Category Archives: Concepts

Pulp Addiction

A great and creative thing to do with your old pulp fiction stock. These shots of quirky book cover art from photographer Thomas Allen. See the whole collection here. More on Thomas Allen and his process here. Enjoy.

1pulp

How To Spell Spam.

An interesting piece popped up on Yahoo News last week; an account about a council tax scam where fraudsters contact you to say you’re due a financial reward as a thank you for paying your bill by direct debit.

Now I don’t know about you, but the concept of my local council financially rewarding me for paying tax would be enough to make me click  ‘SPAM’ faster than you can say ‘seriously unlikely state incentive’. However, clearly enough people were falling for this to warrant its broadcast, albeit hidden within the confused jumble that is Yahoo’s landing page. So I read the whole thing and there – towards the end – was a paragraph about spelling.

Illustrious stuff

I’ve been looking at a lot of illustration in the past few weeks which, for me, is a bit like christmas. Why you ask? Well, because in my dreams, I get to commission all of these talented people to illustrate the many stories I currently have out ‘there’ sitting in the vast bottomless in-trays of the demigods that are publishers’ and agents’ editors. Editors who, I’ve discovered, live on a completely different planet where the concept of time versus available life, has yet to be realised.

Am I ranting?

This post is about posters.

Goshka-Macuga-011With only a week to go, this is just irresistible.  Jonathan Jones introduces a feature in today’s Culture Guardian showcasing alternative takes on the political campaign poster from some of Britain’s leading artists. You can see their work here plus more detailed commentary from each artist (and Jonathan’s introduction) here.

I agree with the article tone that official campaign offerings are more than unimpressive, but I’ve really enjoyed the unofficial and not so underground stuff like My David Cameron. If anyone can teach the big parties a thing or two about clear copy, it’s the creators of some of these gems.

Very early comments on the Guardian site suggest there is a big gap between fine art and graphic design when it comes to posters. My own take – unsurprisingly – is it comes down to the copy and the connection the copy has with the design. Hence my favourite of the lot is this one by Goshka Macuga. Clear, clever, totally connected to its purpose and comes with a back-story.

The Fantastic Dr Lakra

If you happen to be  in Boston this summer, go and see this guy’s exhibition at the ICA. Jerónimo López Ramírez (aka Dr Lakra) is an artist and tattooist based in Mexico. I really like his process – the way he invalidates what he’s chosen to paint on and the slightly subverted tone. You can see a slideshow of some of his work here.

Converse Presents Dr. Lakra from Highsnobiety on Vimeo.

What’s the (second) Big Idea?

Early flying machine I Antique Scientific Illustrations
I’ve been reading a few blogs by fairly well-lit individuals in the business and marketing world. Some appear to conjure up new concepts on a regular basis. Quite aside from how exhausting this must be, it made me think about whether it’s actually possible to come up with more than one Big Idea.

One or two of my subscriptions include the blogs of successful business gurus, considered experts who are watched by a certain sector of Corporate plc for the next big thing – this on the basis that they’ve already delivered one widely adopted Big Idea. But are subsequent pearls of wisdom original new ideas of value and reason for contact, or just the same story set in a different scene?