Gigantic Rorschach Starbuck's Ad in NYC

Walking down west 42nd street in NYC, my eyes were ambushed by this hard to ignore enormous banner advertisement from Starbuck's. The banners are as wide as the buildings it hangs off - you can see from the photo that the banners have strategic cut outs for the buildings windows. If they wanted to get New Yorkers attention they definitely got it with this advertisement.

The tag line, "What's Brewing In Your Subconscious" plays well with the rorschach styled illustration. I like the that it has both a male and female figure in the illustration. Very fun & creative advertisement. It seems Starbucks's is stepping up its presence.

Wipe your feet on The Tyra Banks Show

Walking down 33rd street I kept seeing the same floor mat on the doors of some local store fronts. I finally stopped read what it said and snapped the photo above.

What a strange promotional/advertising tool used by The Tyra Banks Show to advertise that they have moved, a floor mat? What does that say about the show?

Typographic Absolute Ads

Walking around NYC yesterday I kept seeing these Absolute ads posted everywhere. When the sidewalk became less crowded I snapped this photo. Beautiful typographically rendered Absolute ads. Absolute always seems to consistently create really nice work. Great stuff thought I'd share it.

To Many Problems To Count?

This poster really got under my skin the other day. I was on the train heading home and quickly scanned the poster. Immediately, problems seemed to jump off the poster. Now I know this is an ugly poster. And I'm sure not much time was spent on creating it. But it just had to many typographical & basic communication design errors that it was to hard for me to ignore.

First off it looks like two separate posters. The top part seems to be talking about Lowe's winning the JD Power award for customer satisfaction and the bottom half is a poster advertising appliances for Lowe's. Easy way to unify it would have been to just have the background of the poster all white or carry the blue gradient to the top of the advertisement. Second problem is the bottom tag line, "Come to Lowe's first for appliances." What bothers me is that awkward period after the visual of the refrigerator. It would have worked it the used the word appliances or refrigerator, but using a visual instead - the period does not work. The period should not be there it seems like a mistake. A weird square dot just floating there. And finally the small print copy at the very bottom. They gave a hard return to a sentence that separates it from the rest of the copy - it looks bad. It's weird type break which just screams out MISTAKE!

Dissecting a Horror Movie Poster

Last night, I walked past these two movie poster's advertising a new horror movie called, The Collector. Lately, I have been paying closer attention to quotes and statements that are printed on these posters. This one caught my attention - it states, From the writers of Saw IV, V, VI.

Is this the best way to market this movie? Not only is this movie from a bunch of writers it also goes on to state that these writers worked on the sequels not on the original Saw movie. I view that statement as a warning sign?

First, saying," from the writers", makes me think that this story was written in parts, with each writer handling a different part of the story line. This leads me to think that this story line is going to be disjointed and not tied together very well.

Next, they are making sure they mention the Saw movie sequels to create an association to the Saw movie franchise to help sell their movie. This makes me think this movie will have a similar (if not exact) story line as the Saw movies.

Finally, they mention," from writers of Saw VI" - So far, only five Saw movies have come out. They are trying to sell their movie with a movie that hasn't even come out yet.

But then again this is a horror movie... I'm sure no one is expecting it to have a great story line. You just need a killer in a mask that "collects" people throw in a lot of blood and gore and you are done.

A Banner Ad that isn't annoying?

Pringles created a very interactive, very fun banner ad. Companies take note - this ad is actually amusing, engaging, and really smart. It does what it supposed to do make you want to to click through - You want to find out what it's going to say next.

Let me mention that this ad won the 2009 Cannes Cyber Lions Gold award, CLICK HERE - to see the ad and interact with it. I've clicked through the whole ad - it is very long but funny. Good work all around.