'We All Have 20 Minutes in Common'

A rep from French agency La Chose is using Facebook to share its latest work for news publication 20 Minutes. "On a tous 20 Minutes en commun," or "We all have 20 minutes in common," uses the tendency to lift newspapers to our faces to turn our own bodies into promotional frames. (Do people actually do this with iPads? Unlikely. But maybe they'd do it just for the pleasure of the effect, the way smokers occasionally enjoy lifting cigarette packets with rotting teeth to their mouths.)

The facial mosaic thing isn't original, but it does bring to mind the trend Alexandre Oudin kicked off of creating a mosaic photo effect on Facebook profile pages. If you dig that shit, here's a tutorial (and app) for producing the same.

Talky Tits.

Hey, why not give basoomas a personality? Make 'em poetic. Give them names and a cute little Traveling-Pants history.

This is the kind of stuff I hate.*

I'm tempted to lash out with things like, "My tits are pretty apathetic to each other, and for that matter, to me." It feels inevitable though that someone will be like, "Your body loves you, and you should love it back, you awful bitch."

Naw, man. My body loves me just about as much as a virus hates you. It's a machine playing out a program, and trying to convince myself that my various extremities have autonomous emotions is kind of insane.

But maybe this works, and it's for a good cause, and kudos, I guess, to the Pink Ribbon Circle of Life for being willing to sh0w b00b in such a paranoid no-nakie culture.

Work by Grey/Amsterdam and lush femme-focused photographer Rankin ... and there's plen'y more titty where that came from:

Pink Ribbon Magazine - Two Girlfriends (English VO) - (2009) :30 (The Netherlands)

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*Another thing I discovered I hate today: the word "lolcano."

'Smoking Makes You a Slave to Tobacco.'

This campaign for BDDP & Fils for Association Droits des Non-Fumeurs just rubs me all kinds of wrong. Associating smoking with blowing Big Tabac, okay, whatever. But then taking the great grand leap into sex slavery?

I mean, really?

Via.

Don't Think of Her as a Zombie, Think of Her as a Kind of Human Scarf.

There are probably a lot of things that can be said about this ad for Lanvin's Spring/Summer 2010 campaign, but my head feels empty.

For now that's fine: fashion ads are under no obligation to mean anything while provoking. Plus, Copyranter and ChatteringGem have already mounted their theories: Undead as the new dead? Homage to Generation Gaga?

If you dig deeply enough behind an ad's labyrinth of logic, however, there's usually a charming if forgettable story that means nothing to people outside the industry. In this particular case, Lanvin wanted to shoot coupled-up photographers with epic professional backgrounds.

Humor me ››

Speaking of Rejuvenating the Glossy...

...there's more than one way to skin a cat, and they don't all have to be digital. BONUS -- in this case, an advertiser's responsible.

For client BIC Uruguay, agency TBWA works with print mag Freeway to create an edition entirely in ballpen. It's beautiful; you can almost smell the ink! But maybe that's the pop music workin' its magic on me.

The work reminded me a little of this Mexican Scribe ad, where a boy's entire world is remade in notebook paper.

Viktor & Rolf's Pretty Pretties

Jeremy Danté drew my attention to this ad for Viktor & Rolf's fragrance Eau Mega. But I'm only posting it because it's an excuse to showcase an older piece for V&R's first perfume, Flowerbomb:


The Flowerbomb ad ran through 2008, mostly on the back of women's fashion mags. Something about it compels you to stare, and I suspect it has to do with the colours and textures brought together: that cat-eyed woman with her head wrapped in a gauzy flower-shaped veil, the blushing hue trapped in an angular perfume bottle, V&R's wax seal coupled with a ribbon whose little nibs you can almost feel under your fingers, laced around a porcelain frame...

Then there's that arresting choice of pink, submissive against hard black logo work. It's only by slight changes in shade that you even know where it begins and ends.

Eau Mega's got enough of the same nuances to maintain fidelity to the foundation set by Flowerbomb: flowing gauze, wind-swept gamine, interesting use of soft versus hard texture (you almost feel the cold coiny metal of the V&R seal!) and shadowy contrast that forces yielding yellow into hard angular frames -- brought to stunning relief by that soft kiss of blue.

This under-the-radar attention to detail culminates in a simplicity that draws long gazes and invites curiosity: a recipe, I'm sure, for Viktor & Rolf's intended clientèle.

Cannes Lions: Not the Funnest Welcome into Advertising's Sandbox

First ad I saw upon entering the Palais. Where better than a sweltering, decadent vacation spot to remind us of the dire consequences of climate change?

Somewhat less depressing than the wrist slitter cause ad that appeared on BART trains during New Years Eve '06.

In the Event that You Forgot that Kate Moss is Skinny...

Stella McCartney sees fit to remind us.

I'm diggin' the chalky Painted Desert ambiance though. It's so Peter Sís. (Dude illustrated one of my favourite books.)

Viddy-viddy-via.

Remember When Good Looks Were Integral to Good Service?

And while we're on the topic of that-which-no-longer-is, remember when imagery compelled you to read the copy, and copy fed the visual mythology, and together they conceived a better product in your mind?

Sometimes I miss those discriminating days.