Hasta La Creative!

Apparently, the power of online advertising has been so far restricted and acknowledged only by the people who are in the United States and the United Kingdom. While online advertising and Internet marketing is rampant in the world today, it is really out of curiosity that countries such as the Philippines has not adopted such a tactic.

I call this funny for the fact that most of the Internet marketers in the world today come from the Philippines and India. While they are serving countries abroad through telecommute jobs, it makes you wonder why their point of origin does not know what it is missing.

“There is still a huge potential in the Philippines when using the Internet for marketing and advertising campaigns. All that is needed is that they are informed with the methods and tools that can be used by local advertisers and marketers,”

(Source) Philippine Daily Inquirer

Technorati Tags: advertising, Philippines, United States, United Kingdom, Internet marketers, online, telecommute jobs

We all know that the key towards making advertising work is to find ways to get attention. Apparently, this has been in the mind of people who have let out their creative artistry towards various means such as goods and transport media images that can really draw attention.

For some, this may seem funny, but the thing is, you are getting the attention which is important in any advertising and promotional gimmick. Laugh at it or like it, the fact remains that the key here is baring the ideas of modern advertising the people will use for larger market awareness and penetration needed by businesses today.

Technorati Tags: advertising, transport media, promotional gimmick, market awareness

I discovered the work of Bart Hess just a year ago, at the Salone del Mobile 2007. The video of his graduation project A Hunt for Hightech was shown as part of Family of Form, the exhibition that the Design Academy Eindhoven had organized in Milan that year. Just one video on a small screen and several people glued to it, fascinated and sometimes slightly horrified. The images showed mutant skins, breathing shoes, living furs and metallic gloves. My vocabulary is actually even more limited than ever when it comes to describe the futuristic fabrics and textures that the young designer had imagined. As his website won’t give much details about him and his work, i decided to write Bart and pester him with my questions:

Hi Bart, i found little info about yourself online. Would you mind telling us who you are, what your background is and what you do right now?

I’m Bart Hess, I graduated a year ago from the Design Academy, Eindhoven in the Man and Identity department. This department looks at finding new materials, forecasting trends in fashion and culture. I have always had a fascination with photography, painting and fashion. Some people would say that I am shy and introvert, but when you see my work it reveals an opposite personality. I think I’m not so good at storytelling with words, but rather expressing myself with stories through images and visuals.

Right now I’m working for myself exploring several fields that straddle textile, fashion and animation, these fall within the commercial and art world.

In the description of A Hunt for Hightech you write that it is “more interesting to imitate an imaginary world”? Why is that?

With a Hunt for Hightech I made a collection of fake fur that touches on elements of fetishism, human instinct and new animal archetypes. With that collection I did not try to mimic real animal kingdoms but create a fantasy world of my own. The way this started was through the process of imagining fantasy animals; animals that could be genetically manipulated, part robot, part organic, how they would move in their environment and what they felt like to touch. I then took my (imagined) gun and ‘hunted’ them, looking for their extra ordinary, high tech furs. I thought about tactile qualities like reflection, the way the hair grows and three dimensionality and took these characteristics, magnified them, manipulated and exaggerated them.

Can you explain us which kind of materials you have designed for the project A Hunt for Hightech?

I used materials that were not organic or commonly seen in the fashion world, and blended plastics, metallic’s, silicon’s and technical foils. With these materials I tried to manipulate and re-create the same qualities and tactile feeling my fantasy animal kingdom has.

Which technological discoveries have inspired the whole project in general?

Prosthetic technology, where robot or machine meets with human nerve ending and flesh is definitely an inspiration but not an obvious link when you see the result of my project. Genetic manipulation has a clearer connection where it allows or dictates a new or changing evolution. This combination of nature, technology and evolution inspired me to create my own new animal archetypes. In my “Hunt for Hightech Animal Kingdom”, animals can change their prints to distract predators, or grow their hair meters longer to appear bigger.

Your work has been exhibited in many venues and magazines. How does the public react to it?

There seemed to be two reactions from the public, there were people who were not freaked out at all and found it very attractive. These were the people who investigated and were intrigued by the furs and discovered the fabrics were quite soft, even though they were made from needles and sharp metallic’s. The other type of people were scared and shocked with the idea of breathing shoes, these were the people who would get hurt touching the furs. One of my intentions was to communicate tactility and spire an emotion between the viewer and the furs, and this happened in both cases.

The models you present in A Hunt for Hightech are futuristic and fascinating. Do you see them more as sculptures or future pieces of clothing?

I really believe these are the fashion furs of the future. Why kill an animal and re-form the fur into a shape? Why not have the animal already shaped to your body, have it living and breathing around you, like the shoes. Whilst the technology is not there yet, in the meantime the animation is used as an inspiration for the fashion industry. At the moment I’m consulting at the Stijlinstituut in Amsterdam making animation and photographic collages to express and create future atmospheres. This gives me the opportunity to re-create ideas that really do have an impact on trends in the future, be it fashion, product or architecture.

Walter Van Beirendonck, Men’s collection Spring/Summer 2008 – SEXCLOWN

You also collaborated with my favourite fashion designer, Walter van Beirendonck. What was your role in the development of his collection? Can you tell us a few words about the collections you participated to?

