Hasta La Ideas

Levi’s has a new ad out. Set to an uplifting pop tune, it feels like a journey through some of the brand’s best ads – there is a nod towards Laundrette, to Dangerous Liaisons, even to BBH’s classic Nick Knight print ads featuring older models. Yet rather than making this the greatest Levi’s ad ever, by echoing these classic ads this spot just makes me miss the jean brand’s advertising glory days…

The spot is the first one from FCB since the agency picked up the Levi’s account earlier this year, when the brand split from Wieden + Kennedy after five years together. FCB has worked with Levi’s extensively in the past and, alongside BBH in London, helped set the brand’s distinctive tone of voice, particularly in its combination of music and street style. Here, for example, is its 501 Blues spot from 1984:

Its new ad is a curious affair, however. Not entirely bad by any means, its combination of familiar imagery – that really could be for any jeans brand these days, such has the Levi’s style been copied – with frankly weird copy makes for an ad that is unlikely to create the storm of attention that Levi’s spots used to.

In its heyday, Levi’s advertising could be brilliantly quirky. Some of the brand’s best work came out of focusing in on certain features of the jeans, or on new styles. Who can forget Flat Eric, for example, who popped up to promote the brand’s Sta-Prest One Crease Denim Clothing.

Or this spot to promote the Engineered range?

In print, when working with BBH, the brand also knew how to be striking. Here’s one of the aforementioned Nick Knight pieces, which featured older models looking extremely cool:

Other classic print work was shot by Richard Avedon:

And this campaign for the launch of Levi’s black jeans was BBH’s first ever poster for the brand. The tag and the black sheep image were later adopted as BBH’s logo.

In more recent years, the brand has struggled to define itself in a crowded market. Its Go Forth campaign, created by Wiedens, aimed to align the brand more closely with its American roots and also offer a message of hope in troubled times. It was a strong campaign, if a rather downbeat one compared to Levi’s’ sexy, music-based past. Plus, as we pointed out in this article from 2009, the work was at times a little aesthetically similar to Wrangler.

The hope when a brand joins forces with a new agency is that we will see a strong position appear in its first work, which will suggest the tone going forward. Based on this spot, it would seem that Levi’s is going to toe a rather bland line – one that hints of the joys of its advertising past but fails to take the risks that made that work so great.

Rather than worrying about its jeans being bored by its wearers, as this ad bizarrely suggests, perhaps Levi’s needs to be more concerned about its audience being bored by its ads.

Ever more powerful portable devices increasingly enable our always on-the-go lifestyles, yet even the fastest microprocessor needs a power supply, and we find ourselves tethered to outlets in moments of repose, and (mis)managing the wires, cables and cords that serve as veritable lifelines for our power-hungry handhelds. It should come as no surprise that the backup battery industry is booming, but what about the way we reboot at home?

Instead of attempting to achieve invisibility through reduction, Youmin Vincent Kim has seen fit to hide a charger in plain sight. Jury captain Naihan Li and her team recognized the Korean designer’s SOAK Charging Side Table as the winner of the Furniture & Lighting category of the 2014 Core77 Design Awards.

Like many of us, Kim was frustrated by ad hoc solutions. “When I see designers try to combine furniture with technological devices—like cords hanging from the center of a work conference table—it ceases to look like furniture to me, or at least it’s not something you would want in your home,” Kim says. “It’s messy and unconstructed.” The only thing that betrays SOAK’s embedded functionality is its proximity to an outlet, which peeks out from a half-leg that appears to be melting into the wall.

It’s not just for show: the back leg conceals a power cord, which is connected to a wireless charging plate embedded in the tabletop. Although the plug itself fits neatly into the hollowed-out dummy leg, a short length of cord offers the flexibility to accommodate different outlet heights. Similarly, Kim is also considering international standards. “There are several types and sizes of electrical outlets depending on what country users live in. I have been working on making the plug universal so that it will work anywhere.”

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There are at least two big challenges with creating wearable technology. The first is to actually design something that people will want to buy and use, and the second is to keep the device in juice. Here we’re going to look at the second.

The battery design and function of a wearable device is anything but trivial. We need to develop batteries that are flexible, thin, long-lasting and durable…a huge set of requirements that is very difficult to achieve. But one startup, Imprint Energy, thinks it’s got a leg up with a printable, durable battery.

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One of the best ways to use the Fabric Assistances is when you travel. The device not only cleans and deodorizes your clothes, it also irons them. The appliance features an intelligent charging station that also includes a dispensing unit. One of the two chambers is for water, and the other is for deodorizing cleaning fluid.

The Fabric Assistances travel autonomously across the clothes while cleaning and steam ironing them. This project is shortlisted as the Top 35 entries for 2014 Electrolux Design Lab Competition.

Designer: Selin Koşağan

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(Travel Buddy was originally posted on Yanko Design)

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