The Chase

The Chase are an award winning design company that has “many strings to their bow” one could say. They have expanded themselves into many different aspects of design such as advertisement, branding and identity, film, packaging and points of sale. I will be looking closely at the work they have done with regards to packaging as I have not yet come across any other designers or companies that have dabbled in this area.

Here is their brief they received from Original Source, a toiletry company:

“…to attract a more mainstream consumer without alienating our loyal followers.”

The redesigned bottles – http://www.thechase.co.uk/casestudy/original-source/

“Working with product
designers Alloy,
the physical shape
became nicer
to touch and more
practical to use.”

The typographic style
has to deal with
a prolific number of
ingredients from
Lime to Lavender &
Tea Tree.

Ray Kay

Reinert Olsen (also known as Ray Kay) is a Norwegian director who is currently based at and living in Los Angeles. I personally a huge fan of his work and really enjoy his style that he prints on each of his productions which still giving each release its own sense of individually. He is most renowned for his music videos and has worked with many well know artists such as Alesha Dixon, Lady Gaga and Girls Aloud.

When looking over a lot of his music videos, he tends to use a Handy-cam effect, bright colours, high contrast and a lot of lens flare.

Alesha Dixon in “Drummer Boy” (2010)

Girls Aloud in “Something New (2012)

Here you can two example of stills from two of Ray Kay’s music videos where you can see his signature lens flare which is the same style and can be seen in many of his productions

Lady GaGa in “Poker Face” (2010)

As you can see from all of the stills included in this post also emphasis the vibrancy of all of Ray Kay’s work.

 

 

Michael Gondry

Michael Gondry is a French Filmmaker who the title “Academy Award Winning” above his name as well. He not only works on feature films, but also in advertisement and music video making. With regards to his work in advertisement he has worked for clients such as Adidas, Air France and also for the Italian car makers Fiat.

J Otto Seibold

The homepage of J Otto Seibold

Although this may sound quite bad, even though at this stage I don’t know anything about Seibold, I took one look at his homepage and was already slightly put off. The site design is not appealing to the eyes at all and just does not work as a way of selling yourself, which is crucial in todays commercial environment. This is a trend I have discoverd with illustrators.

Seibold is a children’s illustrator and also creates picture books for people of all ages.

However his publications seem very light hearted and fun, and he seems to also write children’s books. When  looking through his items on shopping websites I discovered that a lot of the time he just writes the content  and then another person will contribute with the illustrations

David Carson

David Carson is an American Graphic Designer and also a passionate surfer! His work sees the combination of typography and a wide variety of graphics. I not only find his work creative but also intriguing. Here is an example of one of his pieces where I really appreciate this way he combines image and text.

’09 bark catalog design by DC – http://www.davidcarsondesign.com/t/

Not only is Carson an typographer that loves to experiment, he also works closely with magazine designs, and also the Art Director for the magazine “RayGun”.

Meta Design

Meta Design is one of the most global design companies with offices scattered across the globe. They have bases in Beijing, Berlin, Düsseldorf, San Francisco and Zürich.

When looking over their extensive list of clients it is evident that MetaDesign is one of the most well know and notable companies out there, they have worked with huge global brands such as Coca-Cola, Barclays, Bank of America and Adobe.

I will first take a look at MetaDesigns campaign for Adobe. As you may well know, Adobe is a company that strives to crete software that allows creative professionals connect with their audience via visually compelling graphics.

An example of the eye catching and arguably beautiful identity Adobe has obtained from MetaDesign – http://www.metadesign.com/clients/adobe-systems

Example of how this is implemented into packaging for Creative Suites

Now to take a look into some of the work they have done for Coca-Cola. Below you can see the graphics they created using the Coca-Cola branding, for a new vending machine that contains over 100 flavours available to the customer!

An example of the buttons and on screen graphics used for the vending machine – http://www.metadesign.com/clients/coca-cola-0

An example of the grpahics in use.

You can see by the design of the user interface that MetaDesign are capable of creating very clean, crisp and fresh graphics.

 

 

Tomato

I thought I would introduce Tomato by using this promotional video from their site. It boasts what the company are able to do with regards to animation and also typographically. Tomato is a tightly knit group of close friends and designers who work for many different clients. They are constantly reinventing themselves and pushing the boundaries of design.

Here is a quote from Tomato summarising how the company came about:

“tomato was founded in 1991 as a collective comprising artists, designers, musicians and writers. the group develops cross platform, multi-media projects; both commercial and research based.”

Here is another compilation video from Tomato themselves where you can see a lot of their work in graphics, and also catch a glimpse of the work they did with Smirnoff which I will discuss further on.

Below I have included the ad campaign for Smirnoff, not only do I think this ad is beautiful to look at, it represents perfectly Smirnoff’s campaign about filtered and pure vodka, the colours, score and general idea behind the advert all combine and work in harmony with eachother

Ronald Searle

Browsing over a collection of Searle’s work, it is evident to me that he had developed his on style, and that which is a very eccentric and obscure portrayal of real life. Some of his art I actually would describe as quite quirky and cute!

In a lot of his work colour is absent, I feel this is because the need for colour is unnecessary as the illustrations have that much character within them.

Everybody Loves Him, The Children Adore Him 1973 – http://www.ronaldsearle.co.uk/loveshim.html

Marché! Marché! – The Art of Exporting (1981) – http://www.ronaldsearle.co.uk/marche.

It is evident by a lot of his work that Searle may have a love of or fascination for animals, or use them as inspiration for his work

 

Kathleen Hale

Kathleen Hale is a  British children’s author and illustrator. Hale is most renowned for her series of publications named “Orange the Marmalade Cat”, however I cannot say I have ever come across any of these publications before, unlike with Shirley Hughes where something in my mind triggered from my Childhood.

When doing more research into her work, I realise maybe why it is I never came across any of her work, and this is because it dates back as far as the 1920s, so this could arguably be why it never made it into my life as a child.

When looking at her styles it could be fair to say they are very accurate portrayals, nothing necessarily abstract or obscure about them

Pentagram

Pentagram has a vast number of clients associated with it and this is evident by looking at their back catalogue of work for a wide variety of companies. Pentagram is a design studio that was founded in 1972 by a number of designers in West London. They have worked on campaigns such as Windows 8, WeightWatchers and John Lewis. Interestingly enough as mentioned in another post I am currently working on a brief for Penguin Publications.

The Rebranded Penguin and Puffin Books Logo – http://www.pentagram.com/work/#/all/all/newest/1268/

I decided to take a look into the Windows rebranding and what the new logo might convey compared to the other logo. This is because in my opinion, I think this new design is a step backwards and loses what makes the logo interesting.

Windows 8 launched at Microtropolis, a special public exhibition designed by Mother New York at Pier 57 in New York. – http://new.pentagram.com/2012/10/windows-8-launches/

 

The previous Windows Logo [Top] and the New rebranded logo for the Microsoft Operating System [Bottom]

I can understand where they were trying to go with the new image. The imaged pictured above shows a large add campaign held to gain backing and publicity. And the new vibrant, modern and fresh concept surrounding the new operating system does make it extremely viable as an operating system which is ready for future technologies, however I feel the logo lacks depth and a point of interest compared to the other logo.