Movie Stills: Why Change Your Wife?

Swapping color swatches for pattern, this week's movie stills are from Cecil B. DeMille's 1920 comedy Why Change Your Wife? featuring the gorgeous and incredibly adorable 18-year old Bebe Daniels. Although I hated the sexist and anti-woman message, the visual beauty of this film can't be denied. Stylistically post-art nouveau, the fashion and furnishings are still overloaded with ornamentation and geometric patterns. I really love how over-the-top glamorous everything looks. The variety of patterns seems never ending-- there's something different on every layer clothing and surface of the environment!

Abstracted Nature

Technically it's Spring, although I'm still wearing my winter boots and long coat. In honor of this (cruel) distortion I'm posting these ads from Glade Sense & Spray. The artists are abstracting and distorting the natural, geometric patterns flowers typically possess, into more free-form, free-flowing patterns. After liberties were taken with the visual representation of flowers, the viewer can still understand what he/she is meant to see.

via: www.ibelieveinadv.com

Mozambique Fashion Week 2010

 Check out these promo posters for last year's Fashion Week in Mozambique. The use of bold compliments really make these images joyous and lively, in tune with the spirit of the location. Traditional patterns fill the textiles, showing how much culture influences fashion. I included these as some nice examples for pattern week!

via: kissmyblackads

Pattern Inspiration

Computer-related/generated

Brocades/Victorian

Illustrative

Atypical

Canned Champagne

Yellow certainly plays a part in Dark Glamor. Gold is yellow, as are certain alcoholic beverages. Working the decadence angle, I feel the use of the color was very successful in the branding strategy for Paris Hilton's canned champagne, RICH. Aside from the fact that canned champagne in over-the-top glitzy packaging is extremely campy, I think it gets the message across.

Decadence and extravagance are the desired appeal here. There is no subtlety; it simply screams at you. Not to muddle the effect, no competing colors are used-- the scheme is absolute and straightforward. The sex appeal and decadence of the color are translated throughout the marketing campaign. From the nude celebrity, to the appeal of the product, to the coveted precious metal, yellow is the element which synthesizes all the implied themes.

If promoting a product titled "RICH," would there be a more natural choice than a hue indicative of a precious commodity? Yellow gold having a classic standing as a herald for wealth is a fool-proof choice. Tacky and obvious as it may be, the choice here was completely successful.


Other examples of using yellow to communicate wealth, privilege and decadence.

All or Nothing

 

David Benjamin Sherry doesn't mess around when it comes to color. There is no room for hesitancy. He goes big, bold and bounteous. His photos are like simultaneous celebration and exploitation of color. The brashness of hue and sexual tones make his works feel aggressive to me, but the immediate delivery of mood make them all the more attractive! Check out his portfolio!

davidbenjaminsherry.com

Let's Go On a Trip...

Lipton France is doing some amazing, beautiful and ambitious things to promote their Exclusive Collection. Experience for yourself the extend of the creative efforts on their site, where you will be treated to an absorbing sensory experience of orgiastic display of color and form. You will need working speakers and an effecting scrolling mechanism. You won't be sorry. 

http://www.lipton.com/fr

Ray-Ban ads

If rock and roll is noise pollution, are these visual contaminants? If sight is the most immediate of the senses, are these a swift strike to the peepers? Yes and yes, in the best ways possible.

Geared towards a trendy audience, Ray Ban uses these funky and loud print ads to lure in the youngsters. Catering to a hip lifestyle, ultra-colorful and busy ads were the way to create a fun mood. Going complimentary-heavy is a good strategy to achieve the attention-grab, but seeing these among similarly themed posters or behind a store display of highly-colored apparel tends to muddle the effect. Personally, I welcome the overload of visual stimuli, but seeing these highly-detailed illustrations as individual pieces gives them a higher artistic standard.

On a side note, it always makes me a bit sad when artists sell out and lend their talents to advertising. James Jean for Target? Ugh. Beautiful work mass produced and made unimportant. Imagine throwing away a James Jean illustration.. never! (Although, James Jean for Prada I can live with--at least it's still for art!) Anyway, here is a rundown of the artists who contributed work for this campaign and their multifaceted and very colorful portfolios:

Ames Bros
David Sossella
Matt W. Moore
Paul Reilly
Marta Cerda
Andreas Krapf

Grow Your Own Neutrals

Speaking of neutral color palates, artist Daniele Delnero's work unintentionally utilizes a beautiful array of neutral pastels. The pieces are 3d structures made out of paper covered with flour. The flour is left in the open air to grow mold and create the illusion of antiquity. Observing the natural occurrence of color development gives great insight to the nature of color relationships. Check out more work here:www.danieledelnero.com/

Movie Stills: The Machinist

These stills are from 2004's twist-ending, eye candy thriller The Machinist, directed by Brad Anderson. I chose to show these still because this film is highly stylized and totally gorgeous. These still are from separate scenes yet the color schemes are identical. All throughout the film, the colors don't waver yet the look isn't black and white. The dark pastel family is perfect for the dark subject matter portrayed in the film. Although relying mainly on values and shadows, the sophistication of the (award-winning) cinematography isn't compromised.

Full of symbolism, color is certainly employed as a symbol of the protagonist's state of mind. Post-twist, at the end of the film, the colors warm up.

Nils Udo

Nils Udo is a Bavarian nature artist. He uses pieces of nature (twigs, leaves, branches) to create temporary sculptures, and alter color schemes and landscapes. Breaking the monotony of green monochrome, he uses bright, oftentimes contrasting colors to complete his striking pieces. His sense of color allows him to put together impressive compositions and create vibrant gradients.

See more art and read about the artist here: Nils Udo.

Leica Ad

"Pig."

"Frog."

"Robin."

Here's a 2010 ad for a Leica zoom lens. I think the company and the advertisement geniuses were very bold to just feature a full-page color swatch to promote their new product. Their previous ads featured nature photography and in a unique way, they stick to that theme. The zoom is so powerful, you can see nothing but a block of colored molecules, right? Har, we get the gag. Nonetheless, these ads are lovely and are a great use of simple color.

This series is somewhat reminiscent of the Glade campaign.