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Zombie Stationery

Shamelessly stolen from DesignReligion's blog, couldn't resist, great idea well executed. This stationery and promo material is for 13th Street, an NBC-Universal owned crime and horror channel.

Logorama

This is flippin' ace...

Didn't realise it but it was directed by H5, the French animation collective responsible for Royksopp's 'Remind Me' video. It opened the 2010 Sundance Film Festival (if you haven't already, check out Spike Jonze's 'I'm Here' too, it's ace) and won a 2010 academy award for best animated short. When asked how he felt about this short film, James Cowen said, "yea man, this rocks".

via Clusta

Knock knock. Whos there?

If you caught Doctor Who on New Years day you would have seen the new Doctor introduced at the end of the episode as David Tennent morphed into Matt Smith, the 11th actor to take on the role. But more importantly the shows logo has also received a bit of a transformation, the new design is bolder and much more striking, the insignia combing the titles D and W into the shape of the Tardis which works really well. For a recap of how the Doctor Who logo has regenerated down the years, visit the Guardian website here. Above is the new design and below is last year’s effort.

Design-Ed

Just wanted to draw your attention to Ed Watt’s portfolio, if you haven’t already spotted his work, he’s got a great website and some really nice branding and print projects, personal favourite is the logo he created for the Football For All campaign and promotional material.

Free Socks! Hooray!

Everyone loves a freebie, so I was pretty chuffed when I was handed a pair of red socks at work last week, no strings attached. Estate agents Strutt & Parker sent a few pairs to the office, a piece direct mail, the socks came with a note, “it’s not every day a property agent gives something away. But then not all estate agents work their socks off on behalf of their clients.”  I admit it’s cheesy but much better than a lot of the rubbish sent out, it’s a bit more considered and when I do need an estate agent I might remember where my socks came from or maybe not. Thanks Strutt & Parker.

Keep Out of The Reach of Children

“Relief from the symptoms of wrinkles and crow’s feet without entering the dermatologist’s office”. A friend told me about Botox chocolate bars a while back and thought it was really witty, intelligent packaging and nice use of the medical language applied to pharmaceutical labels. Its not surprising that the packaging and website is so good, Bloomsberry & Co, the company behind the chocolate was set up in 2001 by graphic designer Giles Barker and his wife Vanessa Kettelwell, in New Zealand.

My final project at uni, took on a similar visual style, based on the concept of religion, I presented a number of faiths as pharmaceutical drugs, with a daily dosage, manufacturer, and warning to ‘keep out of the reach of children’.  The main inspiration was the quote by Karl Marx that “religion is the opium of the masses”, used to suppress and control. The language used on pharmaceutical drug packaging was perfect to apply to religion, suggesting when the ‘drug’ should be consumed, how often and what the benefits would be.

Spotted a Swedish brand of vodka on the Lovely Package blog that has also adopted a similar approach, Karlsson’s vodka has recently re-designed its packaging, again taking inspiration from scientific/medical wording, the bottles carry a simple label with the alcohol content, date produced and doctors signature, looks pretty cool.

     

Redheads

I remember seeing these matches a few years ago when I visited Australia, and thinking that the name was perfect for the product, probably one of the most fitting I’ve ever come across and the imagery was really strong too.

I haven’t seen them anywhere since but thought I’d check out the website, the logo was created in 1946 and “instantly recognisable to most Australians”. The design and brand has developed since the 40’s and in 75 the background became entirely red to overcome the problem of changing hairstyles for the Redhead. They seem to have released a series of special edition packs every few years that have become collectable, personal favourite is the “Safety” collection from the 70’s.

I don’t want to come across as a complete design nerd but they left a lasting impression on me, and I guess that’s the key to good branding.