Pencil Sharpener

Design Location: Lurzer's Archive Vol 2 2006

Design Firm: Ogilvy & Mather

This is a series of advertisements done for pencil sharpeners. All of the ads look like they are made from the pieces of pencil that come out of the pencil sharpener. This is a really cleaver way to create art. It is detailed but shows the big picture too.

Rose

Design Location: PDN March 2007

Photographer: Serkan Emivoglu

This is a photograph taken that looks real but yet almost illustrated too. Serkan does photography for women's magazines. I am nit sure what it was taken for but, I thought the detail and the texture of the flower's petals looks great. I love how much you can see into it.

Clorox

Design Location: Lurzer's Archive Vol 4 2006







Design Firm/ Designer: Dieste Harmel/ Patricia Martinez & Raymundo Valdez

This is an ad I found for Clorox. The campaign slogan is something to the effect of " this is what babies see" Every item in the ads is a household item that it turned into a food. I think this is a great way to show the power of cleaning with clorox so your baby or you are not eating germs. The concept is great and the graphic design really showcases the product's capabilities. It is not an ad that you say WOW to based on the graphic design but I really loved the concept behind it.

High Priority

Design Location: Print March/April 2007

Design Firm/Designer: Kevin Smith for New York Magazine

This is a really interesting way to view all these little snippets of information. I love the way each set of fingers is positioned but yet they remain the same person's fingers. The text really pops at the background while getting your eye to move to each of the different boxes to get the necessary information.

Barcode Guys

Design Location: How- Self Promotion Design Annual







Design Firm/Designer: Joven Orozco Design/ Joven Orozco

This may be the neatest piece I have found so far. What a great logo. I really love the way the designer used numbers for letters to communicate and the typical barcode lines to make the shapes of the men. Although I am not completely sure what they do, it really has a certain feeling about it and represents the name well.

the letter b

Design Location: How Magazine











Design Firm/Designer: John Kneapler Design, John Kneapler

I love the interesting use of shapes and the various monochromatic harmonies in the background of this type. The letter itself is not as interesting to me as the way the designer created so many layers. I also love the depth created by the use of color and layering. Of course the letter b is the focal point but that is not what drew me to this design.

Type

Design Location: Faces on the edge: Type in the Digital Age

Designer: Bob Aufuldish

This is a font that I found in a book a while ago. It caught my eye because of the mixture of cursive and print that it combines. This is something that I commonly when I write so I really liked it. I do know that while it is interesting, it could easily date a piece so it would need to be used carefully when applied to a piece.

Crab Drain

Design Location: Creative Advertising 2004
Design Firm/Designer: Saatchi & Saatchi/John McCabe
What a neat way to get a point across. It is very innovative to paint around the sewer drains to illustrate the effects of pollution to the sea and its inhibitants. I really like that it is put together as a design series to show that water pollution affects many different areas of our lives.

I like that the same tagline in used throughout the advertisements to create a unified campaign. Each is put into the design to make it mesh with the illustration.

Grass

Design Location: Image: designing effective pictures
Author: Michael Freeman

I was drawn to this photograph because of the emphasis on the umbrella. The person holding the umbrella is totally isolated from the rest of the photograph. I love how intense the green of the grass is and the detail of each blade of grass. It is amazing how well the photographer has such a vivid photo of the grass.

The photograph is unbalanced because of the negative space in the background but it still is an awesome photograph. I think it is awesome to see some of the same principles in other forms of creative art. This shows a great sense of detail and knowledge of where the subject was within the frame.

TLC Life Lessons

Design Location: Communication Arts Dec. 2006
Design Firm/Designer: The Martin Agency/ Pat Wittich

This is a commercial series of snapshots from a TLC commercial for their life lesson figures promoting their shows. It is one of many figures but the commercial really stands out. I watch TLC off and on so I was aware of this commercial prior to seeing it in Communication Arts. Not only that, the commercial stuck out enough to me that without reading the text of the commercial from the magazine, I knew the product, advertiser, and most of the script. Maybe that is discusting but, that is the point of advertising.

The focus of the commercial is that the woman is wearing an outfit from the 80's and the product is a figure that states "not everything comes back in style". The whole series of figures is an innovative way to advertise their shows. This particular on is for the show "What Not to Wear". It is cleaver, and most of all a memorable way to promote the initial product and furthermore, the show.

Wedding

Design Location: DG #123, 2006
Design Firm/ Designer: Brett Jacques

This is a photo that was in Design Graphics. I am really drawn to the lines of this piece and the lighting. In the corner of the photo it says that he uses infra-red to develop this technique. Even though it is a black and white photograph, there is so much contrast in the piece. The contrast creates a great energy in the photo and emphasis.

The emphasis in this piece to me is the woman's smile. She appears to be glowing with happiness as she should on her wedding day. What is nice about this photo is that is has a photojournalist approach in that it does not seem posed. Whether or not it was a posed photo, I doubt it but it could.

Fleabusters

Design Location:
CMYK Summer/Fall 2006

Design Firm/Designer:
Chicago Portfolio School/ Brant Herzer (Art Director)

Honestly, I was first drawn to this ad because the dog is so darn cute. Then after looking at it further, I thought it was really clever of the creator to use the text "Marco?", "Polo" to represent the little fleas that can be so bothersome to dogs.

This is a really clean design in that it has so few items on the page and the background is clean and white. I think you are supposed to be drawn to how cute the dog is and then wonder what the text is around his/her ears. It is definitely an emotional draw to the art and then it makes you think so it could be a little intellectual.

Newspaper Ballroom

Design Location: workbook 27 design & illustration
Design Firm/Designer: Marlena Agency/Gerard DuBois

The designer has taken a classic illustration of ballroom dancers and made it unique by cropping different pieces of dance related newspaper clippings. Although he probably created the newspaper heading or text himself, it looks very realistic.

I really like the way he collaged the paper items together to look like they were torn out and to create the clothing on the people. You may notice that the words movements and news create waistlines on the people. Whether this is intentional or not, he has used the words to create subtle lines in the "clothing" on the people.

The bottom of the dress is also very interesting how he used newspaper edges to make the dress appear more fancy. Definitely, a lot of emphasis on the details of this piece.

Advertising

Design Location: Graphis Design Annual 2001
Design Firm/Designer: GSD&M/Scott McAfee

This is a piece from a collection of pieces on advertising. Each of the pieces represents a type of medium that advertising can be transmitted through. I was specifically drawn to this one about radio.

I was really intrigued by how the designer used the text in the ad to illustrate radio waves. The text in each wave is manipulated to be condensed or stretched based on the way that a radio wave would be seen by the human eye. I also like the background that was chosen to accompany the focus of the ad. It is an innovative way to portray radio advertising.