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A new ad from the Coca-Cola Co. opens with a shot of a typewriter clacking out Stephen King’s The Shining. The viewer follows a passage being written in an old-timey typeface until theres a reference to a bottle of Coke. Suddenly, the type appears as the cola company’s script logo. The ad is part of a new campaign called “Classic” running in Spain and the U.K., in which Coca-Cola highlights instances when its brand name appears in literature by rendering them in the books’ original first-edition typefaces. The passages are printed in black, and references to either “Coke” or “Coca-Cola” in passages from King’s The Shining, J. G. Ballard’s Extreme Metaphors, and V. S. Naipaul’s A House for Mr. Biswas are rendered in logo format. Coke’s red logo pops against the white paper amid the black retro type. [Photo: Courtesy of VML] The approach emphasizes Coke’s legacy and plays on nostalgia in an analog medium and in an analog way. While so much of soda marketing is contemporary and youth-oriented, Coke is doing the opposite. It found a clever way to remind viewers that it’s been part of culture long before e-readers and cellphones by going back to print. It’s anti-trend and purposefully old-school, using the brand’s history and resonance in culture as social proof of its legacy. The campaign will appear on outdoor billboards and signage, streaming radio, online video, print, and cinema. Out-of-home posters show passages printed on paper, complete with page numbers and the books author and title. [Photo: Courtesy of VML] The challenge for the creatives behind “Classic” was how to reinforce “the timelessness and authenticity of Coca-Cola in a world where trends reign,” says VML, the marketing agency that worked with Coke’s agency, WPP Open X, to create the campaign. “Coca-Cola has always been more than a beverageit’s a cultural icon that naturally finds its way into the stories we love,” Rafael Pitanguy, VML’s deputy global chief creative officer, said in a statement. “With ‘Classic,’ we’re honoring that legacy by bringing its literary presence to life in a way that feels both nostalgic and fresh.” Coca-Cola has played with its vintage-style script logo in new and surprising ways recently, like in a 2024 campaign from VML and WPP Open X that used authentic but unauthorized hand-drawn examples of the logo. And to promote recycling last year, Coca-Cola’s campaign with Ogilvy New York used smashed versions of the logo as they appear on crushed cans. With “Classic,” Coca-Cola isn’t so much finding experimental or clever ways to break from its brand guide like in some of last year’s creative. Instead, it’s finding a novel way to impose its brand guide onto culture, showing how Coke is embedded into literary history itself.
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A new Marvel movie, The Fantastic Four: First Steps, is set to arrive in July, and fans are already invested in its marketing campaign. Earlier this month, the films Instagram account uploaded a promo poster, and people have been reacting. On the subreddit r/marvelstudios commenters praised the poster’s minimalistic design and color scheme. (The art for this movie has been [to] die for. Man. Whoever is doing this graphic design should be proud, read one comment.) The retro-futuristic design features only two colors: sky blue and white. Overlapping figure fours surround white silhouettes of Mr. Fantastic, Invisible Woman, Human Torch, and the Thing standing in the middle of the title-less poster, which includes only basic details about the release date (July 25) and the studio (Marvel, of course). The design is distinct in a world full of floating head movie posters (and a far cry from the Fantastic Fours other, more provocative promotional poster). It calls to mind the art of Saul Bass, one of historys most famous graphic designers. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Fantastic Four (@fantasticfour) Who is Saul Bass Bass is the artist behind some of the most recognizable designs of the 20th century, including the title sequences for Alfred Hitchcocks films and the logos of Quaker Oats and AT&T. Born in the Bronx in 1920, Bass took classes at Brooklyn College, where he studied under György Kepes (whose teachings influenced Basss entire career). Jan-Christopher Horak is the former director of the UCLA Film & Television Archive and the author of Saul Bass: Anatomy of Film Design. He said the influence of both the Bauhaus German design school and gestalt principles, which focus on how psychology changes the way we view designs, manifest in the simple construction and geometric arrangement common in Basss designs. Minimal construction is a key part of Basss title sequences, which he started developing for directors in the 1950s. One of his first iconic images is the twisted arm that opens Otto Premingers film The Man With the Golden Arm. He breaks down the story, abstracts it into a kind of geometry, Horak said. In certain pre-credit sequences, youll have just lines moving through spaces. Youll have figures just moving through space. The Bass effect Horak recognizes Basss aesthetic in the design of the Marvel poster, beginning with the reduction to two primary colors. By limiting the color palette, the designer can create intense contrast in different elements. Horak points out that the design maintains its perception of depth despite its limited color scheme. The use of the figure fours layered on top of one another allows the design to be viewed as a tunnel with the characters monochromatic outlines inside. (This is especially true for the short video sequence also posted by the Fantastic Four Instagram.) View this post on Instagram A post shared by Marvel Studios (@marvelstudios) Its a visualization of the title, Horak said. Its focusing the eye and leading the eye. Basss striking work greatly influenced American design in the 1960s; the 1960s retro-futuristic aesthetic of The Fantastic Four: First Steps makes perfect sense, according to Horak. In this period, Bass completed design campaigns for major corporations, creating one unified aesthetic of primary colors and abstraction. This aesthetic screams 1960s to viewers and, likely from Marvels perspective, Marvel fans.
