The Blauugh

Television advertising is something outside of our scope of work for sure, put the same principles of messaging still apply whether you are taking about a logo, a powerpoint, or even a tv ad. So now that I’ve seen this new ad campaign for the New Mexico Tourism Authority, I’m a little scared about the message.

Look, I get it, aliens crashed in Roswell and they want to go back. Ha ha ha (as sarcastically as possible). Fine. But I’m a tad confused. Are those not the alien’s from the movie “Alien”. You know, the blood sucking, people killing, Sigourney Weaver hating, aliens from the movie “Alien”? So my question is why, why, why would I want to vacation with them? Isn’t that a recipe for disaster. Won’t the term “Tourist Trap” be used literally by these extraterrestrial monsters? Just wondering?

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We need friends, we feel like loners. GO, BE OUR FACEBOOK FRIEND!

FRIEND US HERE!

How shameless of a plug is this!!!

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R Squared teamed with the Housing Department for the design of the YourWayHomeAZ.com website, the one-stop location for purchasing foreclosed homes through the state, county and local governments. Aimed to get citizens into foreclosed homes; the design is aimed to be friendly, easy to use, and frankly amazingly pretty.

To view the site click here www.yourwayhomeaz.com

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Jargon. Apple keyboard command for undo, commonly used by design geeks.

Command - Z is based on the Apple computer’s keyboard shortcut for “undoing” an action. Recently I pondered with the idea of what it would be like if we could “undo” in real life as easily as we can on our laptops? Think of the possibilities. A really bad hair cut - A bottle of Bacardi Anejo combined with a freshly shaved skull and a tattoo - You say something really stupid to your wife - you wreck the family car- you bet a months salary that the Suns will make the playoffs or the ultimate undo…..if you loose a friend unexpectedly. On March 15th we lost an all around good guy, Dave Trout . Dave was only 51 years young, he was extremely active in life as well in the community. I had the privilege of working with Dave for a number of years, supporting his vision for design and marketing. When I first meet Dave he indicated that he would be photographing all of his own work, my initial thought was “Oh my, a creator of jewelry he was but a photographer I think not”…… I stand corrected. He had such a keen eye for color and an incredible ability to engineer light. In other words, his photography was truly spectacular. But not nearly as spectacular as he was as a community leader and a friend. Dave will be missed by many but never forgotten, and with that I ponder what it would be like if real life we had a Command Z - Is it possible that we could still be in the Garden the Eden?

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Back in 2008 the WGN Superstation ( the station that lovingly gives us the worst broadcast team in the history of humanity, yes I’m talking about you Hawk Harrelson and whoever your tool color man is) brought us one of the most frighteningly terrible identities in recent memories.

With a rebrand as WGN America, the station gave us this creepy, goth chick watching you watching her logo. What exactly was the meaning behind this? I don’t know. I’m assuming you couldn’t give me a logical reason behind this image either. Is it a woman watching WGN in a really really well lit room? Do they show a bunch of crazy indie films on the network? Do they strive for the really weird eye shadow demographic? After being so poorly received by just about everybody, only a year later WGN has once again spent gobs of money to try again to give it’s station an identity worthwhile of such a large company. And, of course, once again a failure.

Now believe me, it’s an upgrade. And, from that perspective then the design can be coined somewhat of a success. But, lets break this thing down. Three squares, with rounded edges, skewing together to form an akward disjointed shape? Heavy handed serif typeface. And the color palette, Olive green, lime green, and puke green. What…?

I really hate putting down others’ work, mostly because I understand the challenges associated with different levels of “politics” between clients and firms. I understand that there are certain things that occur on the road to a design that the general public never sees. But, this is just too over the top bad, twice! Hopefully, 2010 will bring us try number 3, and maybe a non-offensive solution.

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