Advertising

[gothwalk]

The more I work in design, the more I notice the damn stuff everywhere. A few collected comments...

O2's graphic designers have clearly discovered Bryce, and they luurrrrve it. That, or one of their advertising execs thinks Bryce's desert-and-moon landscapes are really, really great. I've been seeing them in game publications for years though, so they end up looking a bit naff to me.

Paddy Power have chutzpah. There was a billboard ad for their casino site a couple of weeks ago, featuring the Last Supper, with the table covered in cards, roulette tables, and so on, with text "There's a place for fun and games". Some either clueless or paid-by-Paddy-Power churchman did a whole lot of protesting and complaining, and the ad got coverage in national newspapers. Eventually, under a storm of protest from various quarters, they retracted the ad - and replaced it with one reading, in big red text on a plain white background, "There's a place for fun and games, and apparently this isn't it.", and a url you can go to to see the ad.

Finally, the power of the window display never fails to amaze me. I had the notion that this season's A-Wear lines (yes, I do in fact notice these things) were much better than usual, and yet looking at the clothes proved that actually, they're no better than usual. This mystified me until I saw the backdrop images in the windows - white and gold baroque rooms. Nothing to do with the clothes, but a direct line to my sense of taste.

Comments

[socmot.livejournal.com]

Another comment I'd make about noticing design and related things is that it's generally a bad sign when you start being able to name typefaces on sight, because you have that very typeface sitting on your hard drive at home!

[sshi.livejournal.com]

shhhhh, that's a goooood sign, a gooooood sign
{cue evil laughter}

[socmot.livejournal.com]

It is? Even when I see Comic Sans on a bus advert while I'm sitting in traffic behind it? How, I say, how is that a good sign?! :-)

[gothwalk.livejournal.com]

It's a sign to avoid that ad agency?

[sshi.livejournal.com]

the first step in eradicating an enemy is the ability to recognise it :Þ

[(Anonymous)]

True enough. What do you suggest for eradication?
Although, I hear Microsoft are doing to be doing their best - the new Windows will have all new typefaces, much better than the current ones.

[socmot.livejournal.com]

That was, of course, me!

A-Wear

[sshi.livejournal.com]

score one for the design history classes having a point :>

Re: A-Wear

[sshi.livejournal.com]

Hmm, okay, Scandinavian Jugendstil. Most books I that I know on Scandinavian design seem to focus hugely on modern design, but I think that there is a decent section in this one:

Bowe, Nicola Gordon (1993) Art and the national dream: the search for vernacular expression in turn-of-the-century design, Irish Academic Press, Dublin

Other than that, there should be sections or chapters in any decent book on Art Nouveau (like this one (http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0719041619/ref=sib_rdr_dp/202-0660447-2552637)), but I'd need to actually get into the college library and check in person to be able to tell in any more detail.

I'm not sure if he's technically Art Nouveau, or just of similar period and ideas, but we have one on Carl Larsson, the Swedish illustrator, that might be relevant?
Faunce, Sarah (1982) Carl Larsson, Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, New York

Re: A-Wear

[m-nivalis.livejournal.com]

Hrm, I wouldn't have included Larsson in Art Nouveau, but I can't offhand pin down his style either.
Scandinavian romanticism?

[pardina.livejournal.com]

And there I've been thinking the Paddy Power ad with the doctors playng cards on the belly of a woman in labour, with the same text, was in much, much worse taste than the last supper one...

[gothwalk.livejournal.com]

<cynicism mode="church">That's just a woman. The other thing was Jesus!</cynicism>

I'd be interested to see what response the actual authorities for advertising got to those two ads; I suspect a lot more of the ordinary public were offended by the woman-in-labour one than by the Last Supper. It's also a bizarre sideswipe into the thinking of Intellectual Property; the church protecting their trademarks.

[mr-wombat.livejournal.com]

I liked the ad well enough but I'm no fan of trivilaising religon in general. You won't see Paddy Power putting together an ad that makes fun of Islam or the Hare Krishnas but christianity is fair game, and in doing so they're not just having a go at the Roman Catholic church (which wouldn't justify the mockery even if they were) but at all the christian sects, many of whom have done nothing to deserve the derision of their icons.

[penexpers.livejournal.com]

I think I read somewhere that the ASA have gone on record as saying The Last Supper ad received a level of complaints that was unprecedented for billboard advertising. They obviously didn't disclose who made the complaints, but generally it's complaints from the public.

[wyvernfriend.livejournal.com]

up to saturday at least the paddy power ad was still on the boards behind the bus stop on the other side of the road from the library.

Some ads make me annoyed because of the amateurish values, others make me impressed.

The Library staff are still fighting the grey on grey mess that the graphic people in Dublin City Council decided would be good colours. They work on the internet but they really don't work in real world signage, particularly with sun-fading.