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During Milan Design Weekwhich encompasses Salone del Mobile, a furniture fair now in its 63rd edition, and Fuorisalone, the exhibitions held off-sitethe Lombardian city transforms into a spritz-fueled celebration of all things design. Historic villas open their doors to become showrooms for new products and furniture, interior designers and architects flex their creativity in site-specific installations, and emerging practitioners debut work to an international audience that is eager to discover fresh, exciting ideas. And lets not forget the brands. Milan Design Week has transformed from an interiors-focused event into a significant platform for fashion, automotive, and tech companies to express (or prove) their creative creds. This year, the following five themes defined some of the most-visited (and most buzzed about) exhibitions and installations in the city. Luxury Fashion Goes Full Lifestyle If the hours-long lines, fully booked by-reservation-only events, and Instagram posts are any measure, then fashion brands ruled this year. They have always represented an aspirational lifestyle but have been inconsistent in their vision outside of apparel. In the past, a handful of niche companies, like COS, Marni, and Loewe (under Jonathan Anderson) have created interesting installations. This year, the cohort was especially strong as these brands defined a holistic design-led definition of luxury. [Photo: Miu Miu] Miu Miu (with its heady literary salon), Loewe (with its intricate artist-made teapots), Herms (with its color-blocked glass furniture), the Row (with its monastic cashmere bedwear collection), and Jil Sander (with its monochromatic take on Marcel Breuers Cesca chairs for Thonet) colored in everything else that would be in the orbit of the person carrying their handbags. [Photo: Hartmut Näegele/courtesy Jill Sander] These installations also reflected a rigorous, research-based approach, including the sold-out Formafantasma-organized Prada Frames symposium that included talks on logistics and infrastructure and Guccis Bamboo Encounters exhibition. For the latter, curator Ippolito Pestellini Laparelli invited artists to work with the material (which has been a part of the brands history since the 1940s) and resulted in the Palestinian artist and architect Dima Sroujis series of found baskets embellished with baubles by glassblowers in the West Bank, which create a dialog between unnamed artisans and a craft tradition that is at risk of disappearing. [Photo: Gucci] The Rise of Theatrical Experiences With so many exhibitorsmore than 2,000 at Salone del Mobile and more than 1,000 at Fuorisalonethe bar for a memorable experience is higher than ever. An element of theater and performance defined the most ambitious of them, like Es Devlins revolving Library of Light, an installation that invited visitors to browse 3,000-plus books on illuminated shelves and essentially turned each visitor into a performer on a kinetic set. [Photo: Monica Spezia/courtesy Es Devlin] This included the Finnish textile company Marimekkos All the Things We Do in Bed installation. Developed by the artist and lifestyle doyenne Laila Gohar, the exhibition invited visitors to lounge in a 30-foot-square bed covered in linens in an archival pattern by Maija Isola that Gohar reinterpreted. [Photo: Sean Davidson/Marimekko] For Range Rover, the California-based Nuova Group staged an installation that brought visitors into a 1970s car showroom featuring actors that pretended to be salesmen. (While the salesmen were unconvincing on my visit, the Sleep-No-More-esque installation was a delight to step inside.) [Photo: Land Rover] And a micro-trend within the highly immersive experiences? Borrowing from rave culture, as seen in Willo Perrons trippy mirror-heavy light-and-sound installation for Vans (which launched a sneaker whose design is based on sound waves) and the fog-filled faux warehouse by Nike and the Berlin record label PAN built to launch a new Air Max 180. [Photo: Vans] Sustainability Remained Urgent Designers have been beating the sustainability drum for a long time, and this year the theme emerged in ways big and small. [Photo: Ed Reeve/courtesy Rockwell Group] Casa Cork, a collaboration between Rockwell Group and the Cork Collective, displayed the myriad ways that the natural, recyclable material can be transformed into furniture, flooring, wallcoverings, upholstery, and more. During a talk held in the installation, the industrial designer Yves Behar (who has designed a tower out of cork) spoke about how the materials porosity, versatility, recyclability, and thermal and sound insulating qualities make it a wonder material, but that it needs more publicity, particularly amid the plastics industrys propaganda over the last 50 years. Design accelerates the adoption of new ideas, he told the audience. Selling sustainability doesnt work. That said, Muji made low-impact living look