Brazilian shoe brand Melissa takes 3M’s Post-it notes and stop-motion animated films into a massive new level.
Using 350,000 of the colorful stickies in the U-shaped foyer of Melissa’s flagship store in SĂŁo Paulo, the Post-its act as “pixels” in the video, with become these impressively trippy images of prancing elephants, balloons lifting folks aloft and pulsating heart-flowers. It’s part of the brand’s “Power of Love” campaign, which was appropriate because it took 25 animators five months to create and I bet they loved every moment of it. 🙂
On top of the animation, the company got passers-by to jot down messages on 30,000 Post-its, and it has since gone viral online. There are some environmental types who are concern about the ultimate fate of all those notes, but I don’t see why you can’t totally recycle those notes by passing it to the next person. It’s the power of love, man.
I love Sharpies. I always have one with me. They can be fine or fat markers or anything in between; I’ve used them to doodle in class since I can remember, and I can always rely on my red fine point to mark up anything (yes, the dreaded “Imelda is marking up the printouts again”). And I have the ink-stained fingers to proof it.
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Sharpie’s latest campaign, Start with Sharpie, draws on “Self-Expression,” and it reminds me of all the things I love to do growing up: Writing, drawing, tic tac toe, crosswords, “permanent” tattoos (yea, you had one of those). It taps into the idea that Sharpie gets you to express yourself, be creative and make anything you want. With nearly two-million incredible Facebook fans, what’s better than using their avid fans?
They recruited three of their Sharpie Squad members: Cheeming Boey (you may say “Jimmy who?” but get ready to be blown away), Erica Domesek (DIY Expert) & Mark Rivard (skateboard artist).
Cheeming Boey
Cheeming Boey is the “coffee cup artist” who drew intricate, finely-detailed drawings on those 4-cent Styrofoam cups with a Sharpie. Styrofoam gets a bad rap because it’s cheap, disposable and it never degrades. A landfill nightmare. But Cheeming has turned it into something you gape at.
“About the only time it makes the news is when some city bans its use – as more than 20 California cities have done. Or when some art auction sells a foam cup with a dead ladybug in it for $29,900 – as happened in 2001. All of which makes the simple, 4-cent cup the epitome of pop art. It’s at once kitschy and unhip and dismissed by all. Yet it can be a demanding medium to master. It’s curved. It smudges. You can’t redo mistakes. And every drawing must re-connect to its start.”
Cheeming’s work has been displayed in galleries nationwide. In his ad, Cheeming demonstrates how a Sharpie Pen and a simple Styrofoam cup can be combined to create something truly inspiring.
Note that not even bananas are safe from his wandering Sharpies. In this picture, “mistake” cups are used for drinking.
Erica Domesek
A DIY expert, author and creator of P.S.- I Made This, Erica’s creations are inspired by some of the biggest names in fashion. She has been featured in top entertainment and fashion media, and both her website and her book feature several Sharpie DIY projects. In her Sharpie ad, Erica breathes new life into a standard-issue pencil case using new Stained by Sharpie®fabric markers to create a chic purse.
Mark is a super-talented skateboard artist who has figured out how to manipulate Sharpie markers like a paintbrush to create some amazing skateboard art, complete with the kind of nuanced brush strokes and shading that makes a Sharpie blog editor proud. Using skateboards as his canvas, Mark’s designs have appeared in sports commercials and viewed in galleries worldwide. Mark demonstrates how he uses Sharpie Mini markers to create coveted custom boards.
In addition, the print campaigns will include QR codes where you can unlock exclusive content and videos of each Sharpie project.
The campaign supposedly aimed at teenagers, with new website to boot (not too crazy about it). However, I don’t feel that it alienates older age groups (heck, I’m in that way older age group), so one fat check mark for you, Sharpie!
Would you let people take a picture of you after you just finished your jog, out of breath, sweaty and disheveled? French photographer Sacha Goldberger asked random joggers to do exactly that and here’s the results.
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Sacha Goldberger loves coming up with interesting projects (check out his fantastic “Mamika” series, featuring his 91-year-old Hungarian grandmother Frederika as a superhero). So last summer, he decided to start another interesting project. He created an outdoor studio at Bois de Boulogne, a park near Paris that’s 2 1/2 times the size of New York’s Central Park, where he stopped joggers and asked them for a favor: Would they sprint for him and then pose right after for his camera?
Surprisingly, many obliged. Out of breath, sweaty, disheveled, these joggers let him snap away. He then asked these same people to come into his professional studio exactly one week later and using the same light, he took their pictures again in the same pose they had before.
As you can see, the difference is remarkable. The before and after comparison showed such visible signs of fatigue on the subjects’ faces after the sprint.
This is what Goldberger wants to show with the series:
“I wanted to show the difference between our natural and brute side versus how we represent ourselves to society. The difference was very surprising.”
How true. That’s why I prefer photo shoots in the morning hours. Trust me, it’s not the lighting. You just look better because the day hasn’t worn you out yet. So seriously, don’t let people take your pictures after you ran around the block unless you have a team of stylist & makeup artist to take that “yikes” out of your face. 🙂
I know Goldberger will continue finding interesting ideas and formulating them into more interesting projects. Don’t forget to check out his “Mamika” series:
Grandma’s adorable, isn’t she? BTW, because of this photo series, grandma’s gone viral!
See more of Sacha’s Goldberger’s work & projects, visit sachabada.com
An on-going series by Ben Long, The Great Travelling Art Exhibition is not your typical scrawled words (very often adolescent obscenity) etched into the dirt built-up from exhaust emission. The elaborate drawings on the rear shutters of long-haul trucks are eye-opening.
The temporal quality of the project is also its draw, as he explained:
“Lasting a finite period, though sometimes as long as six months, it is precisely this impermanence and vulnerability that give the drawings their point of interest and contemporary relevance.”
It’s a genius stroke against something as mundane as a dirty truck, elevating it into a piece of traveling art. It turns the freight vehicle as a moving canvas beyond the confines of the traditional gallery space.
See more of The Great Travelling Art Exhibition, visit www.benlong.co.uk
Ever wonder what it would be like to spend 10 hours locked in the Library with 500 other people?
You can with “Find the Future: The Game“—a pioneering, augmented reality experience created especially for New York Public Library’s Centennial by famed game designer Jane McGonigal, with Natron Baxter and Playmatics.
The interactive game combines real-world missions with virtual clues and online collaboration, and is “designed to empower people to find their own futures by bringing them face-to-face with the writings and objects of people who made an extraordinary difference,” says McGonigal.
All 500 participants, locked overnight in the Library, explored the building’s 70 miles of stacks, and, using laptops and smartphones, following clues inspired by 100 works from the amazing collections of NYPL, to such treasures as the Library’s copy of the Declaration of Independence in Thomas Jefferson’s hand. After finding each object, each player wrote a short personal essay inspired by his/her quest. Winning the game meant writing a collaborative book based on these personal stories about the future, and this volume will be added to the Library’s collections.
Yes, it sounds nerdy. Yes, it’s like A Night at the Museum but for bookworms with inch-thick glasses. Douglas MacKrell, one of the participants, made this video that really captures the movement and energy of what it was like to spend 10 hours locked in the Library and on a quest with 500 people.
I think it’s dope. (Yes, I was one of those bookworm nerds with glasses perching on the library all day long. I ♥ books!)
