Ugly Fruit Campaign

I really love this Ugly Fruit Campaign. It's a great idea that modern grocery stores should impliment. Basically this one grocery chain in France, Intermarche, thought it was a complete waste for produce suppliers to toss out imperfect products, products that still taste the same and have the same nutrition as their normal looking counter parts, they just look....ugly. So they decided to take the produce and resell them to costumers at a discounted price, but in order for consumers to buy them, created this campaign to make the fruits and vegetables seem beautiful and to highlight how much food gets wasted due to appearances. I really like the swiss design implemented and the pop of color derived from the produce itself. It's clean, modern, and really makes the ugly fruit the star of the design.

Pencils of Promise

This image was actually done by some students from The School of Visual Arts. I thought it sent a powerful message through a simple illustration of what the children should be carrying instead of doing hard labor, going to school. The campaign is for Pencils of Promise, an organization that builds schools, trains teachers, an funds scholarships.

Erotic Film Fest

These are fliers for the Erotic Film Festival. At first I wasn't that impressed with it in terms of their concept, but then I thought about what they were depicting in each one. In all of them, they have one iconic character or pose that pretty much everyone should be able to recognize: the titanic, Marilyn Monroe, Dirty Dancing (ok, I'm actually not too sure about this one), and Superman. Then a second character is put in to make the image inappropriate and I realized that's exactly what most adult films are, just rip-offs of block buster hits....with sex added!

Persil

This ad took me a while to understand. I knew it was for a laundry detergent, but if I could see the stains still, doesn't that mean it doesn't work very well (even though the stains are really faint)? Then I read the little sentence and it said, "Stare at the Persil bottle for 10 seconds and discover its power". Now it makes sense! I don't remember if this process has a specific name, but when you focus on an area, the things around it become faint or may disappear depending on what you're looking at due to the cones in your eyes getting over exposed (something like that). So as you stare at the little bottle, the curry and wine stains will slowly disappear until you move your eyes. Awesome that they incorporated the optical illusion into their ads to make it more interactive for the viewer! 

Ecover

I am enjoying the combination of using illustrations on top of photographs to create the imagery for this environmentally friendly cleaner. You can essentially turn any normal object, give it a personality, and then you have a character in an already given setting!

Scrabble

I think this ad for Scrabble is really clever. The first thing that grabbed my attention was the cat-caterpillar, and then it clicked. It really does a  good job of visualizing how Scrabble works without using the board game itself.

Celtic Graph

I really like how the graph becomes the main visual image for this magazine spread. It was design by Jake Lim of Foundary Communications. The contrasting black and white makes it visually striking and the simplistic design makes it look modern and slick. 

Bun Mee

While this design is not that innovative in terms of concept, I appreciate the fact that even though it's a Vietnamese establishment, the design approach to it is to make it look American. What you normally see with Asian restaurants is they try to incorporate Asian culture and influences into their identity so the heritage is obvious. 

Eat Healthy

I love the vegetable and fruit icons for this Healthy Schools Campaign. It was designed by John Bufalino and David Sieren of the design firm Remedy. 

Side by Side

Here is another poster for the Signature Theater. The firm who did their posters was Design Army. I like the use of piano keys and how they break apart and then come back together as well as using the black keys for some of the letters in the title. I tried to incorporate piano keys into my movie title exercise in class, but I found it difficult because the spacing of the black keys has to be in the 2 and 3 pattern or else it just looks like black and white lines. 

Chess

This is a poster for the Signature Theater. I really like the use of negative space in this poster as well as the contrasting colors. The Broadway musical Cinderella also uses the heel's negative space in the same manner. 

American Idiot

So I had the largest epiphany I've had in a while last week when doing my CD cover concepts. I was having trouble with them so I decided to look at some CDs I had for inspiration, which this was one of them. It wasn't until the I had already set it aside and glanced at it for the 2nd or 3rd time when it just suddenly hit me, "oh my God, it's Saul Bass"(<--literal thought process), which I then promptly looked up and yes indeed, the artist, Chris Bilheimer, was influenced by The Man with the Golden Arm. In high school I basically worshiped this album, and I remember thinking, the cover was so cool and punk looking with the colors and design of the hand, but now I can't unsee the Saul Bass-ness of it and that's all I think about now every time I look at it (thanks graphic design.....thanks). I guess it was just very surprising revelation to me how even now, the works from over 50 years ago can still have a strong influence on today's designs, even on some of the most unexpected things. 

- Catherine 

The 'Golden Age' of Posters

It was a great time to be doing posters.

This is a slightly different post in that it's not of a specific piece, but I feel it is important for what it is, especially since it was one of the featured articles when I first saw it.
The article is a short reflection of when poster designing really took off and how the artists had to depict a message through one image by using geometric shapes, colors, and text. It may seem like a no-brainer now, but imagine coming up with that back when there was nothing like it to reference. Even now, I am sure that there is some novel design technique and style that has never been seen before, it's just no one has thought of it yet. The article also mentions some of the "failures" of well designed posters because they were just ahead of their time, so the next time someone says your design sucks, maybe the world is just not ready for it yet.

- Catherine

UIC Summer Session Brochure

During the summer, I saw a stack of these brochures where I work at UIUC. I didn't pick them up at first, but they did catch my eye because they were just so bright and the typography was so appealing, especially compared to the other posters and fliers there. Have you seen ads in science/engineering buildings?? They're just awful. After walking by for a month, I finally picked one up just to use for inspiration in the future. I was so pleased when looking at the inside because it just looked so "young" and exciting that it almost made me want to take summer classes.....almost. I especially liked the way they put the calendar in it because you don't normally see an actual calendar in brochures. It's a great visual guide to how long the sessions will be. I also like the variety of colors and shapes used to mark the different events. Overall, I'm super glad I decided to get this. It's a great addition to my "inspiration box" (which is currently the box that my monitor came in) and I can see myself referring back to it for text heavy designs inspiration.

- Catherine

UIUC ECE Upgrade

I got this in the mail today and I really liked the way it is designed. Nowadays, people know exactly what to do when they see a #, so I like how they put a twitter tag as a "title". I also like the contrast between the bright orange and white (granted their color is orange). On the inside, instead of putting exactly half orange and half white, they made it so the orange goes over the fold crease, and for what? Just to create negative space and asymmetry, so it is modern, dynamic, and interesting to look at. The only thing I have to complain about is the typeface chosen for "ECE ILLINOIS" on the inside first page. It is the only thing is that typeface and I don't see the purpose, unless it's the logo for the ECE Building. 

- Catherine 

Creativity Awards

I really like how this flier was designed. I forgot where I got it from, but I think it was from a CUDO talk. The yellow and black make for a nice bold contrast and the geometric along with the condensed typefaces make it look very modern, clean, and slick. I like the diagonal lines on the front that provide movement as well as the decision of putting color photographs on it. Having some of the photos extend beyond their given boundaries makes them look like they're coming out of the paper (in a way). On the back, I like how the yellow is extended beyond the white border so the whole thing doesn't feel contained.

- Catherine