Flashback Friday: First airing in Melbourne on the 28th February 1983 and recorded on Betamax, McDonald’s Australia served us up a nice big budget, yet slightly schlocky, Broadway style production number inspired by earlier 1970s American television advertising. Well done, Macca’s – it’s this high level of fast food aspiration that has earned you a place in Australian pop cultural hearts forever.
In advance of their new line for 2017, IKEA are set to release teasers announcing their new collaborative ‘YPPERLIG’ collection with Danish furniture company HAY. This first video is as cleverly cryptic as it is surreal and follows the path of a glass ball through an empty apartment – a great way of staying creative without showing any of the new products. The video itself was a collaboration between three different agencies, Kühl & Solvstrom, Nikextension, and Barkas. Can’t wait to see what they come out with next – watch this space 🙂
An outdoor print campaign created by Jung von Matt/Alster, German beer brand Bergedorfer Bier had fun parodying classic maternity photographs – men showing their love for beer with some nice pregnancy poses. Very clever 🙂
In honour of the 75th anniversary of M&Ms, Nick Bertke (aka Pogo) has created a remix using footage from M&Ms ads over the years. Love it – and now I want some! 🙂
McDonald’s in Japan have just released an awesome new commercial as a very ‘kawaii’ anime which tells the story of a new, nervous yet enthusiastic employee in a video containing all the classic codes of Japanese animation. So cool! 🙂
What kind of man reads Playboy? Well, if you believe the vintage ads for the magazine published between 1958 and 1974, the readers of Playboy are all young men, most caucasian, handsome, rich, talented, adventurous, athletic, intelligent, and always surrounded by beautiful women. In reality, it seems this advertising series was primarily intended to market the magazine to advertisers and convince them that readers were not just interested in photos of naked women. Ummm…ok sure 😉
James Rawson: We love the paintings of British artist James Rawson, defined as a postmodern pop artist, who blends painting and collage to create explosive and colourful compositions filled with references to movies, brands, comics, and other iconic pop cultural products and objects. While his work reflects on popular culture of the last 50 years, James Rawson also depicts associated social problems such as over-consumption, poverty, junk food, and the omnipresence of advertising. We’d kill for one of his pieces on our wall – awesome work! 🙂
Below are a selection of the latest creations by Natalie Shau, a photographer, artist and graphic designer who combines illustrations and photographs to lead us into a dark, strange and surreal world populated with beautiful creatures. Natalie Shau is a mixed media artist and photographer based in Vilnius, Lithuania who has an amazing talent in fashion and portrait photography as well as digital illustration and photo art. Coupled with her personal work, Natalie also creates artwork and photography for musicians, the theatre, fashion magazines, writers and advertisements. Her specialties include digital art, painting, CD artwork, photo manipulation, book covers, illustration, CD design, collage, digital painting, art direction, production design, advertising and fashion photography. Her digital masterpieces have graced the pages of French Vogue during a Lydia Courteille jewellery campaign and her extensive client list of music labels includes Island Def Jam, Sony Music Entertainment, Century Media, and Nuclear Blast. Gothic horror fiction, fairy tales and Russian classics (e.g. Dostoevsky and Gogol) are among the influences she lists for her surreal and strange creations. Natalie Shau uses a range of media, mixing photography, digital painting and 3D and the quality she seeks is “at once fragile and powerful”. “My works are digital mixed media. I mix photography, 3D elements, vector elements and digital drawing. I also enjoy creating surreal and fashion photography. My photography and digital works are often surreal portraits of women; however, I love portraying animals sometimes.” Natalie Shau regards her works as ‘pretty motionless and doll-like’, but they express the burden of waiting, and the inner conflict that boils within the characters. You can sense this in their expressions or in some contradictory elements or symbols hidden in the work. When questioned whether there is a reason that most of her illustrations and images are of women, Shau notes that she does not choose her characters, they choose her – she’s unable to explain how this happens. Her influences are many however Alexander McQueen, Eiko Ishioka, Trevor Brown are amongst them. Describing her creative process, Shau reveals “I have a flash of an idea or vision and, after exploring it in my mind, I try to sketch it and see if I can express it. I collect all the materials I need for that, take portraits, photograph elements, find any elements needed, and then I start working on a piece.” Take a look at Natalie Shau’s beautiful work below and be sure to visit her website:
