Tag Archives: design

Environmental crusaders

Posted on June 2, 2011 | Leave a comment

Here at Baby we like to think that as well as producing effective creative work, we also occasionally do some good for the world. Charity and opinion change ads have become increasingly formulaic, causing ‘giving-fatigued’ consumers to disengage. With tight budgets and so much at stake, we think this area is the last place creativity should be allowed to stagnate.

With this in mind, we would like to honour some of the incredible advertising  being done in the name of ecological good. These are some examples of innovative campaigns that are changing the world for the better – and happen to be fantastic images to boot.

These posters produced for Earth Day Canada have elegantly tackled the challenge of convincing people that the human impact on the environment does and will affect them directly. These striking images bring the bleak reality of environmental destruction into our homes and a little too close for comfort.

This WWF poster goes a step further by bringing deforestation inside our bodies. This stunning image has a double meaning, not only does it position deforestation as a cancer to the planet, but suggests that losing the world’s forests will lead to an increase in pulmonary disease.

If we’re talking about advertisers that think outside the proverbial box, this poster for the ‘No Tankers’ campaign produced by Rethink Canada (Is it just us or is Canada a hotspot of great advertising?) definitely deserves a mention. In a beautifully simple piece of design, the posters show nothing except a solid black picture of an oil tanker. Printed on paper and displayed around the city, when it started to rain the image would start to drip, ultimately revealing the message ‘Oil spills affect everyone’ from under a mess of black ink.

Here WWF has tried to turn some of the attention (and affection) afforded to various endangered species such as a panda, a rhino and a gorilla, on to the emotionally neglected bluefin tuna. Whilst perhaps not as cuddly, these tuna have been over-fished almost to the point of extinction due to their popularity with sushi-lovers. WWF are trying to reduce the overall allowable catch by urging businesses in the food industry not to purchase this ugly but not undeserving fish.

These gems are just a few examples of the amazing creations being born in the the name of global good. Keep up the good work, design is mightier than the sword.

(Source: wwf.com, trendhunter.com)

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Posted in advertising, baby creative, charity, Conservation, design, environment, green

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Logo Art

Posted on April 14, 2011 | Leave a comment

Some brand logos are art in themselves, and creative agency Dorothy has taken this notion an extra step. In a project titled You Took My Name, the agency has removed the brand names from some very recognizable logos (i.e. as Starbucks actually did last month). The result are super simplistic graphics that are quite pleasing to the eye. How many can you name?

The project has received extremely positive feedback online, including queries about purchasing the artwork. We can completely see why — by definition these logos need to be attractive, and the absence of the brand name strips them of any corporate apprehension. The simple flatness of the artworks are so easy to take in, and we would love to see Dorothy produce more!

(Sources: Dorothy and Creative Inspiration)

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Posted in advertising, art, creative, design

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THE White Pencil

Posted on April 13, 2011 | Leave a comment

D&AD (Design & Art Direction) turns 50 next year.To mark its birthday, the D&AD Awards will now distribute a White Pencil, in addition to its two coveted Black and Yellow Pencils. The D&AD is an institution that exists to encourage, inspire, and celebrate creativity in the design and communications world, and winning at their annual awards ceremony is quite the achievement for anyone in our world.

The White Pencil will be bestowed upon those behind a creative idea that “changes the world for the better,” and 2012 will mark its debut. We’re very excited about this one because we covet ideas that inspire change, and can only imagine the competition that this award will stir up amongst all creative minds.

Essentially, each year D&AD will partner with a charitable organisation and challenge the creative world to develop a communications strategy for them. The accolade will then be awarded to the creators of the idea that D&AD members feel will inspire positive behavioural change in the world.

From our many dealings with charitable organisations, we have come to realise that truly inspiring campaigns require the most creative thinking if they plan to do more than just raise awareness — they have to get people talking and acting. Hence, we are very excited to see what amazing creativity will come of this award each year. The 2012 partner organisation will be Peace One Day (read the brief from D&AD here), who aim to promote the acknowledgment of World Peace Day on 21 September.

Let the games begin!

