Hasta La Ideas

pimg alt=”significant-ads.jpg” src=”http://s3files.core77.com/blog/images/significant-ads.jpg” width=”468″ height=”303″ class=”mt-image-none” style=”” //p

pRob Walker’s a href=”http://significantobjects.com/”Significant Objects/a pairs literary contributors with found objects, who invent backstories for them and imbue them with new meaning. Since beginning in a href=”http://www.core77.com/blog/object_culture/significant_objects_rob_walker_gets_literary_about_stuff_13984.asp”the summer of 2009/a, the project has been compared to the business of advertising, which also seeks to invent significance for stuff, albeit for commercial rather than literary purposes./p

pTo explore this comparison further (rather than sidestep it), Walker commissioned ads from Art Novak’s advertising class at the Savannah College of Art and Design. These ads were meant to advertise the significant objects (object + story) rather than the object itself, referring to the narratives for visual clues. The result is a growing web of interpretation and self-reference, which takes Significant Objects from a collection of short stories to a three (or four) dimensional narrative that connects with its audience in multiple ways; a tool that marketing, for better or worse, has also discovered. /p

pPictured above is Alan Bayoneto’s magazine ad inspired by the a href=”http://significantobjects.com/2009/07/15/halston-mug/”Halston Mug + Mimi Lipson/a story, as described by Rob below:/p

blockquote
I wish I’d taken real notes during my classroom visit, when each student presented and explained his or her work, but the upshot here is that Mr. Bayoneto sought out imagery to echo the date of the story’s setting — 1979. I believe he was thinking of a kind of youth/fashion/art magazine as a venue, and if you can’t read the headline it says, “If they touched it, you can touch it to.” This strikes me as a cunning strategy, as it echoes the notion from Lipson’s story that  this item is desirable because it was somehow proximate to the actual celebrity/art culture of that wonderfully decadent era.

pAs for his decision to juxtapose that particular headline with the Halston-branded rump that is the obvious visual focus here — let’s just say that was cheeky of him.br /
/blockquote/p

pRead the rest a href=”http://significantobjects.com/2010/02/17/significant-ads-the-halston-mug/”here/a, and watch for more a href=”http://significantobjects.com/tag/significant-advertising/”Significant Ads/a as Rob posts them over the next week../pa href=”http://www.core77.com/blog/object_culture/significant_ads_for_significant_objects_15980.asp”(more…)/a
pa href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/1PHLUptVv1SZ6PR-C6KLRAYYLwI/0/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/1PHLUptVv1SZ6PR-C6KLRAYYLwI/0/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/abr/
a href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/1PHLUptVv1SZ6PR-C6KLRAYYLwI/1/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/1PHLUptVv1SZ6PR-C6KLRAYYLwI/1/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/a/p