The madness of August
Madness of the creative sort that is. Three creative influences inspiring us at Liquid Graphic this month:
Abercrombie & Fitch (A&F)
For those of you that tune out anything vaguely tabloid, you may have missed this one. This month A&F released a statement distancing themselves from the tone and behaviour of a character in the hit MTV Jersey Shore TV programme who is seen, in most episodes, wearing A&F gear.
Best piece PR spin we’ve seen in a while…in one foul swoop A&F reaffirm their brand identity, deal with a potential distraction to their brand image and bag themselves oodles of global PR just in time to spike back to school/college sales. Bravo.
Ocean giants
BBC wildlife documentaries aren’t a terribly rock and roll form of inspiration, but it has a captivating quality and the nature of oceans around us so big that they’re unknowable is humbling. It might be the photography or the art direction, it might be the subject matter, but either way it just makes us want to get out there and see more of the world and to use the ocean for creative design inspiration.
An ode to the all-powerful potential of Twitter. A simple sales promotion campaign run through Twitter has, this month, resulted in a 750% increase in the number of followers for one of our clients. Social media has never been such a meaningful online marketing tool as it is now.
Visit our Facebook page or tweet and tell us what’s inspiring you this month…
The writing’s on the wall
“Poets don’t draw. They unravel their handwriting and then tie it up again, but differently.” Jean Cocteau.
Graphologists believe that our handwriting provides a formulaic glimpse into our soul and reveals things about us that are not otherwise discernible, i.e. our mental or emotional state, amongst other things.
For that (and other) reasons, handwriting is considered a form of artistry and using handwritten typography in graphic design carries some novelty value and implies a sense of intimacy with the target audience and, in some instances, a sense of nostalgia.
And nostalgia carries some weight, particularly in troubling times like have been seen on the news this week. People take comfort in looking back to ‘better’ times gone by and the right brands thrive on this, just ask Hovis or Coca Cola.
Nostalgia for the intimacy of the handwritten form led Craig Oldham to create The Hand Written Letter Project back in 2007.
What initially began as a conversation about how personal a handwritten letter can be, grew into something that has commanded the attention and contributions from big hitter agencies and some of the true greats from the world of design. See handwrittenletterproject.com to read about the project or visit an exhibit about the project at London’s KK Outlet (ends 27th August).
In fact there’s no real novelty to handwritten typography in major brand advertising, it’s all around us. At one end of the market, think Boots, Ford, Kellogg’s – all accessible household names. At the other end, think Cartier, Paul Smith, Harrods.
So, maybe there is no formula to handwriting after all. Brands big and small, mass market and luxury, can all benefit from adding a personal touch to their brand identity.
Design’s box of tricks
Most designers and agencies have a box of tricks – metaphorically speaking – to please brands looking to push the boundaries. Generally it’s what’s required to achieve a base level of standout in any online marketing or social media campaign.
But there’s one brand’s campaign that has a box of tricks so cutting edge, it has media commentators getting out of their boxes too…
culturejunkie.co.uk describes the campaign as:
“One of the largest international cultural commissioning programmes of its kind”
wired.com talks about it as:
“the world’s first global networked augmented reality gallery”
designweek.co.uk simply says:
“so ambitious”
So what is it?
To celebrate the 25th year of their art label, lager brand Becks have launched the Beck’s Green Box Project (www.becks.com/GreenBox).
In a nutshell, they’ve commissioned 30 artists to create individual works that will be displayed in seven key cities around the world: New York, London, Manchester, Rome, Milan, Los Angeles and Miami.
Sound simple? Well, it’s not quite that straightforward. In these locations, Becks will install green boxes (hence the project name). Only when onlookers look at the boxes through their custom mobile phone app will they see the unique creative content i.e. the ‘augmented reality’.
The first installation took place in New York this month to mark Independence Day and comprised a 200ft digital art sculpture by artist Arne Quinze.
Becks Green New York
Needless to say, the campaign has spurred a lot of debate mainly to do with the boundaries between art and marketing and the influence of technology on the art world, media consumption and a consumer’s interaction with art.
