantly surprised with the result! It’s like Rihanna, the Little Mermaid and Up and combined into one pin-up shoot! This one has GG and Creampuffs written all over it!

Check out more Pops of ‘Puffs at www.creampuffbygg.com.

Wrapped in Foil for the Holidays

OK little braggin’ moment here. My sister was in her first newspaper ad! Creampuff creator GG Endean has a line of dresses called Foil out in time for the holidays, and what holiday dresses they are! Ali looks amazing in her first professional photoshoot, doesn’t she?! Little holiday ornaments were used at props (and were in turn used as decorative drawn touches in the ad). The ad itself is fun, young and flirty perfect for a holiday party with the girls! I got to exercise my creative brain bits with some styling of the jewelry, props and shoes–even used a pair of the shoes I wore to the shoot! The ad debuted in today’s issue of the North Shore Outlook and the dresses can be see in Favourite Gifts at the Lonsdale Quay Market.

Congrats Ali!

Playland Lets it Out

Playland has always had great advertising thanks to Rethink Canada, a local Vancouver Design Firm.

I really like the simplicity in this year’s Let It Out campaign. Weather it’s a small leak or a bellowing horn, these faces are screaming for Playland. I first noticed them on the skytrain and they really jumped out at me because there is so much going on at each skytrain station that it’s hard to focus. All the people, colours, movement. The black figure on a solid coloured background really grabbed my attention and I tried to pay attention at each station to see the whole campaign.

The 2009 ads used the organs of the rider in everyday objects that mimicked how your insides felt after a Playland ride. I like the concept but the muted colours while consistent with feeling motion sick, don’t convey the fun part of the ride. Brightly coloured backgrounds would have said “Ya, you might get sick, but you’ll have a lot of fun doing it!”

The 2007 ads were cute and creepy at the same time. Fun and stomach losing–just like some of the playland rides. The cute stuffies that you can win posed in front of the iconic Playland rides with their guts spilled in front of them get the point across while saving the viewers lunch-spoiling until they get there.

The turtle looks a bit off. The rest of the stuffies look like they had a good time before losing it, the turtle just looks sad. It might be the lack of tongue sticking out to make it playful, but I think it’s just the way his eyes are.

The 2006 ads were the most creative. Taking everyday objects that mimic the feeling that one has while on the rides. I think the boomerang and the slingshot are cop outs, they aren’t exactly everyday objects and they already have that sense of a ride or a game in them naturally. The egg beaters and the fire alarm however, have a great Playland feeling to them but were never looked at as fun or exhilarating before.

In 2002 the Playland ads stood out because of their lack of colour. This was a great concept, you don’t need colour to recognize the Playland rides but then you notice this little blue icon. Clever. And as always, funny and gross.

Check out more of Rethink Canada’s great ads at www.rethinkcanada.com

Number Two

Ok this commercial is the reason I love my PVR. I wasn’t really paying attention and then I thought, did I hear that correctly? Rewind. Yup. Huggies just said they poo in blue. And wait, this is wrong isn’t it? You can’t make this cool can you? Or wait…

This is the funniest commercial I’ve seen in a long time. I don’t think I would buy the jean printed ones, I mean who sees them under your kid’s clothes anyways? But I am thinking more highly of Huggies now.

Battle the Banks?

I’m a positive person, so generally I like to only post design that makes me happy. Design that is inspiring. But I got this in the mail the other day and it inspired me in a different way. I have it tacked to the cork board above my computer to remind me that design needs to serve a purpose. A design should be intriguing, create but always have a meaning behind why the different elements are there. This postcard serves as a reminder of this.

What is the purpose of having a knight fight? What possible connecting does this have to a mortgage broker? Would you really trust the guy who thinks that a sword fight represents your mortgage, to actually handle your finances?

P.S. Adding the line “Your Personal Mortgage Warrior” does not connect a knight and a mortgage.

Heads Up!

I was sent this great photo of a World Cup T-shirt made by Dutch advertising students Daan van Dam and Bas van de Poel. A couple days ago you could see the shirt on their site which has since been taken down for legal reasons, as they are students who made this shirt for fun not in an official capacity for the 2010 Fifa World Cup. However I have the pictures to show you as they are still wandering around on their lonesome out in the Internet…

Check out their website (minus the World Cup Shirts) at http://wonderyears.nl .

If you’re a fan of soccer you’ve undoubtably seen an enthusiastic player who having just scored is now running around the field blinded by his shirt pulled over his head. Yes there are other ways to celebrate a goal and most are frowned upon by the ref. But in your own home, if you had one of Bas and Daan’s magical shirts, you could celebrate with the KNVB by being the very player that just scored for the Netherlands. Start the celebrations (and the flashing) in 3 days…

Go Holland!

