Published on Wednesday, May 16th, 2012 by Peter Giffen

Red Stripe, the Jamaican beer, recently commissioned Scottish artist Spaceboy to create an animated installation at Edinburgh’s Newhaven Harbour. Spaceboy’s stop-motion illustrations were brought to life by production company Blac Ionica and graphic design students from Edinburgh College of Art.

As part of Make Art on the Street, Spaceboy transformed a set of waterside shutters in Edinburgh into an evolving artwork . Using spray paints and pasted-up drawings, Spaceboy and his group of students took inspiration from the Jamaican studio culture of the 1970s and paid homage to some of the great Jamaican reggae artists. The work features many images of old school tape decks and references to Lee Scratch Perry’s Black Ark Studios.

[Not to Adverblog]

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Published on Wednesday, May 16th, 2012 by Peter Giffen

Spark Productions of Toronto has announced an “exclusive union” with local director Kelsey Larkin, also a photographer. Larkin started here career directing a series of “beautifully executed” music videos, abstract short films and a commercial campaign for Toronto’s Bikes on Wheels cycles shop.  With her background in photography, Larkin’s “knowledge of light, angles and subject” enables her to bring stories to life in video as well. See her reel here.

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Published on Tuesday, May 15th, 2012 by Peter Giffen

From Toronto photographer Steve Carty:

Last month I spent two weeks in London shooting for the D&AD awards, which celebrates creative excellence in design and advertising. This year was the 50th anniversary of D&AD and they flew me out there to shoot 200 of the worlds most important creatives. In the coming weeks I’ll be able to share the work created during that four-day portrait fest.

Some of the best graffiti and street art I’ve seen is in London. Street art has always played a large role in my work and has graced the background of many photo shoots. I love it. Here are some of the pieces, installations and tags I saw in while I was there. All shot on my iPhone 4 and processed in Instagram.

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Published on Tuesday, May 15th, 2012 by Peter Giffen

An Australian campaign for Canadian Club aims to make “Beer Fairies” an endangered species. The series of videos on the CC YouTube channel shows bloated, unhygienic beer drinkers, sporting undersized wings, suddenly exploding every time a young, good-looking urban professional opts for a CC instead of a pint of the usual. If only life were like this. The Canadian Club Australia Facebook page lets visitors sign up for Beer Fairy Hunting Season and compete for prizes.

[Nod to The Inspiration Room]

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Published on Monday, May 14th, 2012 by Peter Giffen

Applied Arts friend and advertising legend Gary Prouk, of Sebastian Consultancy, provides links that will help you kill time, avoid work and find inspiration and entertainment.

Third Chicago International Poster Biennial: Sadly this Kickstarter proposal by Lance Rutter,  designer and president of the Chicago International Poster Biennial Association, fell short of hits funding goal. It’s aim was to “undertake a very large public arts initiative that brings the world’s best poster designers and their work together through competitions, exhibitions, lectures, and a variety of learning and public outreach programs.” Oh well. Next time. (Poster above from the first Poster Biennial, in 2008.)

Hunger Games PSAs:  College Humor offers a series of public service announcements for the phenomenally popular movie, The Hunger Games. “Stand Up  to Bullies . . . Then Kill Them,” advises one.

Startups, This Is How Design Works: This well-designed, informative site, created by user interface/experience designer Wells Riley, aims  to tell newly launched companies about how design works. While startups often know they need a logo or WordPress theme, design is  ”so much more than that. It’s a state of mind. It’s an approach to a problem. It’s how you’re going to kick your competitor’s ass. This handy guide will help you understand design and provide resources to help you find awesome design talent.” It covers everything from the principles of design to the the different kinds of design. You may have clients that you need to point this way.

Sui Generis:  For his Sui Generis exhibit, Belgian artist Stephan Balleux explains, “Sui generis is a Latin expression, literally meaning of its own kind/genus or unique in its characteristics. The expression is often used in analytic philosophy to indicate an idea, an entity, or a reality which cannot be included in a wider concept.” Balleux has taken this meaning to heart in creating his unique body of watercolour, oils, and charcoal and pastel work.

This is Real Art: This site is for a London, U.K., advertising, design and branding agency, “set up by creatives, strategists and account directors from some of the world’s leading creative agencies.” Apparently it’s attention-getting work has even four times “started debates in Parliament.”

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Published on Monday, May 14th, 2012 by Peter Giffen

Nobody loves to do proposals, but often, it’s the only way. If you want the job, you have to write one, especially when your “dream clients” work only via Request for Proposal (RFP), such as in government and higher education sectors.

But how do you decide which proposals to do and which are just a shot in the dark and therefore a waste of your time?

One way is to judge the quality of the RFP itself. Says Allison Manley, principal and owner of Chicago-based firm Rogue Element, “Good RFPs make it clear the prospect understands they’re buying the process, not just the product. And part of our task in the proposal we submit is explaining how the process is going to work, not just focusing on the deliverable.” . . . Read Ilise Benun’s column.

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Published on Friday, May 11th, 2012 by Peter Giffen

Courtesy of Saturday Night Live, we find out what mom may really want for Mother’s Day. In this skit various mothers are caught by family in, uh, compromising positions, as they enjoy reading the erotic best seller Fifty Shades of Grey, by E.L. James. The point of the sketch? If she had ordered the book on the Kindle e-reader, her reading preferences could have been kept secret.

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Published on Friday, May 11th, 2012 by Peter Giffen

It’s not often that we laud the work of big, grey Procter & Gamble, but last month it released a commercial honouring the moms behind the athletes, in advance of the 2012 London Olympic Games. It hits the right emotional notes for Mother’s Day. While not every mother may be nurturing an Olympic athlete, all will relate to the sacrifice and hard work involved in getting kids to their early morning lessons and sports. P&G also launched a Facebook page, allowing visitors to sent their mothers a note of thanks.

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Published on Thursday, May 10th, 2012 by Peter Giffen

Toronto photographer Ryan Enn Hughes has been experimenting with animated GIFs and this is his first project, Sparkler$. To create this, Hughes set up a black set in his studio, and blacked out his windows to block outside light. The subjects jumped, painting with sparklers, as Hughes shot with a DSLR camera on an eight-second exposure.  A flash froze the subject briefly at the beginning of the exposure, and so only the light trail appeared for the rest. The photos were sequenced in post-production to create the animated GIFs.

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Published on Wednesday, May 9th, 2012 by Peter Giffen

The team at creative agency Mondegro was commissioned by the City of Toronto to design a Book of Remembrance, honouring the 200th anniversary of the War of 1812 – a defining moment in Canadian history.

Titled Finding the Fallen from the Battle of York: A War of 1812 Book of Remembrance, the project serves as the centerpiece for an exhibit at the Market Gallery at St. Lawrence Market in Toronto to commemorate those who died during the Battle of York and other engagements during the War of 1812. The book was unveiled at the exhibition opening on March 3 and will be on display at the Market Gallery until September 8, 2012, after which it will be permanently installed at Fort York.

Mondegro  married design elements specific to the period with contemporary sensibility. “Our personal interest in illuminated manuscripts and British history sparked our creativity and served as an integral part of the design process,” says president and design director Frank Moniz R.G.D. “We paid homage to the Regency period in the title page but included silver leaf that recalls design elements found in more traditional Rolls of Honour. For the selection of the font, we drew inspiration from handwriting normally associated with ranking officers and the notes of correspondence of that period.”

Visitors to the exhibit will see the book opened to a page listing the names of the fallen identified to date. The display case also includes copies of the title page with its hand-applied silver leaf and a richly tactile and foil-stamped synthetic leather slipcover.

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