(Sources: Creative Review and D&AD)

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Posted in advertising, art, baby creative, charity, creative, design

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Writing a portrait

Posted on April 12, 2011 | Leave a comment

Designer and programmer Juan Osborne develops portraits using words and phrases directly related to the respective subject of the portrait. Osborne creates his own programs to make these inspiring works possible. Here are a few of our favourites:

Produced with engagement announcement search terms

Featuring words from over 100 Obama speeches

Made using the lyrics from ‘Imagine’

Osborne not only uses words to create his portraits, but also images. Here is one we found especially cool, that is compiled of screenshots from Osborne’s 10 favourite Hitchcock movies:

We love the impressionist aspect of Osborne’s work — from up close, the images are merely words (or smaller images), but when stepping back the iconic figure takes its shape. We also appreciate that Osborne develops his own software to create his artwork. He has said, “There are no limits to creativity – if I need something or think of a new way to make something I just create a new application to do it.” Check out his website for further experiments and projects, as well as a plethora of more portraits!

(Sources: My Modern Met and Juan Osborne)

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Posted in art, creative, design, technology

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Trees of Knowledge

Posted on April 6, 2011 | Leave a comment

We really like these bookshelves from Greek-Italian architect and designer Kostas Syrtariotis, aptly titled BookTree. The designs were exhibited at the kidsroomzoom event at Milan Design Week:

The bookshelves are easy to assemble and are attached to a wall with just two screws.

We think these are a really creative, modern portal to get children excited about reading and about showing off their books and subsequent knowledge.

Keeping with the children’s theme, we must commend Hot Wheels’ recent advertising in Bogotá, Colombia from Ogilvy and Mather:

The monstrous poster is quite life-like and is guaranteed to garner some double-takes. After all, what child wouldn’t want to go on a real life loop after subjecting their invincible/invisible Hot Wheels  drivers to such daredevil fun?!

(Sources: MyModernMet and Neatorama)

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Posted in advertising, art, creative, design, transport

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Modern Mad Men

Posted on April 5, 2011 | Leave a comment

Here at Baby, we love Mad Men (we may or may not regularly sip brandy during meetings). Hearing that we wouldn’t get another taste of Don Draper until 2012 was hard to handle, so we are grasping for anything Mad Men-esque that we can find. We came across this glorious set of photographs from photographer Ben Sandler that is certainly inspired by the 1960′s fashion and lifestyle epitomised in the series.

Furthermore, the Typescreen for iPads now offers a way for us to embody Mad Men characters in the 21st century! We love the classic, sleek feel of punching away at a typewriter, but functioning ones and their ink are expensive and hard to come by, plus their “erasing” was never quite seamless.

The Typescreen is also beneficial for those of us with bigger fingers (or even average size really), a problem which can make excessive typing on iPads quite annoying. We think this is a very cool accessory, and its an officially licensed Apple product.

(Sources: FastCo Design and Design Fetish)

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F is for Font (and Friday)

Posted on March 25, 2011 | Leave a comment

Sometimes a font can make or break an advertisement, so here at Baby we love a good font. Artist Chris Labrooy clearly shares the same appreciation, and has executed some well-known fonts in a clever architectural way:

In the same collection, Labrooy paid homage to some legendary architects:

Frank Gehry

Zaha Hadid

Oscar Niemeyer

Ettore Sottsass

We love how Labrooy made these fonts come to life, offering a 3D image of them in an unprecedented way. We also like how he incorporated household objects into a place where they seemingly wouldn’t belong, but do not appear out of place in any way.

Our ad this week isn’t an image or video, but a humourous job posting for the Sarasota Herald-Tribune:

We do a mix of quick hit investigative work when events call for it and mini-projects that might run for a few days. But every year we like to put together a project way too ambitious for a paper our size because we dream that one day Walt Bogdanich will have to say: “I can’t believe the Sarasota Whatever-Tribune cost me my 20th Pulitzer.” As many of you already know, those kinds of projects can be hellish, soul-sucking, doubt-inducing affairs. But if you’re the type of sicko who likes holing up in a tiny, closed office with reporters of questionable hygiene to build databases from scratch by hand-entering thousands of pages of documents to take on powerful people and institutions that wish you were dead, all for the glorious reward of having readers pick up the paper and glance at your potential prize-winning epic as they flip their way to the Jumble… well, if that sounds like journalism Heaven, then you’re our kind of sicko.For those unaware of Florida’s reputation, it’s arguably the best news state in the country and not just because of the great public records laws.

We have all kinds of corruption, violence and scumbaggery. The 9/11 terrorists trained here. Bush read My Pet Goat here. Our elections are colossal clusterfucks. Our new governor once ran a health care company that got hit with a record fine because of rampant Medicare fraud. We have hurricanes, wildfires, tar balls, bedbugs, diseased citrus trees and an entire town overrun by giant roaches (only one of those things is made up). And we have Disney World and beaches, so bring the whole family.

