3D or not 3D?

I went to see the final Harry Potter film this weekend. I took my wife to Westfield to go and see it in 3D as I figured some of the sequences I remembered from the book would look completely awesome - the dragon escape at Gringots for example.

But here's the thing, they didn't. In fact I found myself distinctly disappointed by the whole thing. Not the film, that was pretty good, just the whole 3D experience. The truth is that I've resisted the whole 3D thing up until now, I thought it was all a bit of a gimmick and a waste of time. And now I really do believe that's true. It cost me twice as much as normal, something I would gladly do for a worthwhile experience, but I really didn't feel that this was one. Add to that the fact the glasses are these huge, oblong-shaped, thick framed beasts so you end up looking like a poor man's Buddy Holly.

It may well have been a completely different experience had the film been shot entirely in 3D but it wasn't. It all just felt a little, you know, meh? It's really saying something when the 3D on the adverts preceding the film are more impressive than the film itself.

So the jury's still out as far as I'm concerned and I certainly won't be rushing for another 3D experience any time soon.

3D - bag o' shite

More beautiful typography

I've been working on a project recently that's required myself and one of our designers, Nick, to produce imagery out of type - specifically out of numbers. I've been really pleased with the outcome and will probably share them on here once they've ran.

In our attempts to define the style, Nick came across this. It's full of amazing examples of typographic images and how they can enhance a great idea.

Check them out, in the meantime my own personal favourites are below.

Michael Bolton moves up a notch

Which would now put him at notch one. But that's higher than I'd previously have put him. I'd always thought of him as the male equivalent of Celine Dion, a warbling irritant with stupid hair and logic-defying record sales.

However, after co-staring in this latest video from the hillarious Lonely Island boys, he's shown himself to be a pretty good sport who's not afraid of taking the piss out of himself and I like that - no one should take themselves to seriously in my book.

I'm still not forgiving him for 'How am I supposed to live without you' though.

Saw this...liked it

It's been a while since an ad came on TV and I thought 'I actually quite like that.' Don't get me wrong, I'm not the sort of person to sit there slagging everything off as being complete rubbish, its just that nothing has particularly grabbed my attention recently...until this one for Sainsbury's.

I think it's really well written ("Did you pack your shopping yourself, Sir?"), well cast and it's amusing - something that always works on me. And I particularly like the little touch of sticking the luggage labels onto the shopping basket.

Makes me want a holiday though. :(

Getting to work would be a lot more fun...

...if the London Underground really was like The Grid from Tron.

Why would I say something this random? Because of this rather cool piece of artwork I received this week:

Unfortunately, I've got no idea who went to the trouble of creating it but, whoever you are, I doff my cap in your general direction and share your vision of a brave and exhilarating way to get about town.

Beautiful typography

No clever headline needed here, I'll just let the images do the talking for me.

Firstly, I must've had my head in the snow around Christmas time to have missed this wonderful campaign for John Lewis.

The typography is absolutely stunning and was produced by the extremely talented Kate Forrester. All of her typography is hand drawn to such beautiful precision whilst still giving off a feeling of complete freedom. More examples below and cheers to Miss Tiny for pointing me in the right direction.

Visuals...

Packaging...

Even on chocolate...

Mmmmmm.

TV ads of the decade

I was looking on one of my favourite reference sites recently, Telly Ads, and I found that they have compiled a top 20 of the best TV ads 2000-2010, based on a survey conducted through 8,000 ITV viewers.

It's a good list, very good in fact, with the exception of the ridiculously annoying meerkat from those Compare the Market ads - shamefully placed at number 3 no less! What is the world coming to?

Anyway, apart from that it really is a very good list and features some absolute gems. As with any list of this nature, there's an element of subjectiveness but it's hard to disagree with the majority of those chosen. View the list in its entirety here.

In the meantime, I've reordered the top 6 in my own image, cos I can. And it goes a something like this...

1. Honda - Cog

2. Skoda - Cake

3. Volkswagen Golf GTI - Singin' in the rain

4. Sony Bravia - Balls

5. Citroen C4 - Transformer

6. John Smiths - Ball skills