Beautiful LA

It's no secret that Los Angeles is a challenging place to live with regards to our eclectic and disjointed topography. One of the common complaints here in Los Angeles is the heinous and offensive use of the ugly outdoor billboard. It invades our skylines and byways with traditional billboards as well as the digital glowing billboard (a giant flat screen...) that changes ads every 30 seconds. As of this week, a new program by the MAK Center called "How Many Billboards?" has commissioned 21 contemporary artists to create art instead of ads. Now as motorists navigate through the interior of LA, they'll be exposed to artists such as: Kenneth Anger, David Lamelas, Kerry Tribe, Yvonne Rainer and a host of others all using the almighty billboard as a canvas from now till the end of March. I love this idea and would like to see more of this happening in our public spaces.

Refresh Everything

Every January people gather around the TV to watch the Super Bowl as two teams battle it out to see who will rein victorious. In addition to some (hopefully) great football, many people are also interested in seeing what TV advertisers have created for the coveted 4 hour time period. To advertise during the game, it costs 2.5 million dollars for a 30 second spot. Invariably during the game - there is always someone in the room that states "Wow! That's a ton of cash!! What if someone actually did something good with all that money?"

Well this year someone actually did. Instead of running a Super Bowl ad, Pepsi has decided to donate from $5k to $250,000k to projects that will make a positive impact on their communities. People wanting to make a positive change can drop into Pepsi's Refresh Everything Facebook (social networking!) page and vote on their favorite causes. This move by Pepsi has been closely watched by the Advertising community at large and whether or not it's successful will be a difficult thing to determine. Will is sell more soda? Will it finally climb proudly above Coca Cola and become the dominant brand because of it's intent to do good? Only time will tell, but in the meantime - how great is it that someone actually did something good with all that money...? Go ahead and Refresh!

Champagne Valentine

The first time I ever saw a David Lynch movie, drank my first beer, listened to The Pixies Doolittle CD, touched an iPod, looked at a painting by Chaime Soutine, mushrooms, etc... These were all very "first time" experiences and today was another one of those experiences.

I've been to the site several times now and I'm still not quite sure what I am looking at or how they created the work in the first place. Champagne Valentine is a digital agency out of Amsterdam and is led by Anita Fontaine and Geoff Lillemon, interactive directors originally hailing from Australia and the US respectively. They have blurred the lines between commerce and art quite nicely and to say the work is "other worldy" is an understatement. Champagne Valentine specialize in expanding/twisting the digital terrain by combining facets of interactive new media, motion and gaming into compelling and technologically advanced works for a diverse group of clients such as Diesel, vh1, T-Mobile, Scion XB, Comedy Central and (RED).

Bestor Architecture

Currently keeping me busy is a ongoing branding project for a chain of Los Angeles based artisan pizza parlors, Pitfire Pizza. As we entered the architectural phase of the project, I was able to encourage the partners to use Barbara Bestor of Bestor Architecture. Bestor, the chair of graduate studies at Woodbury University School of Architecture, has a formidable reputation in Southern California for her loose and eclectic style and has a fantastic book out chronicling her projects called Bohemian Modernism, Living in Silver Lake.

As the Pitfire Pizza, Culver City build-out comes to an end, it's really exciting to see how it turned out and how well Barbara and her team interpreted the brand's tone and voice and brought it to life. Increasingly, brands are looking to their creative partners to help deliver an immersive and memorable experience that separates them from the competition at eye level with the consumer. Starbucks, Nike, Apple are all up there in the front and executing a holistic brand experience from the second you walk into the establishment to the moment you get back to the car with whatever that brand is selling. Barbara's vision for PP, is really going to assist Pitfire in being a fantastic eatery here in Los Angeles and elsewhere. You can see more of Barbara's work in the current issue of Dwell, as she created a surfer's paradise in Venice, California for TBWA/Chiat Day's MAL creative director Eric Grunbaum.

Credit for Sherlock Holmes movie credits

The movie industry is having a banner year in a somewhat dismal economy and I cannot pinpoint the exact reason for it but, Danny Yount is significantly doing his part by breathing new life and energy into a lost art - the art of the movie title. A self-taught designer, (I always love hearing that...) Danny has developed his own creative style as Creative Director over at Prologue and has collected many awards for his work on Six Feet Under, The Grid, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, Iron Man and RockNRolla. The work he and his team created for Sherlock Holmes is amazing with brilliant imagery, storytelling, typography and attention to detail. Danny is a powerful master of his skills and he has truly brought a higher aesthetic to realm of title sequences and credits. The interview with Danny Yount + Sherlock Holmes movie titles can be viewed here.