A Few Sandwiches Short Of A Picnic

Zine I created based on the theme of political correctness.

tokyo:ocean posters

Posters designed for tokyo:ocean in a surreal style.

tokyo:ocean brand identity

The new tokyo:ocean brand identity was created with the objective of being simple, recognizable and most of all cool. The meaning behind the tokyo ocean hat being that of sophistication and elegance. There has always been symbolic statements made by men in hats, with the most famous being the top hat; which has graced the heads of many throughout history from Abraham Lincoln to Frosty the snowman.

These examples of the tokyo:ocean logo and brand identity applied should assist in understanding the desired style of tokyo:ocean.

The ‘Be the hat’ campaign was devised to draw up interest from people who have not heard of tokyo:ocean before. The quirky intriguing slogan derives from the game monopoly where the hat is one of the pieces, the idea being that ‘being the hat’ you are something different and a member of an elite club.

This sort of fun and quirky message combined with class is exactly the message and image we would like to portray.

Wall graphics

I have created a animation to sit onto a wall graphic display based on community. The route I have gone down is the six degrees of separation theory, which suggests that everyone in the world is connected by up to six people. The wall graphics plays with the six people and connections, whilst the video sound is an extract from the film adaptation of the play written by John Guare which popularized the six degrees of separation theory.

Cubeecraft

I came across this cool website named Cubeecraft(pronounced “kyoob-ee”), which is jam packed with free paper craft toy templates. Some amazing designs and many characters you may know and love, so take a look.

Fred Eerdekens

I came across the work of Belgian artist/typographer Fred Eerdekens whilst researching for my ISTD entry (True stories : True Geographies), and the work has just blown my mind, i hope it can do the same for you. What is so beautiful about the work is how it comes into a completely different form once light is shone upon seemingly innocuous items.
Click here for more images.

AOL rebranding

A bit late, but relatively recently AOL went through an intensive re-branding (unveiled on the 10th December 2009), so I thought I might comment on it, and you can have a look yourself. The re-branding came just at a time when just at a point when they had made massive job cuts, which surely will not be a very popular decision for Joe Public.

But hey, were not Joe Public, so let's take a look at what they have done. The newly named Aol. decided on a re-branding to attempt at a fresh hip look. They have teamed up with Brooklyn-based based creative agency Graphic Havoc (GHAVA) who has given then what I see as an unsuccessful logo. Not to completely put a downer on it, there are elements that I really do like the dot after the Aol gives it a sense that there is more to come and they can follow with their further lines. The lowercase letters do help to give it a fresh, fun and less corporate feel. Although when applied to seemingly random images it seems too childlike and sometimes becomes quite illegible. There is also the result of the logo being both blown up in large scale for billboards and such, at the same time in a much smaller scale on pens and promotional goods, I struggle to see how these could work.

Saying all this, the idea of the images behind the logo I feel has one rather successful element being the brand identity videos commissioned by Wolff Olins (creator of the controversial London 2012 logo) and directed by GHAVA. The premise of the campaign is relatively successful, showing the new logo as images go past, reflecting the unveiling of the new brand, whilst giving a cool new image. However the videos try way too hard to be 'cool' and end up being corny; they would have made much more wonder and gain more interest with a series of videos where you see only a small amount of the logo each time to build some suspense. Oh, and of course if this was just an advertising campaign and not the same as their logo!