You make the call, is the Diet Mountain Dew commercial featuring Abraham Lincoln as a stark raving mad wrestler great or is it disrespectful to our nation’s greatest President, the Great Emancipator who gave his life for his country?
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As designers, we often think that our inspirations are unique. However, as this video proves, even we are susceptible to effective advertising. Designers can sometimes be hyper-sensitive to their surroundings, always looking for visual information they can use. But as we see in Derren Brown‘s experiment, simply being in a space or experiencing a product can subliminally influence us in the same way we try to to visually influence consumers. Weird.
Stumbled upon this latest find today, thought I’d share this fascinating new book…
Influence and Inspiration, From the Original Trailblazers to the New Groundbreakers
“The immense body of work produced by graphic designers around the world is astoundingly varied, rich and widely celebrated. Yet in publications, conferences and other public realms, women designers tend to be outnumbered by their male counterparts whose appearances, work and achievements are constantly in the spotlight. Luckily, it’s a reversing trend. While this book does not attempt to relieve the imbalance, it does bring full attention to the wonderful work, careers and contributions of women designers, writers, teachers and entrepreneurs around the world.”
For more, you can visit www.underconsideration.com/womenofdesign, here you can see a list of the women included in this book, and even view spreads inside the book.
Some Early Opinions
This book about women in design turns out to be a great book about design, period, except with fresher, more surprising work, and less bombastic interviews. Highly recommended to 100% of the population.
— Michael Bierut, Partner, Pentagram
This modern matriarchy has given birth to practically every important visual and conceptual form of design expression. I remain humbled and indebted to these many courageous visionaries.
— Rick Valicenti, Designer & Founder, Thirst
While recently visiting www.howdesign.com, I stumbled across an interesting post, that I thought was worth commenting on and sharing.
The Art Directors Club & Idealist, have created a partnership to bring like-minded creatives & causes together for social change. The two have teamed up to create www.DesignismConnects.org. This new site helps bring together & connect nonprofit organizations in need of advertising/creative services, with advertising/creative professionals who provide those services. On this site, a creative can narrow their search to the causes they believe in, with the skills they offer to find a partnership they would be interested in pursuing.
Both individual and organization can post profiles listing their needs or services. From national to global organizations to choose from, and projects ranging from printed collateral to a TV PSA, I urge fellow creatives to check out www.DesignismConnects.org if your looking for a cause to support! And the same goes for all you nonprofits out there in need of pro-bono talent, sign up now to post your cause projects! What better time to start with the new year approaching and the need to fill a new year’s resolution draws near!
There is an old (really old) saying in PR that “any PR is good – even bad PR.”
Recently I saw a movie that had the now-usual product placement for a certain American brand of beer. While their brand name was visible in an enviable percentage of the movie, the result of the character’s ‘enjoyment’ of said product was someone whose life was a mess. Numerous depictions of drunkenness, inability to hold a job or properly parent their child, and disinterest in anything more than the next beer were the benefits of his imbibing. His life turned around when he chose to not partake of said product.
I am all for creative marketing and applaud those companies who figured out that product placement in movies was a goldmine, but I question the judgment of placing your client’s product where its use is portrayed negatively. While no product or service is 100% perfect, (sorry, it’s true) the role of a marketer is to highlight those attributes that are positive, and to try not to bring too much attention to the negative attributes.
On the other hand, maybe I am just too critical and the fact that the beer name was shown not-so-subliminally hundreds of times is enough to overcome any negative perception. Either way, it’s food for thought.
The Creative Team at Omni work on many projects, and sometimes it’s tough to stay creative. However, we all use various techniques to stay on top of our game. One thing that we all use is music. There is a great article on How Magazine’s website about the benefits of music in the creative environment.?
The article highlights a few different companies that use music to their advantage and provides great insight into how music influences them, like this quote from John Besemer of Planet Design Co. in Madison, WI:
“If you’re working on a project that’s elegant and beautiful, you might listen to something like jazz, something that puts you in that mood,…But if you’re designing an in-your-face project, you want music that gets you there. After all, you wouldn’t go to the gym and want to work out to a lullaby, right? Music shapes the message.”
Another way to keep things fun is to take a few minutes each day to find an interesting/awesome video on YouTube and share it with everyone. This is one of my favorites:
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Thoughts on advertising, marketing and graphic design from Omni Communications Group in Springfield, Illinois
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