As a design studio based in the North East we always take note of what’s happening in the wider design world. Lots can happen in just one short week so here’s a quick roundup of some of the stories we’ve followed from the past seven days.

Old Spice and the Instagram adventure.

After trawling through instagram one evening, i managed to stumble on an Old Spice campaign that managed to take me on a fun journey for a few brief moments.

The illustrations are beautifully crafted in black and white, harking back to memories of comic books they also seem to have been influenced by Roy Lichtenstein and his use of pop art, with the reliance of bold lines and pointillism techniques.

The campaign makes clever use of Instagram’s tagging ability to allow users to navigate their way through the story. It opens by giving the users the chance to ‘go toward light’ or ‘grab old spice’. Depending on the choice made you either venture further into the intergalactic journey or quickly meet your doom.

Its difficult for advertisers or companies to draw people in on social media platforms, but this friendly playful approach unlocks your inner child and seems to tick the boxes, it manages to engage us as users with some entertaining non serious advertising which Old Spice has become famous for in recent times.

 

Spot the difference.

Last week on our Monday Roundup we featured a snippet about the creation of the Tokyo 2020 Olympics logos.

At the back end of the week articles started to appear suggesting that Kenjiro Sano, the Japanese designer had plagiarised the work of a Belgian designer who has created something very similar for a theatre company.

As you would expect both parties have put up a fight. But looking at the logos the ‘T’ is almost identical, apart from some size changes so parts of it. Naturally it makes you think has the organisation responsible for hiring the designer to create an identity for such a prestigious event, actually made checks to see if the design they planned on using breached any existing copyrights or was it in use else where at all.

Sadly there is only so much people can do especially if an identity is not protected, but coupled with the fact designers often take inspiration from others and the environments that surround them, we always run the risk of creating something that someone else has already put in place.