Origami (which means “to fold” + “paper” in Japanese) is one of the oldest and humblest art forms around, dating back thousands of years, and stop-motion 3-D animation is one of the newest and most technologically advanced art forms. It’s interesting that the two mediums have found each other and it was love at first sight. As time-consuming and difficult as some origami forms are to fold by hand, paper as a construction material is sturdy but flexible, buildable at a small scale, and relatively cheap. In the case of this video ad for Hamburg’s charitable lottery, Deutsche Fernsehlotterie, a whole village with inhabitants and vehicles were brought to life out of paper. Hamburg-based agency, Zum Goldenen Hirschen spearheaded this ad, with Hans-Christoph Schultheiss directing.

The new Hertz ad campaign theme “Traveling at the Speed of Hertz” isn’t meant to imply that Hertz cars go faster than those of other rental companies, but to suggest that Hertz can get you in and out of their rental lot in a flash. For customers, quick, hassle-free service is really where “the rubber meets the road” when it comes to renting a car. That’s the focus of the Hertz print ad campaign by DDB New York, which introduces Hertz’s Gold Plus Rewards program. Illustrated by Christopher Grey, the print ads feature strong stylized graphics and bold solid colors and the message that customers will enjoy a carefree “lot experience.” The “Bypass Lines” poster doesn’t even show a car, just a superman-type customer soaring over a long line of waiting people.

Delhaize, a supermarket chain in Belgium, issued its own private label brand of regional wines and commissioned Spanish design studio Lavernia & Cienfuegos to create a label that looked festive and fun and great for casual entertaining. Quirky characters carved out of cork represented the regional origin of each wine in a playful, unpretentious way. The label design positioned the house brand as a value product with personality.

Perhaps more than for many products, wine packaging involves understanding psychology. Research has shown that the average consumer chooses which wine to buy based on the look of the bottle and the label. “Too classy” implies expensive ultra-premium wine for special occasions. A gallon jug with a screw-top cap, on the other hand, seems too pathetically down market. But in the medium range, a design that conveys its own story, exudes its own kind of clever charm, stands out from the competition. It doesn’t oversell or undersell its value. It promises to meet expectations and then some.

The witty cork people, minimalist typography, and white caps give a distinctive shelf presence to the entire Delhaize “wines of the world” line. The only caricature that I take exception with is the Indian chief representing California. I don’t think that California native American tribal chiefs wore feathered head dresses.

“Why Asian advertising is strong and mystic” was the theme of AdFest 2011, an exhibition of the best ad work in Asia. Commissioned by the Yoshida Hideo Memorial Foundation/ Advertising Museum Tokyo to promote this pan-Asian event, Dentsu Inc. in Osaka developed a poster series with lavish illustrations that reminds one of a reflexology foot chart or, in the case of the open palm, like a spiritual mudra (a hand gesture that symbolizes divine manifestation).

In their creative brief, the Dentsu team explained that it came up with the concept of a life-sized Asian and “aimed to describe how history, culture, technology and trends of Asia turn into the flesh and blood of an Asian, which is why ideas from Asia are strong.” A close look at the many elements that comprise each poster illustration covers the gamut from Chinese dragon and panda bears to pagodas and daruma dolls to symbols of technology and medicine. All of these concepts are integrated into the body of man.

If this bridge in Oberhausen, Germany, reminds you of a slinky toy, that’s exactly what inspired it. German artist Tobias Rehberger spiraled 496 coils around a rainbow colored walkway that crosses over a canal to connect two existing parks. Rehberger collaborated with structural engineers Schlaich Bergermann and Partner to realize his design. The structure consists of pre-cast concrete plates, spiral bars and railing made of steel and net cable, all attached to high-strength steel stress ribbons connected to the inclined supports on both sides of the canal. The 1,332 foot walkway has a synthetic finish that kind of bounces when you walk. It is presented in 16 different colors, matched in color on the underside of the bridge which is made out of a different material. The Slinky Bridge is luminous with color and definitely puts a spring in your walk.

Lately street banners with a logo of the Golden Gate Bridge have been popping up all over San Francisco to mark the 75th birthday of the city’s most beloved icon. Designed by Studio Hinrichs, the anniversary logo features the Bridge’s familiar vermillion red (aka International Orange) color, its soaring 746-foot-high tower and the Art Deco-styled sunburst border of the rivets that bolt the Bridge together. Applied to everything from signage to souvenir merchandise, the 75th anniversary logo was created to work in one-, two- and four- colors and remain crisp whether etched onto glass, cast in metal, or stitched on fabric. Along with the logo medallion, Kit designed a special Bridge typeface, called Golden Gate Girder, for a commemorative poster, single alphabet letter keychains and other uses.

