A small reminder of why we need to care about design.

I think, as designers, we have moments where we truly feel good about our profession. We contribute to beauty within our culture. We help product and consumer find each other. We create excitement and fun. At times, we can even feel like we've positively contributed to the world in which we live.

Then we run into something awful and grotesque and disheartening. Something that makes us want to bury our heads in the sand or pull a King Lear. For me, that moment came this past weekend while traveling in my car.

Some may say that there isn't much to be caught up about in this photo. Some might not give the back of this truck a second look. But, for me…on this day…this is what made me frustrated with the world of advertising and design.


The first thing that bothered me was the logo. There are probably worse typographic blunders out there, but this one has a number of things to make my blood boil.

First, the dropped 'J.' Drop caps can be beautiful and eye-catching in editorial design, as it gives your eye a place to start reading an article, and very often it can fit in with the layout of an editorial spread.

This is not an editorial spread. This logo has three words and an abbreviation. I know where to start reading. Your typeface is 400 points tall. I also don't find your "tuck the blue bar behind the letter J" trick all that amazing. It certainly isn't reason enough to offset the 'J' with that much weight.

Now let's attack the problem of letter-spacing. It seems that this company would prefer to be known as "Je a d." This is better known in some circles as jihad…not a term with which you want your company confused.

This logo represents your company. I can only assume you don't care too much about your brand, because you used Microsoft Publisher to create your logo.

Lastly, let's just kill this idea of using a company's logo in the middle of a sentence. It's not a word, it's a mark. If you want to say that this truck is on it's way to another satisfied "jihad" customer, then say it. Don't interrupt the sentence with your huge-ass logo, and leave the poor word 'customer' on it's own, fighting to be seen.

Do you remember those children books that use pictures instead of words, so that kids can feel like they are reading? That's what you're doing here. Your interrupting the sentence with an image. I am driving a car. I can read. Don't insult me.

And there's another thing. Why are you distracting my driving with all of this reading? Are you trying to get me in an accident, so that I need your auto parts?

Oh, the humanity!

So, what about you? Share a moment when all the design world seemed ot fall apart before you.

AI: Season 6, Round of 9 (Recap)

First thought: Haley could stand to wear a pair of jeans or pants or something on nights like this, when no one is voting. She found her secret weapons, but she could stand to tease us now and then. Although she doesn't need to go to the same extreme as Jordin.

These Ford commercials make me want to yak.

Why couldn't Tony Bennett sing a song? I mean Michael Bublé is fantastic and all, but Tony couldn't follow thorugh with a performance?

These past two weeks have been surprising send-offs for me. Gina clearly didn't deserve to go home. She really hit the bottom of the voting fast from last week to this week. The only nice thing was that her song choice was appropriate, "Smile, although your heart is breaking." She is the only contestant whose passion for winning the show were completely obvious. Everyone else seems to be in it, hoping that they will make it long enough to get a break. Gina wanted to win really bad!

My (pathetic) countdown prediction:
12: Sanjaya Malakar (Brandon Rogers)
11: Sanjaya Malakar (Stephanie Edwards)
10: Phil Stacy (Chris Sligh)
9: Phil Stacy (Gina Glocksen)
8: Phil Stacy
7: Haley Scarnato
6: Chris Richardson
5: Sanjaya Malakar
4: Jordin Sparks
3: Blake Lewis
2: LaKisha Jones
1: Melinda Doolittle

Also check out: Vote 4 Idol Online, Vote Fair

AI: Season 6, Prediciton

In the past few episodes of American Idol, Ryan Seacrest keeps mentioning an announcement tonight for something "ground-breaking." What are the chances that there will actually be soemthing ground-breaking revealed? Not much, but I do think I may have figured out what he is referring to. At least it's my guess. And like a magician predicting the future, I am going to record my idea before the show airs tonight, and we'll see if I am right. So, here it goes:

I think Seacrest will announce tonight a contest to determine a guest judge for American Idol. I think they'll probably run some online video submission competition, where the winner will be a judge for an episode, or perhaps a series of episodes.

