Typography

Target Food for Thought

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Columbus, Ohio-based Danielle Evans, who goes by the firm name Marmalade Bleue, pursues a quirky design genre – food typography. She uses food ingredients to create very ephemeral letterforms, such as in a “Food for Thought” video for Target stores.

On her Marmalade Bleue blog, Evans explains how her approach differs from others who have used food ingredients as a writing medium. “Food type had been used sparingly as one-offs in the past, all of which utilized the materials incidentally without applying a typographer’s touch,” she says. “The novelty of food as lettering trumped the presentation and legibility of the forms. I chose to apply my background in illustration, sculpting, and painting to create letterforms with dimension, play of light and edges, and happenstance flourishes with personality.”

Describing her methodology, Evans adds, “Rarely do I use typefaces or fonts to influence my work, instead I rely on the materials to dictate the best course. I’ve chosen a symbiotic relationship with my materials, suggesting rather than forcing their direction. Lettering allows for incidental flourishes and ligatures associated with calligraphy, the true nature of my work.” Intriguing and beautiful.
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Advertising

Put Your Beard in Good Hands

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This ad campaign for The Art of Shaving Barber Spa, by ad agency BBDO New York, presents several key marketing messages in a single image. Caressing hands shape and give loving attention to every type of beard. The brand name itself “The Art of Shaving Barber Spa” implies that its men’s shaving and skin care products and shaving services are high-end and exclusive. Its wares are not cheap disposable razors that you buy by the dozen at Walmart.They are luxury items sought by men who go to aestheticians for a trim and wear subtly scented aftershave. Interestingly, Proctor & Gamble, which owns The Art of Shaving brand, isn’t named anywhere on the ads. The maker of snack foods, detergents, toilet paper, disposable diapers and teen-affordable beauty products sold in supermarkets, P&G knows that its reputation won’t add cachet to this line, but make it seem more ordinary.
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Industrial Design

The Reincarnation of Trash

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Finished drinking that Coke? Don’t throw away the empty bottle. Turn it into a pencil sharpener.

Coca-Cola knows that the downside of drinking lots of Coke is the litter that results from trashing the empties. Coke wants consumers to give the bottle a second life, either through recycling or repurposing. To promote this idea, Coke turned to ad agency Ogilvy & Mather China to come up with another use for the bottles. The agency developed a 2nd Lives kit that contains 16 modified screw-on caps that will turn empty bottles into bubble blowers, whistles, paint applicators, squirt guns, pencil sharpeners, baby rattles, hand weights, condiment dispensers, spray bottles, drums, and other functional tools and toys. To start, Coke gave away 40,000 2nd Lives kits to customers in Vietnam. Coke’s 2nd Lives initiative extends the bottle’s usefulness and, hopefully, the bottle will find its 3rd life in a plastics recycling plant.
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Advertising

Moms Demand Action Through Ad Campaign

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Moms Demand Action, a gun-control group backed by former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg, has launched an advertising campaign asking retail chains to refuse service to shoppers who openly carry assault rifles into their establishments. In response to retailer claims that doing that would violate their customers’ civil liberties, the ads point out that retailers have had no qualms about enforcing a ban on shirtless shoppers, eating ice cream cones and skateboarding. This series of ads targets Kroger, the largest grocery chain in the U.S. So far, nearly a half dozen national restaurants and stores have reversed course in response to Moms Demand Action advertising and publicity campaign. No word yet from Kroger.

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Illustration

Lufthansa Makes Advertising a Game

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Lufthansa Airlines came up with a fun way to get consumers to pay really close attention to their online “Passengers on Tour” promotional campaign. It turned each advertisement into a “Where’s Waldo” – like game, inviting viewers to find the Lufthansa tourist(s) in each picture for the chance to be entered into a raffle for daily and grand prizes. Lufthansa’s Munich-based online marketing agency, Plan Net, commissioned 14 illustrators from around the world to capture the attractions and excitement of 14 specific destinations that the airline serves. With so much to see and so much going on, each picture begs to be explored from edge to edge. The campaign took its inspiration from German “wimmelbilder” (hidden object) books, children’s picture books teeming with details, people, animals, and things. Each image features dozens of vignettes of everyday scenes that are connected by the shared environment. The Lufthansa ads took the meaning of hidden objects literally by inviting viewers to click on the Lufthansa tourist in the picture. Choose right and you’re in the daily raffle. The more often you play, the greater your chances in the grand raffle – incentive to keep coming back to look at all 14 ads.

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