In keeping with my recentcarkick I thought I’d post these vintage BMW ads. The first one — created as part of BMW’s affiliation with the 1972 Munich Olympics — is vaguely reminiscent of Otl Aicher’s posters. I’m assuming this was no accident. It’s also a big enough file that you could probably get a pretty good print out of it off a nice inkjet (click image to view full size). I really wish more vintage posters like this were available in higher resolutions. With most of this advertising stuff, the owners of the copyrights have no intention of ever printing them again, it’s a shame they can’t be reproduced and enjoyed by more people.
Insect54 has a great Flickr set of 70’s and 80’s Modern Publicity issues. Still waiting to find a stack of something like this in an old closet or at a garage sale, not holding my breath. Where do you find stuff like this anyways? I suppose at this point it’s down to going to shows and swap meets, I doubt there are many gems like this just floating around anymore.
Published Annually by Studio VIsta. Showcasing the best work submitted by designers from around the world.
Shown here are:
Number 40 –– 1970/71
Number 42 –– 1972/73
Number 50 –– 1981
Art & Copy is a film about advertising currently making its way around the country. The film is an in-depth look at some of the best and most creative minds in the business. As director Doug Pray states, “I felt it could be a more powerful statement to focus the film only on those rare few who actually moved and inspired our culture with their work. And that higher standard made me want to make a film that reflected the same kind of disciplined artistic approach that my subjects used.” It looks really interesting and I’m really excited to see it.
The frightening and most difficult thing about being what somebody calls a creative person is that you have absolutely no idea where any of your thoughts come from really — and especially you don’t have any idea where they are going to come from tomorrow. — Art & Copy
We’ve been watchingThe Persuaders in class over the last few weeks and, while it’s not specifically about graphic design per se, it’s easy to draw useful parallels between the two disciplines of advertising and design (as they are often one and the same anyway, whether you like it or not). If you are interested, you can watch all of The Persuaders on the website.
This winter is shaping up to be a pretty excellent time for designers as far as film is concerned. Art & Copy will be in San Francisco in early November, Objectified comes out on DVD on October 13th (so sad they had to push it two weeks due to a “manufacturing snafu”…how ironic), and Visual Acousticswill be here November 6th.
I think I am most excited for Visual Acoustics — I remember writing about it a while ago and have been surviving off of Shulman’s wonderful photography in the meantime. Also worth mentioning is The September Issue, the film chronicling the development and process behind the largest issue of Vogue Magazine. I saw this one recently and would recommend it, but it wasn’t quite as good as I was hoping. It’s exciting to see design related films making their way into the (almost) mainstream!
Side note: Art & Copy employs a beautiful ampersand in the logo for the film. Not sure what it is, but it’s very excellent looking.
Easily the coolest advertisement for a fragrance I have ever seen. Tom and Tim Muller put this together as part of the campaign for Diesel’s new fragrance Only the Brave. There are many other videos up on the site — nothing comes close to this. (Though Si Scott’s could be cool in a few weeks.) This video, in addition to being flat out gorgeous, really captures the essence of the phrase only the brave. The Apollo 15 Mission connection is a perfect match:
As I stand out here in the wonders of the unknown at Hadley, I sort of realize there is a fundamental truth to our nature. Man must explore.
UPDATE: Tom Muller has written a post detailing this project on his blog. Great to hear a bit more about this fascinating project.
As a collector of 70’s-80’s knick-knacks this selection of portable music players is a dream come true, the thing that makes it for me for the non 70’s fans that might not understand is the color selection and that plastic. It’s almost unbeatable sometimes when in today’s market i’m choosing from gross colors like Beetle shell neon lime green and Bratz doll shiny purple.
I am not one for motorcycles, but it’s an ad like this that makes me reconsider my position. Sign me up to be one of the motorcycle bad guys in the Bourne films.
What about that logo! I like it — maybe a little unwieldy, but it does a good job conjuring their product. I guess it’s hard to evaluate at this point given its classic status. As far as I know, Pirelli was in the business of tires and not bikes. Either way, Gerhard Forster makes the thing look damn cool. I love the charcoal-like texture in the shadows; similar to some of the Robert Longo work I wrote about a few weeks ago.
