Marley & Me

Being in El Paso Texas for a month inevitably leads to developing a close relationship with salsa, Tejano music, and of course, the Super Walmart shopping center. 

This past Tuesday, after getting a plea from the old folks for a six pack of Ensure (because they simply party that hard) I came across this DVD package design:

And seeing this I had to remember the words of Norman Rockwell:

"If it doesn't work, put a dog in it. If it still doesn't work, put a Band-Aid on the dog."

And after mulling it through my head for several hours, since the highlight of that day was Walmart, I decided that I needed to really look into this package design; for although I enjoy simple design style this is like the wheel of design layouts. There is an art director out there that got paid to put a dog on a box and call it a day. Can it truly be this simple? Can one really buy their weeks supply of Pigma Microns in various colors and point sizes with five minutes of design work?

How can this be true? 

To answer these questions I did what any terribly bored but terribly disturbed junior art director would do and I made an entire Marley & Me design timeline chart:

And despite my better judgement, and after a quick foot to mouth dinner, I realized that this design layout did, in fact, have quite a bit of effort put into it. And I have to give credit to a designer who can take the same picture of a dog and play with it as much as this one has; because lord knows I would have stopped after number 4 and called myself a copywriter. It also goes without saying that the final design is, by far, the best design in the bunch.

So Rockwell was almost right. 

If it doesn't work, put a dog in it. If it still doesn't work, then you just haven't play with the design long enough.

Old Navy's Supermodelquins

Working in a sandwich and coffee shop in Brooklyn's industrial sector meant I had a lot of free time, and so without much to do other than clean the same window over and over again, I would pop open the Post to read the comics or whatever horrendous story they would manage to uncover in the city. 

Flipping through one Monday, I saw the myriad of advertising noise print, the Sears catalogues, the buy one get one's, I flipped through the paper and found an ad that actually stopped me:

This new gem brought to us by the young and brilliant minds of Crispin Porter & Bogusky in Miami is really showcasing to us that even the mundane can reinvent itself into something entertaining. I'm very much impressed that finally somebody decided that the mid 90's designs found in every single newspaper in America was in need of an upgrade. The creepy quality the ad had was a plus as well and something that only Old Navy could pull off. With photos of the mannequins shoping for clothing and arm parts, decapitated models with a "Match the head to the fashion" section; Old Navy had me looking through there entire catalogue and wanting to see more. 

Later, CPB introduced us to these characters:

And although they didn't use their creepy qualities to their full advantage they did still have fun with what seems like an oddly familiar set of characters. I do hope they take it just a little more extreme since it seems a little disappointing not to jump on something that can be so fun to watch. Their youtube minisodes seemed promising but lacked the imagination that was first witnessed in their newspaper prints. 

If Old Navy loosens their reigns on CPB just enough (since we all know what the agency is capable of creating) they can have a campaign worth talking about for the next two years. What I saw in the newpaper print was new and terribly inventive. 

I hope in continues.