The idea falls in line with the flurry of consumer-generated contests that have appeared with many brands, and it would stand to freshen up the show a bit. Of course, whether or not it is true remains to be seen, but I think they'd get a ton of submissions form folks who'd like to sit next to Simon and give the contestants their two cents (and probably Simon a few choice thoguhts as well).

Anyway, that's my bold prediction. We'll see if I'm right pretty soon.

UPDATE: Well it seems I was wrong, and American Idol is joinging the "let's give back" bandwagon. Not that it's a bad wagon to band with, but come on… another show trying to prove that they're doing something good? It seems like you either have to be a resounding success or a tiny non-profit to try and tackle big issues like poverty. And Africa is very popular right now with the whole RED thing. And I'm sure having Bono involved is going to only help American Idol. So, I am a bit jaded about this move. At least the show isn't asking me to make a donation. Although it would be nice if they took all those Cingular voting fees and put them to good use as full donations.

The 79th Oscar Ads in Review

I have been known to say that the Academy Awards is now the new Super Bowl of creative advertising, based on last year's ads, and the fact that advertising has jumped the shark with the actual Super Bowl.

Last night was clearly a disappointment for someone like myself, looking for great advertising. There were however some terrific moments in the show, but the overall the advertising efforts fell short for me. Let's review:

Coke: they had a few spots last night that were nice. Diet Coke had more if I recall correctly, and introduced us to the idea of "Yours, Diet Coke" I think the notion of Diet Coke writing it's consumers a letter is nice. The "Yours" aspect is certainly great for conveying the personal relationship that every brand covets. The best of these spots was the one with a woman moving from picture frame to picture frame - which I still cannot find on the Internet.

JC Penney: did some strangely inspiring work with 'Every Day Matters.' The biggest flaw I see for them is that they are trying so hard to look like a Target ad that I always thought their ads were for Target, but alas they were for JC Penney. Very cinematic ads (great placement) and their only miss is with the spot for a lingerie line with the line "for every body." Who are we kidding with this stuff? You're only showing hot models in your ad. Is it really for every body?

Apple: with some fanfare, Apple did a teaser spot for their iPhone, 'Hello.' I am so deep in the world of Apple rumors and opinion that I sufficiently have no opinion about this spot. I will say that for a "revolutionary" product, it doesn't seem to be a revolutionary spot. I don't know what you do with it, but I am not sure that was it either. I'm losing the connection between these stars and the product. Yes, it was aired for the Oscars, but what does that really say about the phone or Apple? Seems like it'd be more appropriate if the whole spot had turned out to be playing on the iPhone. My phone doesn't do that.

L'oreal: got f*ck yourself. Shame on you for doing such crappy, unoriginal spots on such a big stage. A lipstick that is the perfect shade for a specific celebrity? Good for them. Let them wear it. Where's the lipstick that's MY perfect shade?

Bank of America: 'Bank of Opportunity.' Oh, I get it… Land of Opportunity = America, thus Bank of America = Bank of Land of Opportunity or best shortened to "Bank of Opportunity." We've used the transitive property to describe what is essentially nothing. Every bank is a bank of opportunity. Good job ditching higher Standards - because that wasn't true anymore.

Saturn: Turning some car award into the ultimate Stanley Cup experiment: pretty fun and another reason to like Saturn.

Okay, so those are the ones I can remember. Clearly they didn't live up to what I had hoped for, but oh well. At least we had the actual show to watch!

Are Macs for drop outs?

I just saw an ad for the new movie by Justin Long, a.k.a. the "Mac" in the new Apple ad campaign. The movie is called Accepted and chronicles the events surrounding a high school senior, played by Long, as he fakes not only his acceptance into college, but the colege itself.

So, my first question is: do we need another "college is just an amazing party" movie?

The bigger question is: what does Apple think about this? The hero of their newest ad campaign, the guy who they use to personify their personal computer, is not only faking his way into college, but lying about being a college student altogether! Hmmm.

