I ripped the outer Advil label off of the industrial bottle we keep at the office and found this. I guess this is what happens when you don’t need all the warning labels, ingredients, bar codes, sales copy, random high-tech health imagery, legal, etc. All that you’re left with is 100% pure, not-from-concentrate brand. Even though the Advil logo is crap, I love this. And it reminds me of this.
I’ve been working on a campaign for ThinkFoodGroup’s China Poblano, a restaurant in Las Vegas that combines Mexican and Chinese food. Though the client didn’t choose this, I thought it was cool enough to put up on my site. I suspect I will soon be comping this up into a piece for my portfolio.
Once again this year, I created a holiday video/flash/animated eCard for my company. This was sent out to all of our clients, vendors and friends. This year, instead of being Christmas trees, we are snowflakes. Click on the image to enjoy this year’s card.
I participated in Movember this year. Not much to tell, except that my beard grows in red, slow and itchy. This is probably where I should get introspective about the purpose of Movember, but I still can’t figure out what all this has to do with prostate cancer. I guess the lesson I learned is that some people just aren’t meant to have beards.
Last weekend, I ran the Army Ten Miler in Arlington, Virginia. It is one of the largest events of its kind, and has a yearly attendance of 30,000 runners. This year, it sold out in 35 hours. This was the second year I ran it, and I won’t bore you with how I did (although, I did kick some ass), but instead, share some thoughts on the swag.
Every year, the tee shirts for the Army Ten Miler get worse. They hold an annual contest for the shirt design, and as always, spec work leads to design like this:
Someone tell me what’s going on here. The flag appears to be bleeding or torn to shreds, and stars are positively pouring from it. The designer chose to put brick detail into the Washington Monument, but nothing else, creating a weird focal point. The skyline is way too dark to see the runner silhouettes against it. The stars on the banner are too complicated for printing on a apparel, and start to look like spinners. The banner itself doesn’t appear to be connected to the flaps behind it.
Now, I could ignore all of the poor design, but the real problem here is that the concept is totally flawed. From the Army Ten Miler Fast Facts PDF: “the mission of the Army Ten-Miler is to promote the Army.” This is why it’s so weird that the soldiers on the tee shirt would be saluting the runners and the DC skyline. If anything, shouldn’t it be the other way around?
How many years of bad tee shirts am I going to have to endure before I finally give up and do spec work for the Army Ten Miler?
Every finisher gets a token at the end of the race. I actually like the token. It’s dignified and simple, and although the text is a little clunky, it’s a nice giveaway for finishers:
Unfortunately, the back looks like this:
On the other end of the spectrum, I was very pleased with what I saw at the race expo. MiO, a water flavor enhancer, had an fantastically interactive setup. They had an area where you could create signs for your fans to hold up, and then a photo booth to show it off (which you could send to your Twitter, Facebook or email):
The best part about the MiO booth was that if you checked in on FourSquare, you unlocked a special prize. We checked in and received special gift bags with all of the MiO flavors, as well as small cardboard speakers:
No, they don’t sound great. But as far as cool giveaways for doing next to nothing goes, they have won me over. I was shocked at how much MiO gave me for just checking in. I guess they assumed that I’m going to automatically Tweet my check in (I did) and that I have a lot of followers (I don’t). The speakers are MiO-branded but have a lot of white space for me to draw all over them, or as they like to call it, “make it yours.” Not bad, MiO.
This is awesome. I found a recipe online for how to make shirts just using bleach and water. All you have to do is make a half bleach, half water solution and put it in a spray bottle. Cut out some stencils, and apply sparingly. So simple. The effect is amazing too. Here are a couple of the shirts I made (the ladybug one is for my girlfriend).
My friend Jay, AKA MyFriendJay, is a DJ with an abiding love for techno music. Not only did I design his logo, I also put together a poster for his most recent show at SoBe, a bar in Clarendon. Check out the materials below.
