Condensed

How does one fit as much meaning into as little space as possible? Here's a recent promotion for Ikea, done by the German agency thjnk:

Brevity is a staple in effective advertising (blast you, required fine print!). Condensing the message means fitting as much meaning and information in the smallest way. While in the IKEA demo above a conglomerate of words were used, the principle of minimal work can still be appreciated. Here is some inspiration taken from street art. Take a sincere moment to try and identify the message. Artist unknown (to me):

"Lost for words". Cool.

These to concepts lead to me another idea (don't you like stealing?). Particularly in the last one, a static image not dependent on changing lights, we as the viewer entirely choose what to see. Is there room for this in advertising? Usually it is frowned upon; one viewer interpreting an ad entirely different from the next. But maybe the same idea can be applied to the an idea that nearly everyone is trying to message to their consumers right now: "Everyone is different, everyone is unique". Now, I'm not going to go all hashtag deep on whether we all are different, but the consumer likes to think so.

Deep in Create

The last time I posted here (one year ago), I was a fresh and hopeful creative banana as part of the Texas Creative program. Two semesters later, I'm still here, but instead of that firm green banana I once was, I'm a little less fresh, a little more bruised. The one thing I've noticed most immediately this past semester or two is a lot, if not too much, self-editing. Something that is obviously discouraged, especially early on in the creative process. Don't limit yourself, put it all on paper immediately. In getting better at recognizing good ideas, I've been skipping that part for better or worse. Last semester I felt I was in a bit of a creative slump, a victim of this self-editing. But, as they (I) say, recognizing a problem is half the battle. We're about one third through my senior semester, and I'm feeling like I'm on a bit of a hot-streak recently. The problem is just getting everything down and done. This semester has been the busiest of my life, and also the most important. That's all I have for now.