I started working with Walter van Beirendonck for my internship. For six months I worked on the “Stop Terrorising our World” collection doing computer illustrations for prints. This was where it all started and I have been collaborating with Walter ever since. For the “Sex Clowns” collection, Walter had the idea to create avatars and he asked me to visualize his illustrations into 3d drawings. The Sex clowns collection combines new digital life-form, with an all time classic fascination of Walter, fetishism. Fantasising about new types of Fetishism, he created a group of self-conscious men, proudly presenting their masculinity and body diversity.

In some of your work it seems that the garment or shoe is almost part of the wearer’s body. How do you think new technologies could impact the body aesthetically and fashion-wise?

I think a good example of where technology and the body meet, is a project that `I have worked on with Philips Design Probes team, a provocation for an Electronic Tattoo. In this scenario a tattoo traverses across the landscape of the body moving and morphing with touch and gesture. In this case the tattoo becomes a fashion accessory using the body as canvas for moving image, where the technology opens up new forms of communication between two people.

The photographies you make together with Lucy McRae present alternative bodies or body accessories, cosmetic surgery, etc. Where does your inspiration come from?

I work with Lucy McRae in a primitive and limitless way. We work with our instinct and start by using a material on our body, exploring volumes and ways of re-shaping the human silhouette. We work fast, for one day at the end of the week expelling all our creative energy and stress, making a series of photos that capture an atmosphere. We share a fascination with genetic manipulation and beauty expression, but it is not our intention to communicate this. I think unconsciously our work touches upon these themes, we create future human shapes and new body form’s. LucyandBart is blindly discovering a low – tech prosthetic way for human enhancement.

Any upcoming project you could share with us?

I have an exhibition coming up in the Summer in Fort Asperen called ‘Closer to the Skin’. For this show I’m making large scale furs, approximately two metres square, I have developed a method for making the furs automatically that enables me to create the pieces much faster and bigger. I’m also starting a project now with the Textile Museum in Tilburg where I am designing my own collection of textiles using a 3d knitting machine, laser cutting and a loom. There are several other projects I am working on, but unfortunately I can’t mention them yet, they will be on my website when they are finished!

Thanks Bart!

Portrait of Bart Heiss

Related: Lucy McRae’s talk at NEXT.

As far as making brochures and flyers is concerned, many would find it as pressure-packed as they have to create something out of the original ones we see in the market today. Most companies have graphic designers and artist whom propose the proper layout that will carry important company information which in turn will be the key towards providing information for its clients.

We see different concepts and layouts on how these print ad materials are presented. It all depends on what best suits the corporate image, an important thing that must be associated whenever a new idea for the marketing support materials comes up.

One thing you must consider though is not to be too enthusiastic about images and graphics. Remember, you need to put in proper text and use of fonts to make sure you get the real deal in making the most out of print layouts for marketing support of your business.

Here are some good tips on Brochure Designing

Technorati Tags: advertising, brochures, marketing, graphic_designers, print_ad_materials, marketing_support

See how you do. Feel free to let us know your score. Best score here so far is 30…

Paul Isakson, Senior Strategic Planner at space150, wants ad peeps to start thinking like designers, not like ad peeps.

As an industry, we have to stop thinking about things like traditional advertising people. We need to start thinking about things like designers, engineers, architects and the like. We need to think about the action we want people to take and what will be required to make that action happen. We can’t just think about what we want to tell people. Odds are, telling someone to do something won’t be effective alone, if at all. Today’s congested media landscape requires a lot more than a campaign built on 30-second TV ads with a heavy media buy to create any real change. It’s in creating total experiences that we will see success.

Hmmm…sounds like a great argument for inviting experiential agencies to the decision-making table.

Here are some more thoughts from a designer working closely with The Martin Agency:

Matthew Milan, Director of Insight and Planning at Critical Mass, is sharing slides.

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On page eight of this deck, there’s a nice quote from Ron Johnson of Apple. He says, “Design works if its authentic, inspired and has a clear point of view. It can’t be a collection of input.”

I love it when people refuse to compromise their vision. That is, I love it when their vision is grand and wise.

[via Jack Vinson]

I’m a typophile at heart and regardless of the project I’m working on, typography always plays one of the most crucial roles. Bad type is despicable and good type often near-orgasmic. For a quick refresher of the beauty of type, take a look at this short film:

It was Created by Vancouver Film School students Boca (a.k.a. Marcos Ceravolo) and Ryan Uhrich in the VFS’s Digital Design program. Impressive, to say the least. And inspirational. And just a quick & friendly reminder of the criticality of good type.

Things I Have Learned In My Life So Far is the latest book by the master Stefan Sagmeister, one of the grand designers of modern day design.
 
A while ago I read that the book’s packaging was laser cut to reveal different swapable patterns through Sagmeister’s face; but this video really explains how it works.
 
Awesome. The one I like the most is the T.
 
Plus the book is really cheap!. US$24 at Amazon.
 
Via: ComputerLove.

As far as creating advertisements are concerned, it is best to keep them simple. Not too wordy or too sophisticated. Remember that the first thing you have to consider is that people are not too fond of seeing ads with too much on it.Background colors are nice or even silhouette pictures. Use one or two expressive but general words that can capture the attention of your target market. The essence of a good ad is luring in the wandering eyes of the public. Once they are up and close, that is when they will start to read the fine print and see what you really have to offer.