This is the...Renault?

This weekend I saw the new Renault advert and just couldn't help but wonder what the person who designed French Connections "This is the Man" campaign thought of it. Both use the font of the moment; Gotham, both have the type overlaid on top of the image.

You can make your mind up for yourself below.

Spencer Murphy: Fallen Empire

I have always been interested in the discarded, forgotten things and places. The quiet after the party has finished. No location seems quite as isolated as the forgotten theme parks and holiday resorts of this world.

Spencer Murphy's Fallen Empire is a beautiful illustration of this.

Interesting interview with him on itsnicethat.com and you can see more work at www.spencermurphy.co.uk

The External world

The External World from David OReilly on Vimeo.

This amazingly beautiful animation by David O'Reilly has been doing the rounds over the past couple of days. Enjoy.

I Heart Milton Glaser

Milton Glaser was on Radio 4 talking about his I heart NY Logo.

Check it out on this link.

My ________

While trying to find a song through google I stumbled onto mySpace, the website that facebook caused to be redundant. They've had a major facelift since I (or anyone else in this world, surely) has been n there. Its a total branding refresh, new colours, gone is is the deep blue, new logo, even loosing the word space.

Its brave, very few companies change there logos in such a drastic way, especially on the web, amateur attempts at a logo such as confused.com are persistently used. So Hats off to them.

But unfortunately, I fear no amount of rebranding can bring myspace back to where it used to be, facebook topped it, and facebook is going nowhere.

All tangled up

As I have mentioned in previous posts I am a big fan of animation, so I went to watch Disney's new feature "Tangled". I thought it was pretty good, maybe not quite as good as last years excellent Princess and the Frog but an enjoyable film neither the less.

The sub-plot and to all this and perhaps the most interesting thing prior to the release of this film was the name. At first it was called Rapunzel, then it was Unbraided before Disney decided that Tangled was the the best choice.

These changes were not just at script level but occurred rather late, there was even early promotion with the different titles used as you can see above.

"Tangled" was chosen in response to Princess and the Frogs relatively poor turn out at the box office. The reason for this was apparently that boys were turned off going to watch a "princess" film. So Disney, in response to this, changed Rapunzel to Tangled and made a point of feature the male lead as the predominant figure in the trailers and he also appears on all posters.

I am not so sure about the name personally, it doesn't have that timeless feel that Disney has monopolised over the years. By definition a timeless film (as Disney's greatest work is undeniably) should be relevant no matter who watches it, no matter when they are watching it. Snow White for example was made in the 1930's but was recently re-released on blu-ray and it dominated the charts for months with many children finding a film some 80 years old for the first time and they still find it engaging and relevant to them. Equally, in a totally hypothetical world, you could take Beauty and the Beast made in the 1990's and show it to a child in 1940 and I would think they'd find it just as engaging.

And this is the problem with Tangled the name feels very "now", post-Shrek, appealing to the Children of today. Time will tell if in ten years it will be the new Little Mermaid or whether it is this generations Oliver and Company.

The early indications are that the film is going to do well financially and rightly so it is a very good film. But for Disney value of film is not measured in its initial box office takings (Pinocchio flopped on its release), but if in 50 years if they still have Rapunzel dolls being sold in Disney Stores around the world.

Scriptographer

Triangular from Scriptographer.org on Vimeo.

Creative review featured the plug in for illustrator called scriptographer, which I have spent the day having loads of fun with, check out the video of what you can do or download here

Der Fuehrers Face

I am a big fan of animation, especially the early disney shorts. This is one of the most famous of the donald duck shorts, mainly because Donald wears a Nazi uniform, which does make it slightly surreal.

The short was made as part of Disney's partnership with the US government during WW2. It was a partnership of necessity as the Walt Disney studio almost fell to it's knees due to the financial flops of the now much loved Pinocchio, Dumbo, Bambi and Fantasia. Walt Disney had put all his heart and effort into Fantasia especially, so when this failed to produce a significant return on his investment he fell out of love with animation and you can see a shift in his priorities from making the best animated feature possible to keeping his business afloat. WW2 gave him an opportunity to make quick money by producing propaganda for the US government.

Der Fuehrer's Face is possibly the most famous film from this era, though it isn't the best Donald Duck Cartoon it certainly has an incredibly catchy song about Hitler, which I haven't been able to get out of my head for the past week.