Mixing reality with technology, very effective.
Archive for the ‘advertising’ Category
One more
Sunday, March 1st, 2009They made us do it or why design fails (so often)
Saturday, February 28th, 2009Found this in the International Herald Tribune, about why most designs are failures. Even if we normally tend to read about the success stories…
Sometimes I wonder whether I owe our readers an apology. Like most design critics, I tend to write about what happens when design projects work, when intelligent designers try to make our lives a little better - and succeed.
The compilation is interesting, it’s fairly apparent stuff. But nicely compiled in a list.
7. Up, up and away.
As corporate life expectancy shortens, ambitious executives have so little time to make their mark in particular roles that they meddle unnecessarily. Why else would packaging change so frequently, often at the expense of brand recognition? And what other reason could there be for companies to dump great corporate identities for mediocre ones? Exhibit A: UPS’s otherwise inexplicable decision to replace its beautiful Paul Rand-designed “parcel” symbol.
Go on and read it.
Via Pasta&Vinegar.
reversed
Saturday, February 21st, 2009more augmented reality
Wednesday, February 18th, 2009Came across this one recently but forgot to post it.
General Electrics new campaign about their new “Smartgrid” which is an overhaul/update of americas power grid and aims to get better at distributing alternative energy and anticipate power outages. Sounds fine to me.
Either way, it’s a beautifully produced site, which features some augmented reality (so you need a printer).
What the font? iPhone stylee
Tuesday, February 17th, 2009
One more via Swissmiss … 
I have big news! What heFont, the ingenious font recognition app that I use on a regular basis is now available for the iPhone.
With the iPhone version of WhatTheFont you can use the phone’s built-in camera to photograph the text in question (or choose an existing image from your photo albums). The app allows you to crop the image, focusing on only the important parts before uploading. After confirming which characters are used in the image, the app provides a list of possible matching fonts. You can then either e-mail a link to a MyFonts page with more info on that font, or open it up in the iPhone’s built-in Safari web browser.
Different take on brushing your teeth
Sunday, February 15th, 2009
Clever Colgate campaign to remind children to brush their teeth when they’ve had something sweet.
Via Toxel.com
Yellow treehouse
Saturday, January 31st, 2009Thanks to Stefan at Isobar for this one.
The yellow pages in New Zeeland decided to build a super cool (elf-ish) restaurant up in a tree, using only companies they could find in the Yellow Pages. It’s a great way to show the value of both being listed on the YP as well as using them. The restaurant seems to be a success, since they’re completely booked until the end of the season.
I think we will see lots more advertising along these lines in the future. Where entertainment and advertising converge.
Check out the website of it at yellowtreehouse.co.nz (which is both simple and beautiful).
Lego makes use of augmented reality
Monday, January 26th, 2009This is the first time I’ve come across a really well thought thru use of augmented reality (click for a good explanation). The mobile phone apps + postcards and related ways of using it doesn’t really get anywhere longer than - well it’s a cool technology. Legos approach is both cool (as in 3D stuff magically appearing) and useful, you can get a so much better preview of what you are doing.
Now imagine if they made an application for your phone or computer, to make the building instructions in 3D. Cool and really neat when the instructions are hard to follow. You could even have them animated with no problem.