Cartier ad takes you out of this world

This amazing ad for Cartier aired on Friday night (9th March) and lasts for three and a half minutes. It follows a snow leopard as it travels across the world from Moscow to China and on to Paris.

The cinematography is beautiful with added CGI of giant elephants, golden dragons, pioneering airplanes and a frozen Moscow.

Just fantastic and a must see.

Simple illustrations that speak volumes

We really like the work of the Los Angeles based illustrator Nick Lu. Very clever interpretations in a simple illustration style.

These illustrations are called, 'Play at Work', Hearse and Ice Fishing.

Nick cites his influences as "Hockney, Picasso, Milton Glaser, Tibor and Maira Kalman, Christoph Niemann, Chip Kidd, Chris Ware and many more; I love movies, anything by Wong Kar-Wai, Pedro Almodovar, Wes Anderson; music, sports, books and pretty much everything else I come across that’s interesting."

See more of his work here.

A scary prediction for the paperless office!

In a world that is going paperless, or so we have been told for the last 20 years, Canadian paper manufacturer Domtar Paper is challenging the concept through a campaign called 'Paper Because' by ad agency Eric Mower Associates.

In an ad called 'Office' they show what the digital world would be like without paper.

Let's hope it doesn't come to this for the sake of all our sanity!



Find out more about the campaign here.

Charlie Sheen premieres in two new ads

Advertisers in the US appear to be taking Charlie Sheen under their wing with two new ads featuring the infamous star premiering last week.

The first for Fiat sees him racing around his house in a new Fiat, making a point about being under house arrest, and the second sees him acting out the film Platoon with someone he meets in a Turkish baths for DirectTV.






Not sure whether the association of Charlie Sheen with mainstream brands is a good one and definitely question Fiat's choice of brand ambassador! What do you think?

Casting a new light on wallpaper

These LED wallpapers from Architects Paper are a great innovation and will make quite an impression in the right environment.

The paper has LED lights embedded within a circuit board design.

The designer comments, "The LED wallpaper offers very thrilling possibilities to illuminate rooms: Dimmed, enigmatic light hardly revealing where the shine is coming from or an urban vibrating atmosphere – to mention only a few options."

"It’s magic! A big advantage also is that the LED wallpaper can be hung in more or fewer strips and lengths according to the architecture and furnishing of a room. Interior designers have the choice."

See more on Trendir.

Invisible ink makes a come back

The solar energy association in Austria has recently issued its annual report. This may not be a mention-worthy event usually except that this year they have printed it on light sensitive paper.

When indoors the paper appears to be blank but as soon as it is exposed to sunlight the details start to appear.  This is a great way to reinforce the message from the association but must be a bit frustrating if its raining outside!

Remote control cafe demonstrates bad design

This year Helsinki has the accolade of being World Design Capital and as a part of the legacy of the event the organisers wanted to engage with a wider audience of local residents to explain why design is so important in all our lives.

They decided to get the conversation going about the impact of good and bad design by creating a remote controlled café. This cafe included a range of badly design items, to demonstrate what good design means to us all, whilst anyone could remotely control the environment through a web interface.

When local residents popped in for a coffee they would find their chairs raising and lowering, whilst tables adjusted and items like sugar and napkin dispensers just did not work.



The interactive space was a great success and gained a lot of publicity, including a feature spot on the national news with the newsreaders getting into the action.