Dirty Girl.

While in Barnes and Noble the other night to get some design inspirations, I picked up a book called 1,000 Bags, Tags, & Labels. In the book I found these cool package designs for a brand called "Dirty Girl", which are toiletry and makup products I have seen sold at places like Target and Ulta. I think the designs are fun and fantasy-like but have an eroticish, edgy feel with some of the imagery and phrases. However, it is PG enough to be on the shelves of any retail store and definitely stand out from the average makeup packaging. Take a look:

holADays.

I thought I would make a post about some holiday advertisements I have seen in magazines, or online from magazines. I think it is funny how we were always taught in graphic design classes not to use cliche imagery...ironically enough...many of the ads we see today that are strong ads DO use cliche imagery, at least here in some of these holiday ads. Here are a few I would like to share with you:


Here is one I found online for IKEA...I think it is creative how they used the furniture to spell out the holiday words.


Here is an ad for Neiman Marcus, it doesn't scream holiday to me but I like the colors and the drama...I put this in here more for the irony of the quote about not spending a lot of money, when my parents always called Neiman Marcus - "Needless Markup"...haha I got a chuckle.


I love reeses and think this one is colorful and holidayish ;)


This one for Bed Bath and Beyond is great. Everyone knows the BB&B 20% coupon, they are everywhere and they never change the look of it. Here they almost make a mockery of the fact in a very effective way for the holidays. Everyone loves coupons, so why wouldn't they want to kiss it under the mistletoe?


The following 2 are for Pama and Ugg brands. Funny how again we see a cliche image created out of the Christmas tree shape. I do think it is effective however. People can relate to the imagery and will be drawn to see what the product they are selling is all about.



Last but not least is an ad I found online from a magazine. I have seen many ads from Gap on TV for the holidays this season and this ads look goes right along with it. Here we see the shape of a snowflake created from the bodies of the girls laying in the Gap lounge-wear.

Christmas Cards.

Here is a sneak peak of some of the Christmas cards I made for this year. I got into card making with my friend MW last year. We both love to scrapbook and have tonnnns of scrapbooking supplies, however I haven't had much time to work on scrapbooks recently but still like to be crafty. Card making is a perfect outlet for that craftyness. I get to use my scrapbooking supplies and creativity for a practical purpose, AND I get to share them with everyone. I now feel like buying cards for anything is a waste of money ;)

What's your number?

I have been meaning to blog about these advertisements for a while now, and I have finally found some images to share. I have only seen these ads in the form of billboards and bus signs as of now, but just found them on the web. This is an advertising campaign for the PA lottery ( http://www.palottery.state.pa.us/ ). I think this is a clever veer away from "Gus" which we usually see in PA lottery advertisements. No worries, he is still here to stay I am sure, but these appealing little designs definitely caught my eye. They have a series of ads which advertise the various games in the PA lottery. Each has a different reason for their number, just like many real lottery players do. The design consists of the numbers spelled out with images that reflect the reason why each of them play their number. I think it makes the ads more personal. It then asks: "What's your number". On the PA lottery website you can see the following ad in the rotation on the right of the screen:



Once you click on the ad, you are brought to another page which shows one of the following designs:







...after that, you are asked "What's your number?" and you can design your "own ad".

Some Photography.

It has been while, but I am back. I thought I would share a sampling of some of my photography to get back in the swing of things. Hopefully new posts to come soon. Enjoy.