irresistible in its Manifesto House, a modular tiny home by Studio 5-5, and its exhibition of hacked objects like a birdhouse made from a Muji bookend and wood drawer. The installation debuted at Paris Design Week last year, and the fact that this continues to have a life as an exhibition is testament to its message of doing more with less. [Photo: Ikea] An honorable mention: Ikea launched a new foam-free sofa as part of its Stockholm collection, using natural latex and coconut fibers as cushioning within the wood-framed piece. [Photo: Koji Ueda/At Ma] And while not scalable, the Japanese studio At Ma presented a wildly creative project in circularity that involved reimagining what a broken Borge Mogensen J39 chair could become. After finding one with a missing leg in a thrift shop, the designers have become obsessed with collecting and reassembling unusable chairs into new designs, going so far as crushing the unusable wood components into pulp that can be woven into new paper cord for the seat so that there is zero waste. [Photo: Koji Ueda/At Ma] I also appreciated R100, an exhibition sponsored by the Norwegian aluminum and renewable energy company Hydro, that featured objects made from 100% postconsumer recycled materials sourced from a 60-mile radius of Milan. While the pieceswhich included lamps, trash bins, and chairsare one-offs, they were each labeled with their carbon footprint, like a Nutrition Facts for objects. Thats an idea that could be scaled to many products to help shoppers make more informed decisions about what they buy. [Photo: Einar Aslaksen/courtesy Hydro] Process and Materiality Storytelling, process, and materials has always been important to designersespecially those who cater to the collector market. After all, it’s through these elements that personal connections to objects are created. However, this trifecta seems all the more urgent amid the rise in AI and what people can do that is unique and specific to them versus an algorithm. Human experience was at the heart of many of the exhibitions and objects (and was also the official theme for Salone del Mobile). [Photo: Matthew Gordon Photography/courtesy Kiki Goti] At Alcova, a fair of independent and emerging designers held in Varedo, a Milan suburb, Kiki Goti, a New York-based designer, exhibited Graces, a series of vases she created in collaboration with Murano glass blowers. Referencing matriarchs in her family and Greek mythology, Goti sketched the designs through a highly improvisational and physical process that involved sculpting small clay models which she photographed and then painted over. Glassmakers, with Goti working alongside them, then interpreted those images, which had no dimensions or measurements, into three-dimensional objects. Together, they adjusted the vessels spontaneously until they agreed that the pieces felt just right. [Photo: Google] Googles installation Making the Visible Invisible included an interactive light and sound sculpture by Lachlan Turczan as well as a display of the companys consumer hardware and the objects (and phenomena) that were starting points for their forms: a macaron for the Nest Mini, the surface tension of water for the Pixel watchs face, and a river rock for the case of the Pixel Buds. [Photo: courtesy Shakti Design Residency] The Shakti Residency, a new program that seeks to introduce Indian craftsmanship to a worldwide audience, debuted its inaugural collection at Alcova. Among the highlights were artist Duyi Han and Indian couturier Tarun Tahilianis ethereal embroidered fabric chandelier. Stitched by artisanal dressmakers and needleworkers, it borrows its aesthetics from traditional wedding garments. [Photo: courtesy Shakti Design Residency] Modernisms Lasting Influence Amid so many revivals of modernist design on view this yearincluding lamps by Tobia Scarpa by Flos, an Annie Hiéronimus sofa with a cult following by Ligne Roset, and the aforemetioned Thonet chairs by Jil Sanderthe level of execution in Cassinas Staging Modernity exhibition and performance was peerless. [Photo: Omar Sartor/courtesy Cassina] Developed by Formafantasma and held in Teatro Lirico, a recently restored 18th-century theater, Staging Modernity celebrated the 60th anniversary of its collection by Le Corbusier, Charlotte Perriand, and Pierre Jeanneret. It featured vitrines filled with archival drawings and prototypes that told the technical history of the collection and a play based on its history performed on a set composed of the arm chairs, tables, and lounge chairs the trio designed. Meanwhile, the brand Dedar launched a new line of five textiles based on Bauhaus-trained weaver Anni Alberss experimental compositions. Its refreshing to see a new interpretation of fabrics join the long list of heritage designs that design brands want to align themselves with, and work by a pathbreaking woman in the field at that. [Photo: Ilaria Orsini/courtesy Dedar]
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