Friday, January 05, 2007

too slow

i decided to play detective and i thought i had solved the design crime of a century. unfortunately someone else beat me to the punch. i was watching the hp commercials that motion theory did, the ones with the hands starring jay-z, shaun white, and others. i really don't like them, there is something about them that really bothers me. i guess that is neither here nor there. but while flipping through the aiga design archives i stumbled upon a match to the treatment that hp used for the campaign. upon searching for a sample of the hp hand for verification i found that someone else had already solved the crime.



funny because the hands that gray318 (nice name) created for the foer book reminded me of the lemony snickets posters, which of course i'm sure are derived or lifted from hand-lettered french posters. the hand campaign for hp was created by goodby, silverstein and partners and motion theory developed the motion graphics for the commercials. i wonder how all of the parties feel about blatantly ripping off another designers work? i'm sure that they don't care at all and would make up some sort of smart, advertising-related banter to clear their names. interesting that they were named creativity magazines agency of the year. creativity obviously does not mean originality.


4 comments:

Gerard Humphrey said...

A. How come you made the comments link so rediculously small? You know if you want it to be totally unreadable, you could just make the text black with a little web design magic. As it is now, it just looks like crap, and makes it really hard for your fans (me) to post comments. Where's the love?

B. In my books, something as unoriginal as handwritten type inside of a hand doesn't qualify for protection from plagiarism. I don't think the Foer book is anything special in the first place, so I personally don't give a damn if HP stole it. I do think it is interesting that they even used the exact same handwritten-looking type.

Still, the bigger issue to me is blatant laziness, not theivery.

C. Do you like the lemony snicket posters. "Ho hum" i say.

gray said...

are you offering to do a blog template? it's on my list of things to do, just not sure how to work it yet. you know i am technically challenged and the blogger templates blow.

Gerard Humphrey said...

Send me a PS/AI comp of what you want your blog to look like, and I will make it happen.

gray said...

blogger seems to suck as far as designability. they have added a new feature to the front page which allows you to customize a bit more so i will try some experimentation. but really, the comments are small on your screen?

as far as lemony, i know that concerned citizen loved the movie but i just didn't get it. the more i look at the posters, the more i'm reminded of beetlejuice for some reason. i somewhat like the top one but i think i would have rather seen no imagery and just some fun type play. bottom one is so hollywood, except they didn't use a big cameo picture of carrey smiling or looking pensive. but they did mask like a pro. hmmm... shadow is completely off too. never noticed that one. now that's going to bother me.