12.07.2008 by Zoltan

brandtags

Brandtags is an absolutely genius idea by Noah Brier (a strategist at Naked). The idea is to chart public - a.k.a consumer - perception of brands via user-generated tags.

Where the project becomes really valuable though is in playing backwards. Here you have to guess the brand, and the tags become a chart of the efficacy of a clear and coherent comms strategy. Those that have got it right are immediately identifiable by a few massive tags. Those unsure of exactly who they are (and obviously have conflicting comms messages) are reflected in a mass of different tags.

Hardly a true and accurate cross-seciton of the population (yet), but nevertheless if i was a brand manager, I’d have this bookmarked and be charting change over time.

Big up to Naked as well, no doubt this idea was hatched on their time ;)

10.07.2008 by Zoltan

Batman heats up on 10.07.08

The Dark Knight is almost upon us, and it seems the marketing campaign to end all marketing campaigns is only getting warmed up. 10 PM today seems to be a big event, as seen by the countdown at whysoserious.com - one of the plethora of links within the ARG.

For example, there’s a new group called the C.F.B (Citizens For Batman), with their own recruitment video leaked on youtube. They even put the Bat signal on buildings in both Chicago and NYC.

But if you really want to see how deep the rabbit hole goes, then head on over to the wiki, where you’ll find things like email accounts from the Gotham Police as well as the Gotham Bank, fortune teller tickets edited by the joker which are codes to a map of the city (see the images below), text messages sent by human resources people and only god himself knows what else.

Honestly my head physically hurts considering the breadth and depth of this campaign. I would love to meet the team behind this. I can only suspect its actually The Architect from the Matrix. No one else could possibly keep on top of all of this…

13.06.2008 by Zoltan

the-affair gets FWA

This is a bit old now, but if you don’t follow the FWA you won’t know that my t-shirt brand the-affair recently won the FWA Site Of The Day.

Its a real honour - especially as we don’t quite have the same budget as a global car brand. Needless to say its been very good for us with tonnes of new people checking out the site. Thanks again to our resident Flash guru Kamil Gottwald for making it all happen. And if you’re in the position to give him work then please do, I can guarantee he’ll be amazing.

On a side note, that’s one bloody good business, £23.50 to enter and imagine how many per day they must get?!?! I’m sure it beats the financial hell out of selling t-shirts ;)

10.06.2008 by Zoltan

A token of thanks

Normally I hate anything remotely resembling a ‘clever’ way for brands to enter my everyday life. And normally its not unfounded. So it was with apprehension that I opened the slightly bulging packet from ING Direct the other day. But to my great surprise, what I found inside was this brilliant piece of marketing.

With the exact same form factor (and weight) as a £1 coin, this ‘token of thanks’ allows you to (literally) save your pounds when grabbing a trolley in the supermarket. Now I avoid supermarkets like the plague, but for those who don’t or can’t, its the bank’s positioning made tangible. But above all, it is actually useful, so will no doubt get much attention around Britain’s hypermarkets. I wonder who the agency was? Anyone?

04.12.2007 by Zoltan

Doubleyou “Feliz 2007″

Its that time of year again, everyone starts racking their brains for the world’s greatest xmas card and in the end produces something combining snowflakes and company headshots (again). But not doubleyou… No, no, those kooky catalonians have once again shown themselves for the true leaders that they are with this brilliant, not-too-xmassy, fun and above all, memorable ‘card’ (albeit from last year). Enjoy.

PS: if anyone gets their card this year, please paste it in the comments. I’d be well interested to know how they follow this up…

via bannerblog

23.07.2007 by Zoltan

Wine that loves…

Wine that loves is like “Wine for Dummies” but for the ADD-generation. Why bother to learn about anything when some clever marketing can do it for you? Cynicism aside, its actually some lovely bold, and most importantly simple, graphic design on the bottles. Shame about the website…

via the aesthetic poetic

26.06.2007 by Zoltan

NT posters

The National Theatre has just released its entire poster archive for online sale / reprint. They’re not very expensive and there’s some great design such as the ‘Equus’ poster above. But what’s really interesting is that - because they are usually designed in-house - today’s NT posters are a continuation of a graphic language began in the 60’s (see the second image above).

via Nicki

26.06.2007 by Zoltan

Uniqlock

Not sure if this is by Yugop, but considering his input into the online strategy of Uniqlo of late I wouldn’t be surprised. The Uniqlock is a really interesting study in creating something with seemingly no connection to anything, but doing it so well that its sheer memory-effect reinforces a positive brand image.

18.06.2007 by Zoltan

Designer Slash Model

Designer Slash Model is a piece of self-promotion by digital kitchen. Its interesting in that it hardly touches the work at all. In fact there are only very few short snippets from their reel. But what is does do is completely take the piss out of design and the image-obsessed ‘design-errrrr’ we all love-to-hate. Honestly this could’ve gone really wrong, but in the end its saved by a healthy dose of self-deprecating humour.

The very good script is littered withe such gems as: “Sometimes I wonder, Is my work beautiful because I’m beautiful? Or am I beautiful because my work is beautiful? It’s probably a little bit of both”, and “I edit standing up… It gives me the freedom I need to make the hard-cuts”, and finally “Design can change the world… I think crop-circles prove that”.

But its the deadpan delivery of the models (my guess is that with actors it could not have been this toungue in cheek) that borders on ignorant zealotism, and their seemingly genuine belief in the script that makes it so funny…

13.06.2007 by Zoltan

Hidden Town

Hidden Town by Gregor Graf is a world without the visual clutter - no design, no advertising, no cars, no people, no dirt, clear blue skies and certainly no fragile human emotion. No, this is an architects wet dream - nothing but the built environment. Apart from the fact that it makes everything look like a 3D render, it also reminds me of the *new* São Paulo.

via basement

17.05.2007 by Zoltan

Goodfoot Ad Part 1

Check this slick teaser ad for Goodfoot… The editing and sound are spot on, but what I really like is the simplicity of the art direction and the disembodied quality it creates - its not about the mad skater, but the kicks he’s in.

15.05.2007 by Zoltan

OFFF 2007

I’ve just returned from Barcelona - that most beautiful of cities - from the awesomely inspiring OFFF festival (not sure i got enough superlatives in there ;). As usual, there was a plethora of incredible people presenting amazing work that lies mostly on the art side of the art-design divide. There was Maeda, Neville Brody, Flight404, North Kingdom, Graffiti Research Lab and Universal Everything among others. Full run down from my POV will be up by the end of the week.

05.04.2007 by Zoltan

Personal Pies

Personal Pies is a project that abstracts one person’s everyday life into accountable bites/bytes of of information in an attempt to provide “an audit of my life so far”.

I think this is a really interesting idea, and is not at all unlike Feltron’s brilliant personal annual report - although not as well designed. The desire to quantify the minutiae of life in a corporate-esque way speaks volumes of our society and the increasing measure-ability of the world in general.

19.03.2007 by Zoltan

Discover Space NK

A lovely spot for Space NK, where the whimsical music is perfectly matched to the animation tempo. The austere tonal palette helps to focus our attention on the all-natural ingredients rather than the animation itself…

Thanks to Nathan L for this one…

22.01.2007 by Zoltan

2007 logo trends?

According to LogoOrange, these are the 11 trends that will define logo design in 2007. There’s definitely something for everyone, so I’m not sure exactly how something gets ‘trend’ status, but hey… Anyway I’m surprised the web 2.0 ‘wet effect’ only comes in at number 3 :-P

via joel