I See A Different You

I See A Different You are a trio working out Soweto, helping to define the modern aesthetic of South Africa. Their work straddles the line between fashion photography and documentary photography, showing their subjects (very often the three guys from I See A Different You) wearing cutting edge fashion in unexpected or even undesirable places.

This mixing of the desirable and the undesirable brings something entirely unique and quintessentially South African to the table. Twins, Justice and Innocent Mukheli and Vuyo Mpantsha, the three men who make up I See A Different You, are without a doubt some of the most interesting young South African photographers and art directors working today and if their current fame is anything to go by, this is not the last we will hear from them.

We suggest you get acquainted with them now, before they get so famous your mom tells you about them.

To see up to date pics, take a look at their website here.

Check out an interview with I See A Different You below, from their recent visit to Paris.

Check out this video too, from their talk at TEDxSoweto in 2012. 

All pictures © I See A Different You, sourced from their website.

Cape Times – You Can’t Get Any Closer To The News

Who doesn’t like a good selfie? It’s something we’ve all become so used to these days, with the onslaught of social media, and despite the collective eye-rolling that happens when you have that one friend who won’t stop posting them, they’re somewhat of a visual meme. We recognise them immediately.

This thinking was used to great effect by Lowe Cape Town for their recent campaign for The Cape Times (which won a silver award at Cannes 2013). They took iconic images, which we all know and have seen hundreds of times, and doctored them so they would look like the subjects of the images were taking selfies.

The copy reads: Every story feels like a first hand account. What better way to show the in-depth and quality reporting of the Cape Times?

A great campaign, with a great concept that deserves all the awards it has received so far – this shows the power of a strong idea, which is campaignable and just as great with each execution you see.

Fiat 500 – Made of Pure Muscle

When Fiat partnered with Abarth to create a performance model of their cute little 500 model, they needed an ad that would show the exhilaration of driving a car ‘made of pure muscle’.

Much like the TFG Gift Cards by Am I Collective, this ad shows that going the extra mile and doing something the ‘right’ way pays off. This image could easily have been manipulated and photoshopped, but instead, the art directors decided that they should use body paint and real people. The outcome, as you can see, is more than worth it. Check out the ‘making of’ video below.

Besides, no one likes people who take short cuts.

Am I Collective – TFG Gift Cards

There’s something special about making things with your hands, about using real craftsmanship to make something because you know it will turn out better if you do it a certain way. These gift cards for The Foschini Group were painstakingly created by hand and then shot. It would have been easy enough to create these illustrations digitally, but going the extra mile creates something incredible.

Definitely not one to try if you’ve got a shaky hand or you hate getting paper cuts!

Check out more of Am I Collective’s work here.

Dumb Ways To Die

If you haven’t seen the whimsical, content-driven campaign which won the coveted Cannes Integrated Grand Prix for 2013, now is a good time to get acquainted.

This three-minute video from the Melbourne Metro hits all the right spots that make a compelling modern advertising campaign. It’s cute, the illustration is great, the subject matter is quirky and unexpected, and it’s all set to a catchy tune. It’s funny and most importantly – it has huge pass-along value. This is the sort of video you share with your friends, because it’s just so funny. Regardless of whether you live in Melbourne or not (Melbourne has about 4.5 million residents and the video has been watched 55 million times), there is something for you here, because the message is universal.

In terms of character design, this piece is flawless. Each character has the minimum amount of illustration needed and yet is instantly relatable – the mark of great character design. It’s hard not to snigger when you see these poor things die in the silliest of ways.

In fact, Dumb Ways To Die was so popular that it managed to get its own page on Know Your Meme, the online encyclopedia of Internet culture. You can check that page out here. It’s amazing to see how, when an advertising campaign is compelling and exciting, people will take it on and remix it, add their own spin and continue stoking the fires to keep it going. Gone are the days when ads were simply shown on TV and people had to sit through them. These days, people want to get involved, to remix and reinterpret. The trick is, how do you create something so interesting and exciting that people will overlook the fact that it’s an ad and actually get involved with it?

So, without further ado – Dumb Ways To Die!

Dove – Real Beauty

Dove have carved out a great positioning for themselves, standing for ‘Real Beauty’, which encompasses all body shapes and body types. They are telling women that if they side with Dove, they can feel beautiful no matter what – a message which is somewhat at odds with mainstream beauty messages, where thin is best and thinner is even better.

Dove took it one step further this year, with the video below, which went on to win the Titanium award at Cannes this year. The Titanium award is given to the best campaign ‘for good’ which is entered. This powerful film, which may or may not leave you reaching for the tissues, looks at the way we think of ourselves and see ourselves and shows how hard we can be when we describe ourselves. For a beauty brand that preaches inclusiveness and acceptance, this is perfect. There can’t be a better way to encourage people to really love your brand.

