Wonder Bread – still slicing up Goodness

As a mom just returning from a visit to my college-aged son, this spot from Wonder Bread really hits home. And actually the whole series is a fun take on an old and often-bashed, over-processed food from my (and many people's) childhood. Using voice over and stop-action these ads combine visual and audio into engaging storytelling about everyday relationships. Great work by The Hive, Toronto.

It's all about the storytelling...

Verizon wireless' recent commercial starring Edward Norton unravels a crazy story line where his Droid repeatedly comes to the rescue. Structured like a neo-Noir thriller, a flashback story line takes us through his last 48 hours that start amazingly enough with Norton wrestling himself out of a metal drawer in a darkened morgue, naked, and continues through outlandish snippets of scenes showing him singing karaoke, being captured by a toothless farmer, flying a private plane as it hurls toward crashing and gambling– via Connect Four– with a Russian Mafioso and his pet ferret. A genius spot by mcgarrybowen New York.

A Sugar Fix from Big Lots

 

Remember when Twinkies "died"? When Hostess went bankrupt and the foamy, yellow sugar torpedoes could be found on Ebay for $5,000? Then Apollo Global Management and Metropoulous & Co bought Hostess Brands and partnered with ad agency Bernstein-Rein to re-launch Twinkies with "The Sweetest Comeback in History Ever" in July 2013. Now, Big Lots, the "Official Hostess Thrift Outlet", has released quirky new promos for the snack cakes that are "just the beginning of a whole new marketing approach" according to Adweek. In the new spots by Chicago's O'Keefe Reinhard and Paul, moms robot dance in the parking lot and young professionals sing in the car in celebration of their Twinkie purchases. Similar to the little unnaturally bright yellow cakes, these ads are just the right combo of sweet playful weirdness. 

When Neenah Papers set out to revamp the look of their CLASSIC brand, they entrusted the job to one of the most amazing design firms in the U.S. - Design Army. True to form, Design Army gave them amazing results. A video diary of their design process in this venture provides wonderful insight into the kind of strategic planning that allows them to produce the caliber of work that makes the firm the success it is today.

Cool Advertisement

A Faber Castell advertisement for their artist pens, displays Singapore based art director and designer, Chan Hwee Chong's amazing talent in spiral drawings. Three masterpieces were created for the advertisement - The Mona Lisa, Vincent van Gogh Self Portrait, and The Girl with the Pearl Earring. If these pieces by themselves aren't amazing enough to impress you, watching the actual process to create them is sure to blow your mind!

Would HOW Choose You?

HOW Magazine's Top 10 Websites for Designers for the month of October might inspire the design of your personal website, assure you that you're on the right track, or perhaps persuade you to redesign.

MagaNews

The world of design constantly grows and expands with technological advancements, providing designers with fresh, new and exciting mediums to adapt to. Designing for print, grew into designing for screen, which split into design for animation, web, and mobile devices, and now includes tablets. Quickly gaining popularity among iPad users is 'The Daily', a news app so intricately designed it can't be boxed into one category. Stephanie Orma calls it "a magazine-meets-newspaper-meets-the-most-wow-worthy technology", in her article "Designer Spotlight: The Daily Taps into the Future of Design".

Kern Type

Awesome fun for budding typographers! How well do you kern?

A Great Mind, A Great Loss

Last week the world mourned the loss of Steve Jobs. His contributions to technological advancement and marketing strategies were leading the industries. Since then many have paid tribute to his memory, and continue to do so. 19 year Jonthan Mak created the above design in Job's honor.

Type Inspiration

Click here to enter an archive of superb type inspiration.

Scanners Beware!

Sketch quality, digitally, with ease. 'How?' you ask. With Inkling - a new product from Wacom that captures a digital likeness of a sketch being made on a piece of paper. The product will be on the market in just a few weeks, so watch for it.

Is Your Design Hero a Top Influence?

America's 50 most influential designers (according to Fast Company), have been compiled into an infographic that categorizes their talent into "thinkers" and "makers" within the most frequent medium they employ. Author, Cliff Kuang, recognizes its shortcomings and welcomes any comments or questions.

The Ever-Changing Facebook

Complaints. Status updates are filled with them every time facebook changes. Messages like "Dear Facebook, If It Ain't Broken Don't Fix It!", and "I'm appalled that the free service that I am in no way obligated to use keeps making changes that mildly inconvenience me." pop up on walls everywhere. In his article "Facebook's Eerie Goal: Why Timeline Changes Everything", Harrison Weber explains why the latest Facebook change is more than just a mild inconvenience.

Spicy Brainstorming

Got a group project? Need to get those creative juices flowing? Stefan Mumaw and Wendy Lee Oldfield share some exercises your team can use to jump start everyone's creativity in 11 Ways to Spice Up a Team Brainstorm.

You Can't Learn Talent

"You can't learn talent." "There is no freedom without structure." "Be yourself." These statements, made by designer Josh Berta, are among 10 pertinent bits of advice he gives to design students in his article How Do You Solve a Problem Like Design School?.

Social Media Gone Awry

Just as a hammer can build or destroy, so can the many networking tools of social media. In the article Social media nightmares and how to avoid them, Brad McCarty shares a few social media horror stories that you surely won't want to repeat.

Commemorating the Fall

The fall of the Twin Towers on September 11 is a memory that will remain with many for a long time. To commemorate the event, the design team at Collins has designed a mark that symbolizes this tragic event.

The Beauty of Type

Watch font designers and graphic designers share their views on the beauty of type in this informational video by PBS.

Talent Showcase

We always see the final product, but a designer's process is largely unseen. Those skillful fingers whipping around the keyboard/mouse/tablet making the monitor dance with lines, colors, shapes and text is usually for the designer's eyes only. The Cut&Paste Digital Design Tournament changes all of that, however - it provides a venue for designers to showcase their talent...from start to finish. 

Is it time?

Super excited about an upcoming event and want your family and friends to know of it's impending arrival? itsAlmo.st, a beautifully designed countdown timer by Type/Code is a fun way to share your excitement. Just enter your event, the date and the time, start the countdown and share the url.