This really is a place and a typography masterpiece I would love to visit and take picture of .

The photo you’re watching (more in the whole article) belongs to a 18th century chapel, the Ermida Nossa Senhora da Conceição, in the Belém area of Lisbon – Portugal – reopened as an art gallery that shows work by contemporary Portuguese artists.

I don’t know why, curiously, in others blogs you can read that this building belongs to a surgery association (!!!), in truth, the real owners of the gallery and R2 Design Studio, that realized the facade, was inspired to create this composition to reunite in it both the original spiritual use and the actual cultural destination by creating something artistic, in order to attract the attention of new visitors in an area full of important historical buildings.

They started by painting the building white and then used it as the canvas for the repetition of plenty statements referring to God. The name itself of the project is “Vai com Deus” (Go with God). The authors, Lizá Ramalho and Artur Rebelo explain some technical detail in SEDG site:

“The words were rendered at various depths and scales in Knockout type, chosen because it is a sans serif typeface that offers a wide range of sizes and expressions. The letters were built from Intasa MDF hydrofuge sheets, an environmentally friendly product recommended for moist environments. A thick paint made it possible to simulate the texture of the façade.”

The whole thing was built up in only two months and with a small budget, but it has been a real success.
They won an Honor Award from the Society for Environmental Graphic Design (SEGD) and is one of the winners of the Type Directors Club’s TDC 55.

Well done!

Photography by Fernando Guerra

Cover creation from Peter Belanger on Vimeo.

 
This great video shows how much work goes in the creation of the cover of a MacWorld Magazine, to start from the planning of the first shot to the positioning of every single pixel, showing us that really nothing is left to chance.

Time lapse is so compressed that half a day goes in 30 seconds!

This video has been uploaded on Vimeo by Peter Belanger.
You can visit his Vimeo page to read his article about it and the technical details about the cameras and lenses he used.

Enjoy!

Stumbleupon really is a huge treasure vault of  incredible and talented artists.

A while ago I found this guy that makes amazing images from cut-out pulp book covers.

As I’ve already stated here and there in this blog I like vintage stuff and imagery, and seeing those creations really made me stunned.

Inspired by children pop-up books he loves, Thomas has had one of those ideas each creative always starves for, but his work goes beyond that.

His job is not limited to cut the paper and putting in position the slices.

He is an inspired director of stage, light, and composition, really bringing  photos to life, projecting you in the  world he’s seeing.

By making tri-dimensional sets of what once was a bi-dimensional picture, all carved pieces becomes part of a whole new story to tell, adding to it mistery, tension, irony, just like in a typical ’50 movie, a western, a noir, a spy story.
Decay of the paper itself is part of the tale.
Then, a spotlight and a new shot, make the  image bi-dimensional back again to freeze the moment to eternity.

Am I a bit visionary?

It may be, but considering the success the man is having I’m not the only one.

He takes part in several exhibitions and has even printed a book Thomas Allen: Uncovered, a 48 page “jewel” featured in Amazon Top 100  Best book of Year 2007, and whose reviewers speak of very highly (not to mention that his blog really worth reading).

Recently Thomas has teamed up with the webdesigner and blogger Kitsune Noir (another blog I follow) for his “Desktop Wallpaper Project”, so now all of us can have a piece of his creativity to download for our desktop at various resolutions even for Iphone and PSP.

This is called “INFECTIOUS” and features a man with a wrapped slightly bloodied hand, looking worried toward the woman standing at his shoulder.

Still there? What are you waiting to download?

The Brazilian design studio PS2 created this beautiful self promotional typographic memory card game.

This concentration game consist of 20 pairs of card, each one with a different type family.

Set has some extra cards with a typographical glossary and the explanation of the sentence that names the gift: “the quick brown fox jumps to over the lazy dog”.
The package also contains a text about the evolution of type design, locating in history each font used in the cards.

Set is the annual gift to customers and friends of the graphic design universe and of the agency and comes in a limited edition of 300 numbered copies.

JUST BRILLIANT.

Some Spec:
Principal Type: Univers Condensed, by Adrian Frutiger
Paper: Condat Silk + Matte
Colors: Pantone
Finishing: Lustre Lamination + Die Cut

Click to view a larger image

Here it is again the list of my 10 favorite readings of the week.
Let’s start.