Did he use Pages to create the fake letter of admission? Did he edit the whole experience in iMovie and burn it to a DVD with iDVD for nation-wide distribution? Is this the kind of movie that Apple wants coming out close to back-to-school with high expectations surrounding computer sales for new colllege students?

OR is this only the worries of an overly-obsessed Mac geek, and no one else really cares about this stuff? Probably the latter. In fact it's probably even better press for Apple, as proven by the fact that I wrote about it at least.

UPDATE: So, after actually watching the trailer... I've noted a few things.


Justin' Long's character actually is using a Mac when he fakes his acceptance letter, but he is using Microsoft Word and an HP scanner. Proof of concept for the "Macs can do that too" ad and the "works well with other technologies" ad.

Plus the movie has the ultra-edgy moral that "all it takes is a committed group of people, dedicated to learning to make education happen... not an institution filled with traditions and schedules and credits." Nice commentary, poor premise for a movie about hazing, wet-t-shirt parties and celebrating the nerds and losers from high school.

Too much of everything

Being a "creative" in the marketing and advertising industry demands that you are constantly reading about how much bad advertising there is in this world. From infomercials to billboards, banners and pop ups, movie ads, etc. etc. everybody is bitching about something someone else made.

This is not to say that there aren't any good ads, and that they don't get their due, but an exorbitant amount of time seems to be spent pointing out, ridiculing, justifying, and lamenting the bad ads of the world. Many fingers are pointed. Many agencies are shunned. Fewer are exalted.

Recently I have been thinking about how many people there are in the world. This led me to a dizzying attempt to think about how each of them could really find a job, a place in life, to be happy. I came to the conclusion that there must be a huge number of people working in jobs that they don't belong in, despise or even hate. This must be true of the many players in advertising as well - client and agency side alike.

So, with that motivation and considering the number of possible time slots on televisions to fill, the number of billboards that need communication, the ever-growing pages of magazines, an internet explosion... it seems to me that it is fairly reasonable to expect a lot of terrible advertising to be produced.

Great work takes time and cunning and the ability to revise and contort and just plain think. We don't have enough time or committed people in the industry to make them all great ads.

So, when we choose to be choosy about the least among ourselves, perhaps we should consider that the people who made it might have no desire to do good work in the first place. Perhaps they are on their way to the thing that really makes them happy, or they are filling the space that we have generated or perhaps the process killed everything good along the way, because the process is the same people who hate their jobs anyway.

Perhaps we just have too many people who need jobs and too many ad spaces to fill.

All of this was spurred by this lovely post from American Copywriter.

Why Bridgstone ads suck... maybe not.

Here is a terrific example of how poor management of your brand can result in very different messages.

What's the difference between a great Bridgestone commercial and a horrible Bridgestone commercial?

I've been waiting a long time for a good reason to complain about the Bridgestone campaign which is running right now. It uses an audio track with variations on the song "The Wheel." The songs repeats "And the wheel goes round and round. The wheel goes round and round. And the wheel... goes round."

Are you fucking with me? The wheel goes round? Talk about choosing a point of communication that is absolutely the same for everyone of your competitors. Plus, the song is just really annoying.

Apparently these spots were shot by some big shot music video director and the dancers were all painstakingly auditioned. Yet, I have never seen more awkward looking dancing in my life. And what does all these over dressed dancers have to do with tires? Apparently "A Passion for Excellence", but I am not buying that it has anything to do with tires.

The spots are so bad that I was only able to find one on the web, and it was an ice skating version at that. If anyone knows where I can link to the other dancing in the rain or dancing in the dark spots, please let me know.

The other Bridgestone commercial that I just saw on the web is in such stark contrast to "The Wheel" campaign that I can't believe that they are from the same company.

The spot communicates a real emotional reason to buy the tires, tells a great story, and is tremendously different than any other spot by other tire companies.

Sure, the dog is "cute." But it's well directed and edited. I'm sure the doggy sex makes it hard for the spot to run in the US. If you search YouTube, Google video or any other video engine, you'll find that the dog spot is the one that is all over. That should be reason enough for Bridgestone to realize that it is the better direction for the brand.

