Hasta La Ideas

X-Men: Days of Future Past isn’t scheduled for release until 2014 but the marketing activity has already begun with a series of anti-mutant posters and a fake ad for Trask Industries. But how effective are these campaigns?

It seems as though no release of a superhero or sci-fi themed film is complete these days without a huge marketing effort filling in the backstories of the key characters and organisations involved. For 20th Century Fox’s X-Men: Days of Future Past, LA-based agency Ignition Creative has built a detailed website for Trask Industries, the company supposedly responsible for building the Sentinels, a robot army bent on destroying all mutants.

The site presents Trask Industries as “the world’s leading full-spectrum genetic security and containment company, Trask Industries continues to uncover new ways to control the mounting X-gene threat. We are proud to bring decades of experience, along with 118,000 innovative minds as we continue to secure human freedoms in every nation on Earth. Our goal is to solve tomorrow’s problems, today.”

In the site’s ‘media’ section, two downloadable posters address the mutant ‘threat’ (see top and below).

In addition, Ignition and production company Logan have created a fake Trask Industries commercial

In a feature in our June 2012 issue, film writer Adam Lee Davies traced such complex, multifaceted movie launch campaigns back to 42 Entertainment’s work for Dark Knight Rises in 2008 (with a nod to 1999’s Blair Witch Project).

A particular early favourite here at CR was the email campaing supporting the 2000 fim of American Psycho whereby you could sign up to receive missives from Patrick Bateman on topics such as the marketing genius of Prada and the advantages of using a prvate airport as well as cc’d emails to his therapist. (Read the full list of emails here)

This one reads “I have long ago given up worrying about man’s ability to devise new ways in which to spend a disproportionately huge amount of money in order to show his fellow man that he has amassed huge piles of it. Forget cocaine. It’s place in the luxury goods market has been usurped triumphantly by Prada. I applaud the brilliance of those minds behind this phenomenon. Where else can merchandise made primarily of nylon and leather be fought over by patrons wearing Diamonds and Sable? Prada. More than a brand; A mantra. A greeting. “Prada?” Soon to be right up there with Shalom, Ciao, and Aloha.
Virtually yours,
Patrick Bateman”

Since then, we have seen increasingly elaborate campaigns for films such as District 9, Watchmen and, most notable of all perhaps, Prometheus, which included this fake TED Talk by character Peter Weyland.

But, as Lee Davies notes, impressive as these campaigns are, they may just be preaching to the converted. Marc Berry Reid, regional director of digital communications agency Way To Blue, concurs in the piece. “The big question for me is how can viral campaigns break out of just appealing to the core audience. They are typically adopted by the ‘fan boy’ audience who, it could be argued, are going to see the film anyway. Avengers Assemble is a good example of a movie that, even though it screamed for one, had no elaborate viral campaign. Did the lack of one impact the movie? The box office so far doesn’t seem to suggest so.”

Robert Marich, contributor to Variety and author of the book Marketing to Moviegoers has harder evidence. “It’s absolutely shown by interviewing American moviegoers that the most impactful marketing is the in-theatre screening of trailers and TV commercials. Online comes after. That’s unlikely to change for the foreseeable future.”

The immaculate, award winning campaign for Tron: Legacy failed to put bums on seats, while James Cameron’s Avatar had no viral campaign to speak of.

Read the full article here

Want to learn a new skill? Hone your craft? Or just switch off that Mac and do something a little less boring instead for a while? Then our August issue is for you with details on workshops, short courses and a host of ideas to reinvigorate the creative mind. You can buy the August issue of Creative Review direct from us here. Better yet, subscribe to make sure that you never miss out on a copy – you’ll save money too. Details here.

Studio Tipi’s cover and feature illustration for our August issue features some legendary figures from the worlds of art and design: can you identify them all?

Our August issue takes a look at a wide variety of courses and workshops readers can take to refresh their creative mojo. For our piece on univeristy short courses, we asked illustrators Studio Tipi to create their ideal university, with an all-star line-up of teaching talent. Their illustration (above, which also features on the cover) references a variety of art and design stars, all hard at work imparting their wisdom. How many can you spot?

Who, for example, is this graphic design lecturer, who evidently likes to pin up examples of his own work in the classroom?

Our photography tutor is less a famous lensman himself and more a noted portrayal of one on screen. And can you identify his subjects?

Our character design workshop is led by a famous character from children’s literature

While our film class is taken by someone whose profile may be familiar

And if you prefer film theory to the practical, we have an expert guide to Japanese cinema – can you spot who it is?

Our drawing class is led by one of the all-time greats who is sure to make a (neo)impression

And our fashion course tutor is known throughout New York for her distinctive eyewear

So that’s the faculty at CR University – can you name them all?

You can buy the August issue of Creative Review direct from us here. Better yet, subscribe to make sure that you never miss out on a copy – you’ll save money too. Details here.

Andrew Davidson has produced a beautifully detailed set of hand engraved illustrations for the cover of adult editions of JK Rowling’s Harry Potter novels.

Davidson was commissioned by Bloomsbury, who will publish the series and Webb & Webb, who are designing the covers.