• Most brilliant is new Zippo advertising campaign. Even if message clearly exaggerate the amount of space taken by discarded lighters, it shows an interesting point of view that probably few of us had considered before. Read a full article on StillAd ;
• Most Useful is The 13 most essential plugin for WordPress by Net-tuts. Even if I don’t agree to all of them because I think some plugin in list are not strictly necessary (don’t forget that each plugin you activate eats resources and slows a bit your wordpress!), there are some I didn’t know. I would add to list Login Lockdown: detect and record IP addresses of every failed login attempt and if more than a certain number of attempts are detected within a short period of time from the same IP range, then the login function is disabled for all requests from that range;
  
• Most stunning is Step into my Cardboard Office from CR Blog. Their article tells about Nothing, a new Amsterdam creative agency that built its internal working spaces with cardboard. Article has plenty of amazing pictures of the studio;
• Most funny is Comments you won’t have seen by DavidAirey.com. I read this clever and wit blog very often and surely there are a lot of graphic design post to point out (I especially like the “Logo of the month” series), but this one was, really, exhilarating;
• Most Interesting is Achieve your goals with Incremental Persistence. I’ve found this article on DevLounge. Very powerful explanation about how persistence conquers all. You can’t miss the linked John Reese article on Income.com too;
• Most Beautiful is a showcase of SmashingMagazine of 40 typography-related websites and blogs. Astounding creativity and a lot of knowledge here;
• Most Inspiring is a DesignM.ag Showcase about landscape photography. Incredibly, the shot of the cypresses has been taken not far away from where I live. Those trees are really famous among photographers here;
• Most Valuable is The Ups and Downs of Business by Chris Tomlison. I’ve found by chance this 5th and last article of an interesting series, so, my advice is to read them all;
• My favorite artist is Jay Horinouchi creates dreamy and intriguing worlds filled with Japanese-inspired creatures. Amazing painting technique. He is having a solo exhibition at Möbius Gallery in Los Angeles until April 7, 2009.

Well, it seems the Dubai department of Ogilvy & Mather has no no doubt about it: everything was DHL’s fault.

According to Omero version of the story, Greeks sent in front of the city of Troy a huge horse, which had to appear as a peace offer. The jubilant Trojans dragged the wheeled, wooden horse into their city to celebrate the end of the 10 years of fighting.
Unfortunately it was only an Odisseus plan to ultimately doom the Trojans: the horse was filled with soldiers that during the night, while the Trojans were more than a little comatose from too much drinking, slipped out of it. Killing Trojans and setting fire to the city, they quickly won the war.

So…here we are in presence of a revision of the history and DHL takes full credit for that old delivery.

I think this campaign is simply brilliant, clever and fascinating, not to mention beautifully illustrated.

I just love it.

Advertising Agency: Ogilvy & Mather, Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Executive Creative Director: Till Hohmann
Art Director: Rafael Rizuto
Creative Director: Dalba Singh
Illustration: Keith Thompsom
Editor: Sascha Kuntze

This Sunday, I’ll list my 10 favourite websites of the week.
They may include articles, video and portfolios.
Let’s start.

• Most Comprehensive is Your Rights as a Photographer by Tutorial9.net: a complete and extensive guide about commercial and legal rights when you use your fotocamera, there also are two downloadable samples of models releases;

• Most Creative is A little something to remind me… by CR Blog that shows how photographer Michael Hughes renew the concept of tourist attractions in his new book Souvenirs, where he take a shot of a postcard of them, skillfully merged with the real view;

• Most Outrageous is Shavethepussy.com. Yes, as the name says, you have all the tools to shave a pussy and get a score to win the foam/moisturizer set. Honestly, I didn’t understand if this site was made to really promote the set or the amazing mastery of the flash design, but one thing for sure it gets noticed!!;

• Most Funny is Make my logo bigger video on YouTube. How often customers obstruct us from doing our work with request of the kind: “I want my logo bigger”, “All of that white space is wasted”, “I want more colors”?. Well, it has been created a new set of tools right for this purpose.

• Most Useful is How to Write An Effective Design Brief By JCD Blog. Starting from the definition of design brief itself it analyzes what goals of design could be, then it draws a roadmap through target market, design specifications, benchmark and deadline.