It's really frustrating working in the business of advertising and seeing the spots that I see with dancers and rain and spinning wheels and bad wheel music, because you know that the whole thing could be meaningful if taken in another direction. Then you see a spot like the one with the dog and you wonder if the agency just fell down on the creative end or if there are new people on the client's side, or someone is out to prove something to someone and the ads got sacrificed along the way. No matter what happened there is clearly a better ad out there-if someone is willing to make it.

Happy go lucky spots

In advertising there is a certain snobbish quality about our opinions. We cherish our "award-winning" work and give little credit to anything that doesn't bring home a Clio or Addy or Cannes Lion.

I may be taking a step on the plank here, but I'd like to submit two ads that I really like, but will never win any awards. One is for Diet Coke entitled 'Roller Girl' and the other is from Old Navy called 'Madras.' Both of them are simply fun spots that entertain with some pretty good and carefree music.

Both have really nice moments of editing... 'Roller Girl' has this stellar moment when the lead character is swinging with a guy and the camera moves from right to left. It's simply a nice cinematic effect as their motions counter the motion of the camera. In 'Madras' there is a bunch of that corny Old Navy dancing, but for some reason this spot comes across with more genuine moments intermingled with the choreography (we catch a little girl tossing her hair.)



I think the other thing that makes it easy to like these spots is a well-cast blonde woman whose gestures are entirely inviting and pleasant. In fact, I ask if anyone knows if, by chance, these two women are the same?

This TV matching game may become habit.

Mac man?

Can anyone confirm if the guy in the new Apple spots (left) is John Hodgman of recent Daily Show fame?

What people want

What makes us so sure we know what consumers want?

If you are in this business (marketing or advertising) you probably know what I am getting at. I mean what makes us so high and mighty, that we can declare an understanding of society? And yet we do it all the time. I do it, creative directors do it, account executives do it.

I heard something somewhere where a creative director walked around with a shirt that had blazen on it "I am not a 45 year old black woman." I think the back said something like "And neither are most people in this room."

All we can hope to do is engage people with a story that is entertaining and interesting. Something that speaks to an emotional level of truth about a product/service.

I know what consumers want... for us to stop assuming we know so much.

Super Bowl XM

I'd be remiss in my blogging duties if I didn't comment on the recent Super Bowl in Detroit. Here are my 3 cents.

The advertising was predictably okay to less-than-good. I have said it before, but I'll state it here again: we have jumped the shark in Super Bowl advertising. The clichés and lowbrow humor have taken firm grasp on our expectations, and thus we are still waiting for someone to zag within every brands attempt to zig. From monkeys to middle-aged-men-seeking-humor-in-their-maturing-lives, it was all there. I will note there seemed to be far less in the way of car commercials, which I can't say is a bad thing. Overall I'd say there were few surprises and my personal favorite goes to the Budweiser wave - but don't put too much in that.

The game itself under-delivered big time. This should have been a fabulous match up and it turned out to be a penalty-ridden, ho-hum affair. Both teams seemed to be distracted. Maybe it was Aretha Franklin's ear-popping rendition of the Star-Spangled banner... maybe they all secretly wanted to be in the Rolling Stone tongue at half time... either way, Seattle lost the game more than Pittsburgh won it, and the refs were a big factor.

Seattle had 50 more yards of penalties in the game - surprising for a team with the least number of penalties in the league all season. A lot of those penalties negating great punt returns and/or big passing plays. The refs blatantly blew two plays (Big Ben's touchdown and Hassleback's illegal block/tackle - what the fuck was that?!).

But Seattle definitely didn't do what it takes to win - execute. Pittsburgh did just enough to get two big plays and that's all it took. If you look at the statistics, you'd say Seattle won. They only came up short in one category - third down conversions. Congrats to Pittsburgh for playing well on the way there (minus one Bettis fumble - thanks Ben!).

Other than that I'd say the best thing to come from the Super Bowl was that they sold me on watching Grey's Anatomy, and it was worth it. Except for that woman from Sideways. She is really annoying. I probably have two more episodes in me before I become completely bored by their patient neglection.