The illustrations were created by printing hand crafted wood engravings made on nine by seven-inch English boxwood onto Japanese paper, “which seemed to create the perfect effect,” says Davidson.

“I wanted them to look as if they had come straight from the pages of a book taken from the library at Hogwarts [the boarding school for wizard’s where the books are set].”

The finished book covers will look something like this, and will be on sale in September.

The project took around two and a half months to complete, and each of Davidson’s illustrations represents a key scene, character or setting from that novel: designs for early books in the series feature the Hogwarts Express train and Gothic castle, while later covers have a darker feel and feature ghouls, skulls and serpents.

“Each image aims to capture the spirit and setting of each book – as the stories become darker, so do the engravings. There are also hidden clues in each of the illustrations to look out for…” he adds.

“The brief was to create a set of covers that would stand out on the shelves of any shop and to make the author’s name a key focus, which is why we’ve used large type and bold colours,” explains Webb&Webb director James Webb, who designed the covers before commissioning Davidson’s illustrations.

“We wanted to steer clear of using photographs of the characters, or the black and white imagery used on a lot of teen fiction, so we presented the idea of using Andrew’s illustrations to Bloomsbury. We had originally approached Andrew to work on a set of Harry Potter covers three years ago, and are working on another project with him now for Royal Mail,” he adds.

Webb&Webb have worked on the project since August. “We had to devise around 100 variations before we settled on a set that would meet sales, marketing and design needs – it’s always a tricky process,” says Webb.

Andrew Davidson is represented by illustration agency The Artworks. To see more of his work, click here.

It’s the summer of Sendak here in New York, with the Society of Illustrators celebrating the beloved children’s book artist, who died last year at the age of 83, with an exhibit of more than 200 never-before-seen Sendak originals (on view through August 17). Over at the New York Public Library, “The ABC of It: Why Children’s Books Matter” exhibition (on view through March 2014) devotes an entire wall to a giant, furry, and unmistakable silhouette of one of the “Wild Things” encountered and conquered by young Max. We scoured the gorgeous Abrams book that accompanies the former exhibition—and particularly the chapter contributed by children’s book expert Leonard S. Marcus, who happens to have curated the latter show—to bring you this handful of fun facts.

1. Sendak honed his drawing skills at a young age, while looking out from the window of his family’s Brooklyn apartment and “making endless sketches of the children playing in the streets below,” writes Marcus in Maurice Sendak: A Celebration of the Artist and His Work, “drawings that recorded not only the children’s body language and facial expressions but also their emotional weather.”

2. He skipped college and went right from high school to a job as the assistant window decorator at FAO Schwarz on New York’s Fifth Avenue.

3. Sendak’s close friend and editor Ursula Nordstrom, who Marcus describes as “America’s most daring publisher of books for young people,” planned early on to pair Sendak with Margaret Wise Brown (Goodnight Moon), but she died suddenly in 1952 at the age of 42 before the two could even meet, much less collaborate.
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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Illustrator Ugo Gattoni has teamed up with UK retailer Starley to turn a plain white bicycle into a work of art.

Using a handful of black marker pens, Gattoni has decorated the bike frame with doodles of palm trees, tigers and sunny skies, as well as the round-headed figures that first appeared in his  large scale portrait series for the Museum of London’s London Cycles display.

An avid cycling fan, Paris-based Gattoni also created Bicycle (below) – a concertina book of bike-themed illustrators for Nobrow Press published to mark the 2012 London Olympics. The illustrations follow commuters, bankers, athletes and other London residents on a race through the streets of the capital, and you can read our blog post on it here.

“I first spoke to Gattoni a year or so ago, when he published Bicycle – we had one of his prints on display at our factory show room and it attracted a lot of attention,” says Starley marketing manager Nick Fountain. “We thought it would be great to give him a frame to draw on, so we had one made up and painted white; and Gattoni worked on it for a few weeks in between projects,”

The bike will be auctioned to raise money for charity in September, but Starley plans to work with more illustrators and designers on one-off custom frames, partly to promote its bespoke frame design service “and because we strongly believe that a bicycle should be a work of art,” says Fountain.

Starley has been selling bikes for around three years – its in-house graphic design team has created frame artwork for clients including Liverpool Football Club and the Royal Air Force and is now targeting consumers as well as corporate clients.

“It works a lot like any graphic design brief – the client presents some rough ideas and we’ll put together some concepts, design some drafts on Illustrator and present them for review – the whole process usually takes around two to four weeks,” he says.

Designs aren’t always to Starley’s tastes – “but it’s about what the customer wants,” says Fountain. “We’re seeing more and more customers who want a bike with a personal touch – one that’s unusual and an investment. We’re not the first people to offer a custom service, but we’re one of the most affordable,” he says.

Buy the current print issue of CR, or subscribe, here

The July issue of Creative Review is a type special, with features on the Hamilton Wood Type Museum, the new Whitney identity and the resurgence of type-only design. Plus the Logo Lounge Trend Report, how Ideas Foundation is encouraging diversity in advertising and more.