This is a good example too, of how a relatively small branded activation (drawing a relatively small number of women) can be amplified innumerably by turning it into content. The video below has been watched 55 million times and counting – it’s a great idea and it’s a great film.

This campaign extends into print executions too (although many, if not all, of these came before the Real Beauty Sketches), where Dove asks pertinent questions about the subjects, encouraging the viewer to really think about not only their own feelings towards women in advertising but also about how advertising represents women.

If you can make your brand stand for something, and you can allow people to be part of a movement by engaging or collaborating with you, then you’re moving way past making mere advertising. The question is, what movement or cause can you align with your brand that people can get behind.   

YouSendIt rebrands as Hightail

When you think of cloud-based file-sharing services, you probably think of a lot of blue logos and websites. Dropbox, Google Drive – they’re all friendly and blue and kind of a bit ‘samey’.

This is why YouSendIt (formerly green, formerly using a paper aeroplane as their logo) decided they needed a rebrand – something that would last them a long time, and something that would represent all their new products and services. Let’s be honest – cloud storage is now available wherever you look. You only need to sneeze in the right direction and you get a few extra GB.

This new design is fresh, minimalist and functional. It’s not trying to be overly friendly or warm – it’s a serious design for a serious product and more than anything, it adds gravitas and trust to the brand. YouSendIt was great, in its time, but the time for Hightail is now.

Check out the video below, explaining their thinking and how they plan to improve in the future.

Purienne

Henrik Purienne, born and bred in Worcester, South Africa brings a golden retro glow to female figurative photography. Sexy, but never sleazy. Titillating but never too rude.

You can tell that Purienne got his hands on a bunch of Scope magazines from the 80s as a young kid and somehow never got over them. His retro, gold-tinted images are somehow timeless, referencing a time when sexiness wasn’t about showing as much as possible – it was about showing the least amount needed to make you want to see more.

For more of Purienne’s pictures, check out his website here.

(All images owned by Purienne, or their respective copyright holders)

 

Lifebuoy – Roti Reminder

Lifebuoy is India’s number one selling soap, and the brand believes they can help save thousands (if not millions) of lives if people just wash their hands. In this innovative campaign that took home a bronze PR Lion at Cannes, they took Marshall Mcluhan (The Medium is the Message) to heart, or rather – they took it into their hands.

At the country’s largest religious festival (which sees 100 million people meet in the same place), Lifebuoy stamped over 2 million rotis with a message which read, ‘Did you wash your hands with Lifebuoy?’ Hard to imagine a better way to reach such a large amount of people in such an innovative way.

There’s something to be said for taking a new stance on medium choice. Similar to thinking about the user experience when designing a website, it’s important to think about how someone uses an object (from a design perspective) in order to break new ground. As as traditional in India, people don’t eat with knives and forks – they eat with their hands and a roti. One could see then that this campaign, if it were executed in the West, would perhaps work better if plastic knives and forks were branded with a similar message. It’s all about understanding your audience.

Eva Valicsek – Egg Packaging Redesign

Some beautiful and most importantly, insightful, work from a student in Hungary. We are so used to thinking of design as decoration or embellishment when in fact, design has a very practical element to it as well. This work from Eva Valicsek, is a perfect example of using design thinking to improve upon things we take for granted.

We know how eggs are packaged. They come in those purpley/grey or tan boxes which are perfect for garage bands the world over to stick on the walls in the hopes of soundproofing their wailing. We know the shape, it is absolutely iconic, but when we start to think about sustainability and responsible design – is the traditional egg box the best way to package eggs? Does it use the least possible components? Is it as good for the environment as it can be?

These were questions Eva Valicsek asked herself when she was tasked with redesigning an object we assume is perfect. Eva noticed an interesting problem with traditional egg packaging though – the cups in the packaging did not allow for eggs of different sizes. She wanted to design an egg box which could change dynamically to fit the eggs within, and it all came from a happy accident. While she was experimenting with new box designs, she noticed a rubber band on her table, which she put to very clever use.

The new carton can be flat-packed and is assembled without any glue and is fixed to the base at just one point. It has also been tested for safety and she is assured that it protects eggs just as well as traditional egg boxes, due to the dynamic rubber bands, which hold the eggs tight even if the packaging is put on its side.

It is currently not in commercial production, but word is that there is tentative interest from European egg producers to take this prototype and turn it into a fully workable piece of packaging.

Not bad for a college project!

Check out Eva Valicsek on Behance here.