• Most Interesting is Typographic Nostalgia: Bell Centennial by Speak Up. This article talks of the creation of the typeface Bell Centennial, used for the AT&T telephone book, as an update of old Bell Gothic. A lot of good pics of the rare booklet that illustrate the process.

• Most Beautiful is The beauty of old maps by Design Daily. I just love vintage photos and illustrations. Period.

• Most Valuable is 10 Timeless Business Tips From 10 Millionaires by Quick Sprout. From venture capital to savings, from starting a business to investing in ourselves.

• My favourite portfolio: Philipp Zurmoehle at http://www.phillennium.com/ is a fine and creative graphic and web designer from Norway.

After last year successful guerrilla street campaign, Orbit is coming back.
New advertising poster has a beautiful vintage style (of those I love) and features a group of cannibals while preparing a couple of (human) pyres for their forthcoming snack.
In the foreground, a packet of Orbit whit the headline “After any meal”.

How daring! Humorous, engaging, and most of all so beautifully illustrated.
Ad was made by Agency Mark BBDO under the direction of creatives Leon Sverdlin and Martin Charvát. Brilliant copywriting was and idea of Pavel Sobek, art direction of: Daniel Kurz and (let me tell it again) wonderful illustrator was: Lucie Štamfestová.

Regarding last year campaign I just mentioned, if you don’t know it yet, faces were painted around street irregularities, with attached a simple note: “Dirty Mouth? ORBIT.COM”.
Very Impressive!

Campaign was planned by agency Energy BBDO Chicago, under the creative direction of Marty Orzio, art direction of Frank Dattalo, copywriting by Mike Roe. The artist that painted faces was Karen Tisel and the Christian Petersen-Clausen. Producer: Liz Miller-Gershfeld.

Some years ago I made a set of four advertising (I realized both visual and copy) for a branch of a press agency that deals technology and computer gadgets.
They all (but one) were two pages wide and were going to have nationwide diffusion (for those who don’t know I am in Italy).

The reason I am writing about this is that few days ago I was leafing through a technology magazine when it happened, to my great surprise, that I saw one of those old adverts (and to be more exact, the one you can see a detail in the pic above).
As far as I’ve always known all advertising campaign have their life cycle: customer gets attracted and interested in products thanks to the freshness of the message, than desire and acquire (you know … the old good A.I.D.A. formula …).
So, when customer already knows your visual and he is already accustomed to it, your message higly risks to get unnoticed.
I am pretty sure the result of each campaign has always been benchmarked by that company so, if they keep on publishing that advert it can only mean one thing: IT KEEPS ON SELLING.

This whole story inspired me some insights that I want to share in this article.

• Good Design Tells a Story.
  Design IS communication, and spending your hours with your tools just to make a composition look better or to refine your tecnique is useless. No one of the element of design should be gratuitous, everyone of them must convey your message. It doesn’t? Discard it. Never forget the old rule LESS IS MORE.
• It all starts by the definition of a “concept”.
  I know of a lot of colegues that when they are going to start a new project brainstorm by jotting down everything comes to their mind then refine in a second time. I work in a different way. I start defining a creative concept that should describe client and product. Something daring that I want to hook the customer. Something different and new.
  The case in example was particularly challenging: how many online technology and gadgets shops already exists? How could I been able to compel customers to get there?
  To make things even more difficult target audience of adverts were a lot heterogeneous because they were going to be featured not only on business and high-end tech mag, but on newbies magazines too.
• You got to reach your customer “emotionally”.
  Best feature of the client was that he offeres often rare to find tech gadgets and solutions, so, the starting principle of all four adverts I developed was the he provides products that make life easier. As a plus, to contrast with “cold” technology I wanted my message to be strongly emotional.
  Watch in the pic above and you already know the direction I took. I choose a photo of a happy grandfather and child, imagining the first whispering to the second about a secret place where he would have bought some unique and rare to find gift.
  
• Colors have to be active element of your composition.
  They never-ever have to be casual. Colors communicate as much as visuals itself, I’m of the opinion that every designer should learn the power of a correct use of color. I often like to desaturate the scene and leave color to the element I want it to have emotional impact, but this is not a set rule.