It's not about Dragons

I found this along with another car variation in the magazine Lurzer's Archive and thought it was interesting. The whole thing says: "Unfortunately, over 3 million people in France will keep on thinking that this is a poster for A Film with Dragons. Help us make illiteracy the national cause of 2013. Sign the petition of the national agency for the fight against illiteracy in France on illettrisme2013.fr." I just think it was ironic they used a movie poster style ad for an illiteracy awareness message. Obviously, people who cannot read will think it's for a movie since that is literally what it looks like. It is well done because at first glace, it really does look like a movie poster for the Hobbit or something, only when you take the time to read the find print will you see the true message. I highly suggest finding the full size version, it's worth a look. There's also a car, bikini, and mascara version of the same message.

~ Catherine

Absolut Vodka Ads

http://www.buzzfeed.com/copyranter/the-best-of-the-great-absolut-ads

Here is a list of old Absolut Vodka advertisements.  I love how there is a variety of them, each one depicting a very situation. It's also great how they easily incorporated the bottle into each one without forcing it too much along with the one word next to "Absolut" that summarizes the poster. Speaking of their bottle, it has become kind of an iconic hasn't it? Just with the silhouette  alone, most people would probably be able to identify that it's Absolut. You know you have a good business when people can just identify you with your packaging. I wonder how long it took them to design that bottle....

~ Catherine

Art Nouveau Today

http://www.buzzfeed.com/ellievhall/game-of-thrones-ladies-as-the-art-nouveau-goddesses-we-alway

I have decided that I am a fan of Art Nouveau. Ever since I saw it as the design topic on shirt.woot.com, it has lodged itself into a small portion of my thoughts. I have no idea why, probably because at the time I haven't seen much of the art style. Nowadays, I see the style often enough done by today's generation of young people, like the ones from the link above. I have not actually seen Game of Thrones, but I certainly appreciate the artist depicting the women in the Art Nouveau style. It goes to show that an art form never really dies, it lives on and adapts to the taste of society.

Let's Ride

I saw this giant sign in downtown Urbana, and it looks like like something Living Letterpress would make. I was hoping that it would be the real deal, but when I got close to take the picture, I saw that it was an image printed on sheets of metal. Can Living Letterpress even make images this big? They should because apparently there's a demand for it. I think this is the first time I've seen/noticed a "letter pressed" sign used for legit advertising in my everyday life. It makes me feel good knowing that I've seen in person how this raw print would be made.

~ Catherine

New Google Logo

I am on a blogging roll here! Woot! Anyways, many of you probably have noticed that with the last Google update, also came a new Google logo (are they responding to Yahoo!'s new logo?). It changes are subtle, but noticeable. It seems they have been getting their logos to appear more flat with the last few changes. Prior to the "old" logo in the picture, the letters of Google used to cast a shadow, making them look 3D. They got rid of those shadows in 2013, but for the most part left the lettering the same. Now they have gotten rid of the shading and highlights, and have made the colors less saturated. The resulting new logo now appears very flat and 2 dimensional. I wonder why they thought this change was necessary, and what will they do to the logo in the future? You can't really make it anymore 2 dimensional than that. Perhaps they'll start adding the values and shadows back again, haha!

~ Catherine

"Talking" Graffiti

I found this picture quite amusing. It's a great example of type conveying sounds just by the way it is written. Reminds me of Futurism that we learned in class. Graffiti is particularly expressive because it is free handed and usually has many curves and/or angles within the letters. I wonder if the second part was hand written or a stencil was used. It looks like a stencil was used to me because of the italicized very uniform lettering, but I could be wrong.

~ Catherine