Continuity

Skoda Fabia Website

The website continues along the theme of confectionary to back up the success of the television advert which I thought was a nice touch.

It starts with an outline of the car resembling a cookie cutter, which slowly fills up with batter as the page progresses to load.

Once loaded the image of the actual car is displayed so that you can see what the non-cake car actually looks like.

However, the image is scattered with biscuits that you can rollover in order to find a link or information on particular aspects of the car.

I think it is overall a successful campaign and the fact that the unusual cake/car partnership is continued through to the website adds to the success. I know that cakes, biscuits and sweets may at first seem like rather juvenile objects to assist in car advertising, but Skoda have made it work by putting a playful spin on their car. In a way they have played up to the ‘joke’ of perceptions of Skodas in the past and turned the perceptions around.


Website
http://www.newfabia.co.uk/

'Full of Lovely Stuff'

Skoda Fabia

Skoda isn’t exactly renowned for being the most popular make of cars, in fact people have been highly embarrassed if they own a Skoda.

The recent Skoda Fabia advert has attracted a lot of attention for Skoda, and most of all it is attention of the right kind.

The advert reminded me of a project given in the first year, the brief was to design two posters for the British Library in which we had two quotes and had to recreate them in any 3D material we thought appropriate.

I think Skoda have illustrated that you don’t have to follow the norm in order to reach out to people. They advertised their car using confectionary to construct a life-sized car- a medium not usually used in order to advertise cars. This worked in their favour obviously as it is one of the most well-known adverts around at the moment and will probably remain so for a very long time.

The tiniest of details are also included, the part where the ‘engine’ is filled up with Golden Syrup in replace of oil was a lovely touch.

The advert is fitting with the tagline of the car, ‘Full of Lovely Stuff’ and the soundtrack to the advert; ‘Favourite Things’ also works brilliantly, even if it is a little clichéd. The only shame is that the confectionary car had to be thrown on the compost afterwards due to the heating of the lights on set making the car inedible. All in all the combination of the unusual medium, tagline and soundtrack works so well together that car companies are having a lot of thinking to do when it comes to future car advertising.

See the advert and ‘Baking of’ documentary
http://www.newfabia.co.uk/

Lack of Billboards

Not being bombarded with Information?

I recently visited Rhodes in Greece and was amazed to find that on the journey from the airport to the accommodation- there were 5 Billboard advertisements on the entire 2 hour coach journey.

In places such as England and America, we take this for granted as the countries are so commercial that media such as billboard and bus advertising are part of everyday life- we are bombarded with them. In Rhodes, this was not the case.

On an excursion, I asked the Greek tour guide why they had hardly any advertisements around the island (I did get a few strange looks). He responded with an interesting answer. The reason there are not many advertisements are because there simply aren’t the same number of locations to put them all in Rhodes as it is no where near as built up as other countries and it would ruin the landscape. The billboards which are visible are also printed on metal sheets or more recently a specific type of fabric, the reason being because if they were printed on paper-the sun is so strong that it fades the colours within a week so to prevent that happening they must be printed on metal or fabric. This leads on to the secondary reason as to why there are fewer billboards- they are too expensive to make as they are printed on more expensive materials than in England.

It must be because I take part in a design course that I noticed this as the people who I was with and the people on the excursion didn’t notice the lack of advertisements until I pointed it out and just said, ‘I don’t take any notice of them-they are just always there, they are nothing spectacular and if I happen to take notice of a certain one then so be it’. Surely visual advertising on billboards and bus shelters etc are more powerful than that.

Modern Architecture

Modern Architecture

Modern Eye-sores?

Using the relatively new Wembley Stadium as an example, I want to know whether it is actually necessary to spend millions of pounds making buildings look unique and different or just make them simple enough to do the job that they were designed for.

The majority of office blocks and blocks of flats do just that, they aren’t exactly the most attractive thing to look at but the main thing is that they do their job- provide shelter and space to work or live in. More importantly, they are able to do this without costing vasts amount of money to make.

There was a lot of controversy concerning the design and construction of the new Wembley Stadium. Was it necessary? Why did it take so long? Why destroy the historic ‘Twin Towers of Wembley’? And why replace them with…an arch?

You can say that the new Wembley Stadium looks impressive; I am not suggesting that it doesn’t, but surely the main requirement of a stadium is more to do with the interior, not the exterior. When people talk about Wembley-they think of the arch, not the capacity, not the pitch, not the meeting rooms or the dressing rooms or the retractable roof. Those are the main components of the construction, so why not leave it at that? Is it necessary to dress it up with an arch?

After going on the London Eye, you can actually see the Wembley Stadium in the distance and I was looking out for it as were other people in the pod. Trying to spot it amongst all of the cranes around London wasn’t easy because that is exactly what the Wembley Stadium arch looked like- a crane. It wasn’t until we reached a certain point that you could distinguish the arch as an arch.

I am not saying that architecture should be as plain as to merely just do the job for which it was designed for, there are plenty of buildings that can do that and be amazing to look at. I personally just don’t think that Wembley Stadium in particular ticks both of those boxes.

Information on the features of Wembley Stadium
http://www.wembleystadium.com/brilliantfuture/thenewdesign/

Antony Gormley

Antony Gormley

‘Event Horizon’

The artist famous for designing ‘The Angel of the North’ sculpture took over the London skyline from May of this year. I first saw this on a BBC London News slot when the sculptures were first beginning to appear and wanted to find out more about this unusual stunt.