We love the brutal honesty of the post especially in light of the dwindling newspaper market. We also appreciate its poking fun of infamous Floridian mishaps – what journalist would want to go anywhere else?

Happy Friday!

(Sources: My Modern Met and Boing Boing)

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Posted in advertising, baby creative, creative, design

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Inspiring time lapse videos

Posted on March 24, 2011 | Leave a comment

Today we’ve come across two time lapse videos that are both inspiring and beautiful in two completely different ways. First, we will share Norwegian landscape photographer Terje Sorgjerd’s awe-inducing time lapse video of the Aurora Borealis:

The imagery in the video is absolutely stunning, and its hard to believe that this spectacle is not cinematically crafted, but a natural phenomenon caused by the sun’s radiation. To shoot the Northern Lights, Sorgjerd sustained -25° C temperatures every night for a week, taking nearly 22,000 pictures near Kirkenes and Pas National Park, near Norway’s Russian border. We can’t imagine seeing this with our own eyes, and are so appreciative that Sorgjerd endured such conditions to share nature’s beautiful art with the world.

The next video we came across is just as beautiful and inspiring, but on a much different level. The video is an advertisement for the Topsy Foundation, a UK registered charity that “provides a range of services to support families and meet the needs and personal development of orphans and children made vulnerable by HIV and AIDS in poor rural communities in South Africa.” The ad shows 90 days in the life of a women living with HIV/AIDS and the amazingly positive effects that ARV treatment had on her condition.

The time lapse effect in this video shows the effects of ARV therapy in a way that most Westerners would never get to see–a great way to appeal for donations in order to change the lives of others like Selinah. Check up on Selinah’s progress here.

(Sources: MSNPhotoBlog and boingboing)

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Posted in advertising, art, charity, creative, design, environment, video

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Getting Americans to museums

Posted on March 23, 2011 | Leave a comment

The following mock-up ads done by art director Jenny Burrows and copywriter Matt Kappler have gained instant internet appreciation, though they are (unfortunately) not being used in an actual campaign.Their quick success online suggests that the campaign would have been equally well received had it been for an actual American history museum.

“Our goal was to reach high school and college students, to try and engage them in a subject that many of them find extremely boring. To encourage them to learn more about people who they might have disregarded as stiff and dull. I think I can say without a doubt, if this had been a real campaign, it would have been immensely successful,” says Burrows.

We think this an excellent way to reach America’s youth – both Ozzy and Bret Michaels may be a bit outdated, but their recent stints and ridiculous antics on reality television have brought them back into modern pop culture. The ads feature a proper layout for speaking to the particular audience, and actually make one want to learn more about these ridiculous facts about historical figures. We would love to see ads like this comparing modern celebrities with past English or European monarchs (way more hardcore, ha)! Well done–we bet these 2 are wishing they’d pitched these to a museum before posting them!

(Source: My Modern Met)

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Eat your words… or your pen

Posted on March 22, 2011 | Leave a comment

About a year ago, we posted about Luxirare’s edible crayons. Today, we bring you a more adult version of this, with Dutch design student Dave Hakkens‘ edible pens. His original motive is illustrated below:

The creatives in the office are constantly brainstorming, sketching, crossing-out, and re-thinking, and are known to nibble on a pen here and there. We hate asking to borrow a pen and receiving a seemingly mauled plastic tube or lending our pen out to a known pen-muncher. Hakkens undoubtedly could relate to this, hence his edible creation.

The candy used to make the pens is similar to that of candy bracelets, so it does not melt in your hand when using it. The whole pen, including the ink, is edible except for the tip where the ink is released from. This solves the problem of those half-chewed pens being strewn about the office! Furthermore, the tip can be saved and used in a different flavoured pen.

Our only qualm with this very cool invention  is what one should do if they wish to put the pen down after having chewed it a bit. Perhaps an old-fashioned quill holder would solve this germy problem? Our favorite part of the product besides its power to cure a sweet tooth is its reduction of plastic waste. So often we throw out a pen after the ink runs out without even taking into consideration how much of the product is going to waste (as Hakkens pointed out, essentially 90%). Quite the double positive.

(Sources: M. E. Design and Dave Hakkens)

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Posted in art, Conservation, creative, design, environment, food, green

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