Few things have deserved a WTF more than this.

Rexona "Future"

I'm a Luerzer

So, I just found out yesterday that one of my ads made it into the April issue of Luerzer's Archive magazine. That's a huge honor as Archive is an international magazine, and only four student ads make it into every issue. It's one of the major industry pubs.

Oddly enough, it's not my favorite campaign. It wouldn't even go in my in-progress portfolio. But hey, we got into Archive! It's still awesome.




Big props to my awesome art director Mia Deng.

Stuff on My Pet

In lieu of getting to see my lastminute.com stuff, you get this:

Stuff on My Pet

Japan scares me a little bit.

The last minutes of lastminute.com

As the theme of sleep (or rather, lack of it) has seemed to be the main focus of this blog recently, I'll continue with a) one more related fact and b) one related anecdote.

Fact:
I pulled an all-nighter again last night. That makes four out of the past five nights that I have gone entirely without sleep. Hooray.

Anecdote:
When I finally passed out this afternoon I had a dream that an impending wave of destruction was on a collision course with my town. A volcano had just erupted, I believe. My friends and I were running around trying to grab our key possessions (computers mostly) before doom struck. We could hear it rumbling in the distances and knew that any second a giant wave of molten lava would come spilling into our house. Just as we grabbed the last monitor and scurried to high ground, a giant, churning tsunami of bright 100% magenta lava came bursting through the door. Then I woke up.

The reason why I've been pulling these all-nighters is to get campaigns finished for the British D&AD Awards. In fact, I did two for the lastminute.com brief. Their brand color is 100% magenta. That's all I've been looking at for the last week. Enter gigantic wave of magenta lava.

So, to justify all this madness, here's the first of the two campaigns we fondly call the Death Campaign. Just so you know, lastminute.com is basically England's equivalent to Travelocity but with a bit more edge and more offerings. The brief was to make adventurous, somewhat wealthy Europeans make the most of their free time by booking holidays and in-town tickets to play, concerts, sporting events, etc. So, enjoy!




EDIT: I know it might be lame, but I've taken the work down temporarily. I'll put it back up once campaigns are due in London on the 20th. It makes me a bit nervous having it up. So, hold tight, and you'll get to see it soon.

The day that wouldn't end

To update everyone since my previous post, yes, I am still awake and no, I have not gone to bed yet.

That's right. The last time I had a proper sleep was Friday morning. I’m on three and a half days in now. And like I said, the crazy thing is that I feel completely fine.

Well, no sleep isn't 100 percent true. I blacked out for a few minutes while art directing on the morning of the second all-nighter. Then there was the time I dozed off for a few moments standing in the shower. Or the two hour nap that my friend forced me to take yesterday afternoon. And then this afternoon I lay down in the middle of the hallway, face down on the floor, and passed out for about an hour.

So, that's about three hours of sleep in the last 84 hours. I've broken some sort of crazy wall. I feel absolutely OK, like I could keep doing this. Maybe if I just continue to get only an hour of sleep from now on I'll be fine and way more productive.

Or maybe I'll die.

The other crazy thing is that there are at least three other people at school who are in about the same spot as me.

Hooray for Panel in a week. It can only get worse from here! Huzzah!


UPDATE: I'm watching a show on the Discovery Channel about the powers of the brain. There's a story on right now about an explorer who was awake on a hot air balloon for 88 hours before his brain shut his body down. What a pansy. Give me four more hours.

This is what my tuition goes towards

Right now, it's 8:47 in th morning. I've been up for just a little under 48 hours. Why? You ask. D&AD's. I haven't slept for days because of lastminute.com. I'm suprisingly coherent, but since startin mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

Ahh, I just fell almost dozed off




So that was what happened when I opened up my blogger window this morning. Because of D&ADs due Monday I'm now going on day three without sleep. I'm about 51 hours in and actually feel perfectly fine. It's sort of bizarre. I'm guess a crash will probably come tonight as we're working on the tampons redesign.

I was going to post the fruits of my labor right now, but I think I'll wait and just eat a sammy, watch Thursday's Lost on TiVO and take it easy. 51 hours and counting, son.

I'm completely stoked on the stuff we're entering so that's awesome. I think we definitely have a shot. Britiiish peeeenciiiillll . . .

P.S. Coors Light is my new favorite energy drink.

"Only Works at the Movies"

Here’s a campaign for Germany’s Cinemaxx movie theaters. Not really good ads, but very funny, twisted cartoons at least. I particularly enjoy the last one.

Seeing (red)

Death Match collaboration done with designer Krichmar and writer Liza Behles:

Challenge: Design a 10-card series for Hallmark's (red) series that benefits AIDS work in Africa.

Solution: We created a series of cards around the philosophy/tagline "Sometimes a little something can mean a lot." Each card is a celebration of some seemingly small aspect of life that holds a special, if often overlooked, significance in its own right. The cards are also physically small--3-1/4" by 3-1/4"--to mirror the smallness and ease of the sender's gesture. Their copy reflects the humor of the target market—smart, fun, a bit silly and certainly not sappy. By incorporating the word "red" into each line the brand is also linked to this idea that a little something can mean a lot; a portion of the revenue goes to fight AIDS in Africa.