Billboard uses natural scenery to enhance product advertising
I stumbled upon this clever piece of advertising by design agency Leo Burnett (their website is lovely incidentally) for Koleston Naturals hair products and was impressed with how such a simple idea has been executed so stylishly.
Their billboard design utilises the stunning scenery behind the advert via a simple glamorous illustration die cut out of the board itself. This is designed to (according to the agency, and I am inclined to agree) highlight the beauty and variety of the shades of hair dye they produce as well as the all natural ingredients of their products. This is achieved by the hair changing colour throughout the day and night based on the position of the sun behind the poster. Not something that would work in every country or location but definitely a lovely use of the wonderful countryside around the area the posters were used.
Googlemaps street view – the new advertising medium?
Googlemaps recently launched street view http://maps.google.co.uk/help/maps/streetview/ – which allows users to view street level footage of many areas in London as well as their existing aerial photographs. I can see how this is a very useful service for those trying to find their way around (although driving cars with cameras around London all the time does nothing for their carbon footprint).
The road to success is paved with bagels
I don’t usually put up a post just to link to someone else’s blog – but Adverspew put something up this week – a simple set of honest advice on how to be successful. Things everyone should be told at the start of their career. It is all common sense but sometimes things like this still need to be said as despite how obvious they are and Ernie is the man to do it.
Red Vs Blue – war of the spoof sites.
The top sponsored link for the phrase ‘Gordon Brown’ on google currently leaded to the spoof apology website http://www.sorryfromgordon.com/. The page is the Conservative response to Gordon’s recent speech to Congress. The site features a photoshopped image of Brown wearing Elton John style glasses and the phrase ‘Sorry seems to be the hardest word’ and invites visitors to create their own speech on his behalf using drop down menus and then send it to their friends.
Design icons – Skullcandy headphones
I have always had a bit of a soft spot for off the wall headphone designers Skullcandy. They have been ahead of the game when it comes to stylish yet ridiculous (but still affordable) headphones for some time now, ensuring that anyone can look like an outlandish DJ whilst on the train home from work.
Facebook connect – who do you trust with your identity?
Social networking giant Facebook has recently launched a new platform from which to continue it’s ever growing world domination: Facebook Connect.
The web 2.0 technology allows the social networking sites user base to authenticate themselves on many other websites via their Facebook log-in and interact with the site and Facebook simultaneously, posting comments and reviews on other sites with the option to also publish them in their own feed or send them to friends via Facebook. No longer will people need to remember the vast array of log-ins and passwords written on post it notes and on the back of envelopes strewn across their offices or constantly click the ‘forgotten your password’ link on sites – rather they can store them all in one place and use a singular global Facebook identity to access the rest of the web (or so the theory goes).
Another gem from the guys at DAG Designlab
I came across this Israeli design company not that long go and was really struck by their simple well executed designs. They seem to specialise in finding beautiful solutions which allow for clean and innovative design ideas to become a reality.
For example; their milk carton designs use a cunning injection molding system which allows inputted data to effect the shape of the bottle produced using the same mold. Any input could be used to generate a new bottle design for the next day. The mold uses pins which move the walls of the shape in 3D to create the new formation. They also used a weather feed to determine the colour of the bottle as well – creating quite a variety of interesting results without an extra material or labour costs. They say that One mold can create 3.6 million different shaped bottles.
The simplest ideas are sometimes the best.
I came across this competition entry on design blog ‘Design Boom‘ which really reminded me how the simplest ideas can sometime be the best. Take a simple problem and provide a simple cost effective solution.
A group of designers in Italy have both those boxes ticked with their innovative cutlery designs which allow you to utilise office stationary to eat your lunch. Simply transform a biro via pen cap style spoon, knife and fork attachments. Yes – You can now legitimately use a biro to eat your pasta with these add-ons:
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News travels at the speed of broadband – but is any publicity really good publicity?
As I am sure all of you are aware social networking site Facebook made headlines everywhere this week after changing a line in their terms and conditions relating to ownership of users content and photos.
The change to the terms consisted of just a few lines being altered but the results were instantaneous. A wildfire of outraged complaint spread across the internet, one of the early spotters of the change seems to have been ‘Comsumerist’ which posted a damming blog on Sunday which stated that “anything you upload to Facebook can be used by Facebook in any way they deem fit, forever, no matter what you do later”. The post is reported to have received somewhere in the region of 300,000 views almost overnight. Bloggers were in uproar, an angry Facebook group opposing the terms grew into an army 120,000 members strong within hours, users threatened to delete their accounts and the headlines went to press the next day.
Red Vs Web 2.0
This is kind of a tangent to my current exploration of political party websites, namely my Red Vs Blue comparison of how both Labour and The Conservatives use their main web space to engage the general public.
This post delves a little deeper into the Labour marketing strategy, especially their current upscale in social media and what could loosely be called ‘web 2.0′ style sites. This kind of political marketing is really ramping up after successful implementation of similar strategies by Obama in the US, it seems our politicians and strategists are realising it is a highly underused medium for political engagement over here.