Living Colour

Eggshell White. Magnetic Grey. Animated Coral. Interactive Cream. Paint chips always seem to add adjectives or even verbs to their names to sound better. But how many coral coloured walls have you seen that are actually animated? And how many cream ceilings have you seen that are interactive? I didn’t think so…

Enter McKinney and Buck who explored Sherwin Williams paint chips (and their names) and actually made an animated, interactive world of living colour.

And if these stills didn’t blow your world, check out the video.

I think I’m going to go paint something now…

Dawn Saves Wildlife?

So I have a bottle of Dawn soap that says 1 Bottle can = $1.00 to Save Wildlife and I’m thinking yay us! We bought environmentally conscious soap! But then I realize the bottle doesn’t say “buy this and we’ll give a dollar to the wildlife” it says it “can” as in it has the possibility. apparently they don’t just give money away to a good cause, you have to do more than just choose to buy their brand over others, you have to go online and activate the code. At first I was upset but now I’m not sure. Does going online to activate the $1 donation mean Dawn doesn’t want to help or is it making sure the people who bought those special bottles really care? Maybe it’s actually smart and makes the smart consumers who follow through, and read into what they are purchasing, maybe it makes these people go online and forces them to read more about what they are actually donating to. Maybe this makes the average consumer more committed to the project. I’m not sure, but I don’t think I’m mad that I had to spend an extra 30 seconds to activate a code anymore. And besides, the little animal cut-out coupons are actually quite cute. I might even call them dandy…

Starbucks Ads

The new Starbucks ads do not seem typical Starbucks to me at all. They have a textured background and look like they have been screen printed onto the material using limited colours. The background is very fitting because it is the right texture of a burlap sack, which coffee beans were traditionally bagged and shipped in. The images and text are obviously not actually screen printed on the burlap but just Photoshopped in which is how they can achieve the sharp, crisp lines but they have done a nice job of faking it, seeing the texture through the letters. The only thing that really bothers me is that some elements haven’t even been fake printed, they’re just small images that are smacked right on top without any further consideration; the faritrade logo below for instance. I can see the need to want to get the logos recognizable and keep the integrity of them however, the Starbucks logo is so recognizable that I think making it seem more like it was screen printed onto the bumpy material would be so much more natural and not at all hard to interpret. The logos are the eyesore of an otherwise dandy looking ad.

  

This latest look to the Starbucks print material works well into their new “shared planet” earth friendly scheme but the sayings printed onto the ads juxtapose this friendly nature. Very edgy for a company that prides themselves on the fact that the customer is always right. I like the edge, it just seems way off norm for the usual Starbucks look and feel of their stores, products and advertising. The ad below is maybe more egotistical than edgy.

Egotistical yes, but at least this one ties in with the nature of any coffee to leave an after taste:

Coors Light Summer Campaign

A few months ago I started noticing some cheeky ads from Coors light. The first one that caught my attention said in bold letters on the side of a Coors Light can “Colder than a certain unemployed ranger”, being a Kokanee drinker myself I thought this wasn’t right. Then I saw a Coors Light can stating that it was “The venti of ice cold beers” this one got my attention because I was working for Starbucks at the time. It was then that I realized they were brilliant billboards. Using the consumers knowledge about other products- even competitors products and turning this knowledge against them. You only understood the ads if you knew about the other products first, but it makes you think about Coors even if it’s in a bad way. I didn’t like that they were making fun of the Kokanee ranger but I did tell lots of people about it. And once I saw these two ads, I started noticing them all over the place with quotes that were even cheekier even either played off of other products, or played off scenarios that probably have happened to a friend of yours. Slogans like “Colder than Jenn when you called her Susan” and “Colder than an NHL franchise in Hamilton”.  the brilliant people at Coors decided to have some more fun with their slogans and get their consumers to finish the line “Colder than…” If you log onto www.coorslight.cayou can make up your own slogan or vote for other peoples. Of course after this,  it was the controversial “Colder than people in Toronto” billboards. To me, these ads were of the same caliber as the others ones, just this time a whole city took offense. But really, if the Starbucks and Kokanee ads were funny to you, you shouldn’t have any quams about people making fun of you. Tit for tat. Any even though Coors eventually took down all the Toronto-offending ads, they got a ton of free advertising from the media. So cheers to Coors, and one hell of a dandy ad campaign.

Coors had always had cheeky ads, so why the fuss now? Take a laugh at a few from over the years…