Microsoft has come up with some creative advertising for their new Microsoft Office 2007 launch. This web advert takes the shape of a ten page illustrated fairy tale comic book that features a fairy tale princess CEO who saves her woodland empire through the wonders of Office’s newly redesigned interface. Kudos to Microsoft for breaking out of the usual boundries of creativity in promoting software products.

via digitalthread

British Museum in London, England

by Sam Javanrouh

2007 Adobe Design Achievement Awards honors the most talented and promising student graphic designers, photographers, illustrators, animators, digital filmmakers, and computer artists from the world’s top institutions of higher education.

DETAILS

Deadline: April 27th

When Mercedes asked Toronto photographer Don Dixon to shoot an introduction ad for the New Turbo 320, he said, “Why not?” To get things in order for the shoot, he called the Toronto Zoo to make a date with a camel, next was an Extensis scan through his massive stock library to find a parched desert road, followed by a trip to the airport in search of the perfect jet engine. A couple of days of retouching and here we have it: A new Mercedes Ad.

via Applied Arts Magazine

Eric Karjaluoto, Creative Director & Principal, smashLAB

Eric Karjaluoto is a bald man with a lot of ideas. He studied at the Emily Carr Institute and now leads creative efforts at smashLAB, where he focuses on brand strategy, identity, and interactive design. He has worked on a number of diverse projects for clients in the public and private sector. He strongly believes in a sobriety in design that results in work that is both pragmatic and meaningful. Eric often writes about design on his blog: ideasonideas. He is strangely obsessed with type design, and is an exhibited painter. He is working on his first book.

Q: Have you visited the new Intersections Digital Studio at your alma mada, the Emily Carr Institute yet? I heard that it cost $4.3 million to build and features some fantastic new digital equipment meant for projects in: sustainable design, health-related product design, video gaming and interactive digital entertainment.

Eric: I’m embarrassed to say that I haven’t. I still drop by the campus from time to time, but I hadn’t realized that the new studio had already opened.

Q: What’s your earliest memory of making “art”?

Eric: I’ve always been interested in making things. I remember drawing logos in third grade and trying to make little comics, newspapers and the like. (I was a little nerdy.) (more…)

A great artist, who’s work I’ve just recently been introduced to thanks to Holly@decor8. The ink sketches and watercolour paintings by Stella Im Hultberg perfectly exude the sad, sophisticated energy of the postmodern ingenue…Every character is shadowed, stained, and soiled with glamour.

Want to see more? Check out Stella’s sketchpad.

These are definite classics.
The Fortuny Lights, designed by Mariano Fortuny in the early 1900’s

…photographer-style fixtures that are absolutely stunning.

The brightest of them all…the new printed “Ornaments” version shown above.

via Design Within Reach

The new iPod ads take place at a new club. I think I like the hip hop club better. The new club is a prog rock punky kind of stylized place with a Warhol-like 60’s feel. All the ads are addictive but getting tired. The most obvious shift is not the design but the change in target audience. Apple has moved from hip hop to progressive rock / punk audience. Do you remember the rap ads? (The everyman Caucasian rapping a cappella with headphones on.) “Baby got back and I can not lie, you other suckers can’t deny….” Nobody is offended by a white guy rapping poorly, and everyone is happy when they see it! ;-)

Anyway, all in all these new ads are the same ads all over again with a clear target demographic shift and it looks like that is what the designers were assigned in the new creative brief. They are still fun…but I’m looking forward to something new!

The Art Director’s Club is one of the most prestigious design awards you can have on your mantle. Their 86th Annual Awards design competition is open to pros and students, and includes a broad range of expected categories – interactive, illustration, photography, as well as the forward-thinking category called “Hybrid” which allows for submissions of designs including, in the words of ADC, content that is “yet to be conceived.” Deadline was just recently extended but is basically NOW…so get going: http://www.adcawards.org/

The Sun Jar is an ingenious and rather charming lighting concept from designer Tobias Wong. Just as jam jars store jam, the Sun Jar stores sunshine. You sit the jar on your windowsill during the day, then when it gets dark the Sun Jar automatically turns itself on and glows with the day’s sunshine. The jar contains a solar charging panel and low voltage bulb with a sumptuous orange glow, and an auto light-sensitive on/off switch. Don’t let the sun go down on your day.