Sonntag März 20, 2005
More cool ads
Go to http://www.jvm.de, select the English version, go to "Creation" and pick "BMW Mini" for example.
( Mrz 20 2005, 11:00:36 AM CET )
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Fascinating Mind
Yesterday, I discovered, or should I say realized, something very interesting. I don't know if it is just me or if this is true for most people. However, if it is, it might be useful to know and to keep in mind.
A few months ago during one of the several communication trainings that I have taken at Sun we were told a few simple words and had to reply by explaining what pictures popped up in our heads. I was pretty frustrated, because the instructor said "cat" and nothing appeared in my mind. Why didn't I see anything? Why did nothing show up? What's wrong with me?
In a presentation training a few months later something similar happened. We were given a random word and had to do a spontaneous little presentation about a vivid life experience that had to do with the word. Again, my head was blank! I was shocked and frustrated!
Was my life so boring that I simple did not have any experiences that I could connect with these words and talk about? Was I such a nerd that I missed true life?
The next second I discovered something very interesting. I translated the words into my mother tongue (German) and boom ... as soon as I thought about the equivalent German word all kinds of pictures and memories popped up in my mind.
The issue was not that I did not understand the English words. I definitely knew what a "cat" or "penguin" was. However, it seemed like my brain stored memories and pictures only under words of my mother tongue, my native language.
Yesterday, I found out that my theory was wrong. My wife and I talked about birds and she mentioned the English name of a Californian bird which does not exist in Germany: "Red-winged Black Bird". When my wife said the name of the bird I immediately saw Lake Elizabeth in Fremont (California) where my wife and I often went for a walk in the evening Sun during the two years we lived in the US. I could even hear the strange off-key song of the bird. Apparently my brain is able to store memories and pictures under a different language, but now it looks like the first language simply wins. Since my mother was from the Netherlands I also speak and understand some Dutch. The next thing I'll try is to find out is how my brain reacts to Dutch words. ;-)
As I said in the beginning, I don't know if my brain is representative for more brains or even every human brain, but if I'm not a special case, people should be more conscious about what language and images/examples they choose for their presentations. Even if people speak and understand English (or another language) they might perceive statements in a completely different way.
( Mrz 20 2005, 07:14:53 AM CET )
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Being creative
Yesterday my wife and I went to the exhibition "LeadAwards 2005" here in Hamburg. The best articles, ad campaigns, ad texts, ad pictures out of German magazines were shown there. The first half of the exibition was very interesting, since I enjoy watching creative and funny ads. The second half was a bit boring.
Nevertheless, the gold winner in the category ad of the year was also my favorite. You can see it here. You have to click on the link "1. WMF 'Die Fliege', KNSK" under the category "2. Anzeige des Jahres". BTW, Apple's iPod campagne won in the category best ad campaign.
Since I like creative, interesting, cool and funny ads, I can recommend a few books that I have digged out about this topic. I also found some nice books about branding and packaging design. Here they are:
● Creative Advertising by Mario Pricken
● Designing Brand Identity by Alina Wheeler
● eat me by Ben Hargreaves
● Branding & Packaging - The ultimate Marketing Solution by Murray J. Lubliner
● Absolut Book by Richard W. Lewis
● Design Secrets: Advertising by Hickey
● Logos: Making a Strong Mark by Anistatia Miller and Jared Brown
● Logo Design Workbook by Sean Adams and Noreen Morioka
● emotional branding by Gobé
● lovemarks by Kevin Roberts
● Packaging Graphics & Design by Renée Phillips
● Challenging the big Brands by Judith Evans and Cheryl Dangel Cullen
● Design Secrets: Packaging by Fishel
What I like about all these books is that they talk about the topics very visually, i.e. lots of examples are included. Picture wise I found PHOTOS.COM pretty useful. Unfortunately the pictures there are pretty expensive if you just want to be creative for the fun of it. Oh, another useful, but much less visual book that I really like(d) is "How to get Ideas" by Jack Foster. It's a great book!
( Mrz 20 2005, 06:41:36 AM CET )
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