Sand drawing

Beautiful and very moving sand drawing created by Ukrainian artist Kseniya Simonova, who draws on a giant light box, accompanied by dramatic music to show here interpretation of the effect of Germany's invasion on her home country during WWII.

Mousetrap-style Website

A lovely webpage for Dutch product company that is playful and eye catching. Watch til the end!

Tree cosies

It's the wrong time of year to be keeping trees warm, but who said there was any logic to these beautiful tree cosies?
I would think they're just for decoration only, and how good they look!

Stop and Smell the Stilton

Pat on the back for me as I was pleased to discover the book I did for Nexavar, 'Stop and Smell the Stilton' has received critical acclaim at some industry awards. It won an RX Gold at the RX Gold club awards and a New York Global for excellence in direct marketing. The book is aimed at oncologists treating terminal cancer patients, and is designed to help patients cope with the little time they have left in an uplifting way. The book is full of real patient anecdotes, illustrated or created with unusual popups, or craftwork, making it a delightful little read.

Watch a short clip here:

Stop and Smell the Stilton

Rip Off!

Yes it has been a LONG time since I posted something here - that's partly to do with my new job & adjusting to being a full-timer & partly because I forgot my password to get in!
Anyway, several posts missed, I have yet another rant to share - This is relating to my first discussion back in Nov 07 about advertising creatives ripping off artists ; an ongoing debate that I think will continue since creatives naturally look to the artworld for inspiration. The solution I think to making sure you are always original is to be aware of all this stuff, but keep your self interested by anything and everything going on in the world. Expose yourself to not only art, but to literature, politics, talks on the science world, articles on Ugandan garners and their crops. Everything feeds the creative brain subconsciously - it's how you dip into it that is the clever bit. i am a of course a hypocrite of my own words, as I tend to follow my main interests and fall into a trap of reading the same blogs & visiting familiar websites, but I do try to venture elsewhere.
So back to the reason I have brought this up again - the recent BBC trailer for Radio 6 as created by RKCR/Y & R. In it, an animated character graffitied on the wall grows ears and gravitates towards wherever there is music. All fine. Concept relates to the client. Except it
uses EXACTLY the same technique, if not style of the well - known artist BLU, who I showcased here back in June. His work spread around the net like wildfire, basically because it was so great. So to see it replicated for an ad frustrates me so. Basically because the creators of Radio 6 get all the credit for being innovative and groundbreaking creatively, while the artist doesn't receive such acclaim as he deserves. That's why we have to spread the news on blogs like this!

Goodbye Cellulite

Spotted this in Cr, and thought "cool". It's quick, clever and good use of media.

Unfortunately while searching for the Nivea image, I was disappointed to discover someone had got there first two years ago in Russia. It's hard to know if the creatives at TBWA NY knew of this, and one could argue they have made much better use of the idea. However, it spoiled my initial "ahhh.." reaction.

Stop motion of the 70's

Here's some of those animations from the seventies/early eighties I was going on about below - God, we found them entertaining when we were little!

Some Colourful Ads

I've had hardly any time to devote to my little Blog since I started at Tribal and felt increasingly out of touch with all things creative so have a done a little trawling on some of my favourite blogs, and good ol' advertising sites, just to remind myself what business I'm in.
It's often quite frustrating when you see an ad in print or on Tv that has used an idea you came up with yonks ago, but got ditched somehow, and the latest Saatchi ad for NSPCC is a good example for me. And I personally don't think the tool of the butterflies work as well as we had in our concept. I'm referring to the coloured butterflies that flutter about around children's playgrounds, weaving in and out of children, then one comes up against a glass window and can't get in. On closer inspection you can see that the butterflies are actually two ears flying - representing the counselling service that the NSPCC offer.
Years back while working on a brief for the COI, my partner and I had an idea for a campaign against fraudsters who cheat the system and don't pay their taxes. The Inland Revenue were setting up a hotline for people to call up and 'dob' these people in. (I know, a REALLY effective way of catching tax evaders!) So we had these sweet butterflies fluttering about while some guy was blagging to his mate how to always pay cash, that way you don't have anything on paper to catch you out.. These innocent cute butterflies were actually conniving ears flying about. I think we may have even ended with them splitting apart and smacking themselves onto an earwigging neighbour...! Anyway it used the whole thought that if walls had ears - watch out.
A much stronger strategy don't you think?
Oh well.
An ad I do like at the moment is the Ford Fiesta ad created by Ogilvy.



I was reading in Creative review the other day that they commissioned 20 artists/designers to create the films on the tv's that move about. They are really cool, but it is so quick you can't appreciate the hard work that probably went into them. The reason it caught my eye when I first saw it was it reminded me of the cut and paste style animation they used to use on Sesame Street - you know, sometimes for learning the eight times table, or sometimes for no reason at all. They were always really eighties and graphical. The endline 'this is now' has recieved a lot of criticism within the industry e.g 'What is it saying?' But I like it. How deep can you be about a new car? This is now. Done.