Rihards Unplugged

Yeah, I’m still playing and quite active in Popomundo. I suppose the older/better your character gets the more you get motivated to play. Or maybe it’s a matter of wanting to try out everything that one can do in the game. Whatever the case might be, that’s not the topic of this post.

   

   

Recently I’ve been doing some more Popomundo art work, and yeah I know these aren’t exactly super hot pieces of design, or in some cases design at all. But I still like doing the odd piece every now and then. It makes for a great break from usual designing work. Not to mention the fact that these aren’t paid designs, so people (including myself) get what they paid for.

Wow, what can I say? I’m really impressed. Phil Hansen really needs more exposure, though it’s not like my blog will bring him much attention, but every single person who does learn about him from here is really an excellent thing. So who is Phil Hansen and what does he do? As the title already implies, he is an artist, but not just any artist.

This guy is really amazing, and each one of his works is different as well, and somehow it all makes wonderful sense. Really really amazing. There’s another video, which shows off more of his work and how he does it at Yahoo’s People of the Web feature.

So I’m having a break at work and browsing BBC for news when I come upon this article about the new logo/brand for the London 2012 Olympics and I can’t believe what I’m seeing there.

They spent £400,000 (almost $800,000) to create this brand. I don’t even know if it can be called a brand, it’s such an utter waste of money. I’d really love to know who made it, and that without having to wade through hundreds of paragraphs of bullshit on how it conveys the Olympic message on their homepage.

I still can’t believe that it’s not April’s Fools or that there isn’t other good enough excuse for this thing. Hell, most of the user submitted logos (they can be seen in that article as well) are much better than what the official designers have come up. This really better be some sort of twisted joke, because that logo really is horrible and should be replaced with something acceptable.

“We’ve had a huge reaction to the launch of the new logo - most of it negative,” I really wonder why that is so, maybe because it is indeed crap. Argh, someone please make the right phone calls and fix this mess!

We all know that advertising for most parts are crap, tedious, annoying or all three at the same time. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t a select few gems out there that are well done, and deserve the praise for standing out from the jungle of advertisements that surround every one of us on a daily basis.

One such ad can be seen bellow, and while it may not be what everyone would consider a great ad(read: “You pervert! What were you thinking when you posted that image?!”) I think it’s great. For one it catches everyone’s eye, especially if you have to walk through there, and secondly it makes sense unlike a lot of the ads these days.

There are several sites which collect such ad design gems, and my favourite so far is Ads of the World. They have well over 5,000 ads that are noteworthy, divided up into several categories for ease of finding things that could interest you.

Just as a little side note, the new Durex XXL ads are hilarious. NotEvenOnce has some really great, and shocking ads as well, so those who like design and have some free time be sure to head over to Ads of the World and have a look around.