Hasta La Ideas

A 1940s Coke ad has been recreated using 200,000 crushed cans to mark the start of Recycle Week

The 50m long artwork was created on the Sussex coast by a team of artists led by Robert Bradford and took a week to complete. It’s based on this 1949 billboard ad by artist Haddon Sundblom who painted many of Coke’s most famous poster images.

The point, Coke says, is to encourage people to recycle their used cans. As with all ‘green’ campaigns there is a slightly bewildering comparative statistic to reinforce the importance of this: “At the end of Recycle Week [June 22-28] each of the 200,000 cans will be recycled saving enough energy to keep a television running for seventy years.” According to Coke, if you recycle your used can, it could reappear on the shelves filled with yet more tooth-endangering flavoured water in just six weeks. Marvellous.

Of course, there’s not much point doing all this awareness-raising if there’s nowhere nearby in which to put your cans for recycling: Coke is, we are told, working with the recycling body WRAP to install Recycle Zones around the UK in places like places like shopping centres, theme parks, airports and university campuses (20 so far, another 60 by 2011).

Here’s a little film about the whole project

It’s hard to be anything but cynical about Coke’s new-found interest in conserving the earth’s resources but if the exercise encourages more people to recycle then fair enough. We can’t help wondering whether all that time and effort couldn’t have been put toward creating a more interesting final image though.

Credits
Robert Bradford – Lead Artist
Paul Cross – Production Designer
Jason Hawkes – Aerial Photography Specialist
Norfolk Environmental Waste Services – provider of cans and final recycling destination

Regular readers of this blog may recall that in February we posted up a call for entries for Secret Blisters, an exhibition organised by Print Club London of 35 screenprints – each by a different artist, each in an edition of 35, selling for £35 a piece. As we mentioned in that blogpost, artists signatures will be hidden at the show, to encourage peopple to buy the posters they like, rather than buying simply for the sake of who the artist is.

Now the artists have been selected, the prints designed and printed, ready for the exhibition which opens next week at MC Motors in London’s Dalston. Print Club London has sent us a handful of images to whet our whistle – and, of course, hasn’t told us which print is by who, although we can guess some of them…

The list of exhibiting artists looks like this:

Agent Provocateur / Alex Ponting / Alice Stallard / Andy Miller / Andy Smith / Anthony Peters / Anthony Atkinson / Anthony Burrill / Cept / Chrysa Koukoura / David Walker / Dominic Meaker / Eine / Harry Malt / Holly Wales / Iain Hector / Ian McDonnell / Ian Stevenson / Joe Wilson / John Doe / Jonathan Krawczuk / James Joyce / Jody Barton / Jon Burgerman / Kate Moross / Luke Whittaker / Miles Donovan / Masa / Mathew Humphrey / Matthew Green / Marc Stewart / Martyna Zdanowicz / Melvin Galapon / Oli Frape / Paula Castro / Paul Bommer / Peter Stitson / Pure Evil / Revenge is sweet / Richard Hogg / Rose Stallard / Rugman / Rude / Ryan Todd / Serge Seidlitz / Si Scott / Steve Wilson / Telegramme / Tinsel Edwards / Tom Eastland / William Edmonds

Secret Blisters runs from 26-28 June at MC Motors, Millers Avenue, Dalston, London, E8

Here’s the poster:

Full details at printclublondon.com

We really are feeling this concept. Stripped of its color, the DoodleBar has been whitewashed making it a blank canvass for anyone to leave their mark. The employees play a key component in this interactive interior.

“The waiters will be wearing white jeans and shirts,” says Jules Cocke of filmmakers Squint/Opera, who along with illustrator Serge Seidlitz, came up with the idea for the bar. “You can doodle anywhere you want on their clothes. It’s up to the waiters where they draw the line.”

via:

in the past week AR took a nice step forward with two very thoughtful examples of how virtual and actual can mix in useful (not just pretty, shiny) ways:

and the US Postal Service’s Priority Mail Virtual Box, which lets you see if what you’re shipping will fit in their flat rate box. A simple, useful tool.

Leonardo da Vinci, in a Renaissance version of Mad Magazine, may have painted his famous Mona Lisa in a number of ways, including nude. Now, a painting has surfaced that looks much like the original, sparking debate over just how far the master took his iconic painting.

Now this is kinda funny cause they say that the Mona lisa is Da Vinci, so does this new painting suggest that Da Vinci painted himself as what he would look like as a nude woman?

read more here