But art aside, there’s a lot more in the box for Becks as there’s a hefty opportunity for harvesting consumers’ Facebook ID, limitless PR and it’s just the stuff that has Twitter followers chirping a merry chorus.
Not a bad trick for an empty green box.
The madness of Summer
…madness of the creative sort that is. Our top three creative influences at Liquid Graphic so far this Summer:
Best Buy
Already with some serious customer service clout to their name, this retailer has some clever things going on. Not least of all, Best Buy has provided their sales advisors with smart phones to engage with Twitter. Now, when a customer tweets a question about that next LCD TV they’re looking to buy, they will benefit from the expertise of Best Buy’s entire team. In fact, using Twitter has gained such momentum that Best Buy now provides staff with fun incentives purely based on the speed and quality of responses.
Flippin YouTube
Trend spotters in web and viral marketing are citing YouTube as the next ‘big thing’. Already successful in its own right as a social medium, the commercialisation of this channel has been slower. But with brands now having figured out the right and wrong ways to use Facebook and Twitter, YouTube was always the next logical step to breathe animation and ‘life’ into online marketing campaigns.
So, grab your video camera and think video blogs and creative competitions. And grab your video camera while you can. The Flip video camera is one of the most simplistic and popular standalone video cameras on the market but production has shut down since the company was bought out by Cisco due to competition from the smartphone market. If you’re a fan of simple – which we are at Liquid Graphic – go grab one now.
Festival feel-good
It’s that festival point in the Summer where there’s a lot going on that has to do with being outdoors, being with people and being celebratory. It doesn’t need to be about Glastonbury or one of the big music festivals, although these are good examples. It can also be as simple as your town carnival, a barndance, the funfair or a traditional country fete. Whatever your need for inspiration, there’s a lot we can take from these moments of celebrating togetherness and humanity.
Contact Liquid Graphic if we’ve inspired you to think again about your creative or to think about engaging more effectively with social media.
Faking it
The appetite for ‘celebrity’ has never been greater.
What began as us all being fans and the notion of being interested in a person who plays an inspiring character on TV, nowadays means complex socio-political issues.
In fact there’s a postmodern irony to the fact that issues such as phone hacking, super-injunctions, paparazzi and stalking dominate headlines in equal measure to the celebrity stories themselves. Stories… about making stories… about celebrities…
To some extent, social media has redressed the balance. Celebrities can now employ people to Twitter away about the mundane things they’re doing (cynical but probably true) and their PR-vetted views on current events (cynical but, again, probably true). This then feeds fans with details they crave while they get on with living their normal – forward-slash – fabulous lives.
The question we’re asking at Liquid Graphic this week is what do we really know when it comes to celebrities?
We know about the products celebrities like, because they’re paid to endorse them. By default, we know the story on the front of the weekly gossip magazine is almost certainly not true. We know about the material they’re bringing out, because they’re paid to promote it. And we might even know about the celebrities they rub shoulders with, because it reinforces their A-list standing. So, we actually know nothing that isn’t governed by some form of marketing.
And the boundaries between what’s real and what’s not when it comes to celebrities are becoming less clear all the time.
Case and point: fans of Japanese girl group AKB48 were recently surprised to learn that the girl band’s newest member, Aimi Eguchi, is in fact a computer generated avatar – she’s not real.
Japanese girl group AKB48
Graphic design has evolved beyond recognition with the development of sophisticated computer generated imagery (CGI) but this goes the next step. Aimi sings, she dances, she smiles sweetly while endorsing confectionary on national TV and she had a lot of people fooled.
Maybe there’s something in it for everyone. Cheaper and lower risk endorsement deals for brands, an even greater semblance of perfection for the public to idolise and celebrities may get some of their privacy back. Albeit, at a significant cost, as there would be less demand for them – ipso facto – privacy not a problem.
It’ll be interesting to look back in another 20 years to see whether, by then, CGI has displaced the current notion of celebrity (assuming that we’ll even realise this has happened). Or, whether Facebook has made mini celebrities of us all, and film actors, musicians, TV personalities and trust-fund socialites will return to their day jobs.
Keep watching.