He constructed 31 life-sized casts of himself and placed them on top of various buildings in London. It encourages the eye to look up, possibly at buildings and sites they wouldn’t normally take notice of which I think is inspirational in itself. There are so many constructions in London that the eye is overwhelmed at places to look and there is only so much that you can take in during the brief period that you will be walking/driving/cycling past the buildings. Antony’s sculptures however, help to aid people in looking at various parts of London’s busy skyline instead of absorbing what is only at eye level.

It emphasises an important part of design – how a successful design must have that special something to make you look at it in the short space of time that you will take to pass it and to make you absorb it ahead of all the other elements of design that you will encounter during the day.

However, Antony’s aims of this stunt go beyond encouraging people to ‘look up’. He says, ‘"I just wanted to recognise that now, it's said, that over 50% of the human population on this planet now live within the city...a totally constructed humanly made environment and what that means." (BBC Article)

So by making the human sculptures a part of the man-made environment is making a highly literal point which I feel gets overlooked. So many places celebrate the natural element of the landscape and cities go against all of that, consumed in almost an entirely man made world.

Video Available on BBC London News Website, search ‘Sculptures rise over London’

BBC News Articlehttp://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/6614487.stm

Photographs of the sculptures
http://www.antonygormley.com/newsite/viewwork.php?workid=541&page=12

Antony Gormley Website
http://www.antonygormley.com/newsite/home.html

London 2012 Olympics Logo

The London 2012 Logo

The logo is supposed to represent ‘the dynamic Olympic Spirit and its inspirational ability to reach out to people all over the world’.

To be fair, the logo could be said to be dynamic as it is bold, striking and certainly attracts attention whether or not it is positive or negative, so in this respect it does fulfil the ‘dynamic’ criteria.

Moving on to the ‘inspirational’ aspect of the logo. To me, this logo doesn’t scream inspiration as it resembles graffiti that society believes to be a nuisance and an eye sore. Remembering that the event is watched all over the world, London doesn’t want to have connotations with graffiti.

The Olympics are meant to be celebratory and exciting which I don’t think this logo is. Previous logos could be said to be more traditional, with this one ‘breaking the norm’ which is in some cases an exciting and successful thing to do. However, we must not forget that the Olympics have been going on for centuries and thus an element of tradition must be kept n my opinion. The Olympic rings are recognised all over the world and in previous logos have been given most of the emphasis which I think is important in relation to the ancient tradition of these games, but on this new logo, they are faded into the design without celebrating their colour.

The main element is the year, 2012…why? Surely the rings deserve more respect than to just be placed as a small, white-out element within the design. Another issue that I have with the logo is the dominance of the location, ‘London’. London are meant to be relishing the opportunity, which wont happen again for years yet they seem to not want to dwell on this by giving the place a ‘back-seat’ in the logo. It doesn’t scream ‘pride’ like the other logos have done in the past when displaying their name.

I feel that the rings could have been used more to their advantage with their shape opportunities as well as their colour opportunities. The rings could definitely have been more incorporated into the overall design of the logo. Clichéd ideas that come to mind may be to use the circular shapes and associate them with landmarks around the destination such as the London Eye for example.

Another issue I have with this logo is legibility. The balance of the logo seems to work, with the latter 1 and 2 holding up the 2 and the 0 of ‘2012’ although I don’t really understand the purpose of the square-like shape in the middle. However, the definition of the numbers aren’t very clear bearing in mind the many different cultures that will be familiarising themselves with the logo. The ‘2’ is a different shape each time, and the jagged, rigid structure doesn’t allow for easy recognition, particularly with the white ‘shadow’ confusing things behind the shapes. I feel that there are just too many confusing elements to the logo.

After recently having done a project involving logo design, we were told that the logo should work in all sizes as well as in black and white. The good thing about this logo is that it would definately work in black and white and there are different colour schemes developed for the logo. However, if the logo were to be reduced to a fairly small size, I don’t think that it would be very effective, especially after having legibility issues with the elements anyway.

Overall, the tone of voice of the logo would probably be suited to something else, such as promoting activities to younger people, but the tradition of the Olympics has been lost in this logo and other cultures could have difficulty with legibility and layout of the design.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/other_sports/olympics_2012/6722763.stm

Richard Curtis

Creative Decisions

Richard Curtis is a writer, producer and director of many successful films and TV series specialising mainly in comedy. He has worked on films such as Bridget Jones’ Diary, Love Actually, Four Weddings and a Funeral and Notting Hill as well as TV series such as Vicar of Dibley, Mr Bean and Blackadder. Curtis was also a founder of both Comic Relief and Make Poverty History, organising the Live 8 concerts with Bob Geldof.

Watching a DVD with one of the bonus features being an interview with Richard Curtis, he said something that I found quite thought provoking. He was talking about deleted scenes in films that he has worked on and said that “the deleted scenes that I have written are most often my favourite”.

Doing a course in Graphic Design, we are often advised to discard certain ideas that we have but often find it hard to part with those ideas completely thus we try to develop and change them so that they fit the criteria. We think this is a tough process, yet people who write for films have to often completely part with their favoured ideas and forget about them completely in order to make the film work. The amount of time and effort that goes into writing, directing and acting out a scene in a movie often has to be deleted.

The process of deciding what scenes must be cut from films and TV shows must be a tough and arduous task, especially when you have developed a bond with certain scenes, so it just made me think about how tough we have to be in making creative decisions.