Since the Bridge was conceived nearly a century ago, it has remained a marvel of engineering and style, as iconic to the West Coast as the Statue of Liberty to the East Coast. In 1937, consulting architect Irving Foster Morrow brought an Art Deco sensibility to what was then the world’s longest suspension bridge, giving it a sleek and elegant look with angular lines and gracefully curved cables that refracted the setting sun to dramatic rays of shadow and light. The vermillion red color was chosen to complement the landscape and stand out in the fog. But the results could have been much different had the Navy and Army had their way. In 1937, the U.S. Navy wanted to paint the towers in black and yellow stripes, arguing that “bumble bee stripes” would be more visible to ships in dense fog. The Army Air Corps thought the towers should be painted like a barbershop pole in red and white stripes. Thankfully, they were overruled by Morrow, who felt that the entire span should be all one color, and not clowned up like a bumble bee or barbershop pole. That’s how it has remained.

Year long festivities are planned to mark the 75th anniversary of the Golden Gate Bridge, and celebrations are just getting underway. Concerts, film series, lectures, and fireworks on San Francisco Bay are slated for the month of May. The one event that won’t be repeated from the 50th anniversary celebration is closing the Bridge to auto traffic, so pedestrians can walk across it, as they did at the real opening in 1937. At the 50th anniversary event in 1987, the arch in the roadway flattened under the weight of 300,000 reveling pedestrians, causing a human “traffic” jam to end all traffic jams.

Motel 6 chose an interesting way to tell consumers that they’ve been around for a half century. They “time traveled” both the station wagon and the family of four inside through the decades by morphing them into the latest styles. For those who are baffled about how Motel 6 got its name, here’s the story. The motel chain was founded in 1962 by two building contractors in Santa Barbara, California, who figured out how to offer bargain rates by calculating out the cost of land, construction and ongoing maintenance. By cutting out any frills, they decided they could offer rooms at $6 a night and still make a profit – hence, the name Motel 6. Of course, inflation and other factors have caused room rates to go up multifold over the past 50 years, but relative to other hotels, it is still considered affordable to penny-pinching families.

This commercial was made by Dallas ad agency, The Richards Group, which has been running Motel 6 ad campaigns since the 1980s. They were the ones who came up with Motel 6’s famous tagline “We’ll leave the light on for you.” The Richards Group teamed with the production firm King and Country (K&C), which made the 30-second spot from start to finish – production, direction, editorial, animation and VFX – completely inhouse. Rick Gledhill directed for K&C.

For more than a century, the QWERTY typewriter was the most important business tool in any office. Millions were made and sold. Then in the 1980s, along came the desktop computer and within a decade, typewriters were destined for the trash heap. Where most people saw outmoded technology, illustrator/sculptor Jeremy Mayer in Oakland, California, looked beyond the typewriter’s original function and saw an intriguing array of metal shapes and forms that could be reassembled into full-scale anatomically correct human and animal figures.

Mayer’s sculptures seem both skeletal and robotic. They are rendered in intricate detail, using only typewriter parts and nothing else. No welding, soldering or gluing is involved. His process is entirely cold assembly. Mayer spends between 1,000 to 1,400 hours to construct his more elaborate pieces, which are finding an appreciative market in fine art galleries.

If the existentialist playwright Jean-Paul Sartre had a house cat, it would undoubtedly have Henri’s morose outlook on life. This video short is written and directed by Will Braden, with narration in French by Will Braden, who lives in Seattle, Washington, and doesn’t speak French as his first language. Braden’s video production business is mostly engaged in making videographs of wedding receptions and producing special video projects for local organizations. He keeps his creative senses and his sense of humor sharp by producing his own film shorts. This one is a sequel to Henri’s first appearance in a short that Braden made as a student film project in 2007.

Most people don’t know this product by brand name, but they know exactly what you are talking about when you describe the pine tree-shaped air fresheners that dangle from rearview mirrors of taxicabs and long-haul trucks all over the world. The product is trademarked under the name “Little Trees” and manufactured in the U.S. by the Car-Freshner Corporation, but the shape is far more recognizable than the name. In fact, unlike the contoured bottles that people immediately associate with Coca-Cola and the Golden Arches that is synonymous with McDonald’s, these cut-out tree silhouettes don’t recall a name so much as a particular scent, location and purpose. That hasn’t hurt sales a bit; Little Trees trees have sold in the billions since they came on the market in the mid-1950s.

Little Trees were invented by Julius Samann of Watertown, New York, who came up with the product after listening to a milkman complain about the stench of spilled milk in his delivery truck. A Swiss-born chemist and perfumist, Samann had spent time in the Canadian pine forests learning about the aromatic oils that give evergreens their distinctive, soothing smell. That earlier research gave him the idea of impregnating matte paper (much like beer coasters) with an odor-killing fragrance. To keep the resinous substance from sticking to fingers and other surfaces, he attached a string to the top of the paper pine tree so it could be hung in convenient places like over the rearview mirror in cars. He sent samples to local gas stations where they quickly sold out and the rest is history. Today Little Trees has over 60 air freshener fragrances on the market, including New Car Smell, Cotton Candy, Black Ice and Green Apple. The product now comes in different colors and patterns, but the one thing they have in common is that they are all shaped like little trees.