On Design


Life Is Not A Billboard

Next time you find yourself working on the next commercial, poster or billboard, please consider that hijacking our attention – on the sofa or on the street – might not be the most fun and convincing way to permeate culture and create a compelling emotional connection.

By: Tali Krakowsky, Published: Nov 04, 2009

I certainly don't have answers about where advertising will migrate to but I really feel that there have to be better ways of interrupting our time and space. Mass messaging is often clearly not the right solution. Instead, branding and advertising is becoming more curated and personalized. It's also more subtle. In fact, lately it's becoming more difficult to find products in advertisements.


Title: Affair
Agency: Saatchi & Saatchi
Client: Silverfish Books


Title: Cheerleaders
Agency: BBH London
Client: Levi Strauss EMEA

Advertising now seems to want to seep into the fabric of culture, crawling into television shows, video games, architecture and even high art.


Advertising Agency: Grabarz & Partner, Hamburg, Germany
Art Directors: Christoph Stricker, Julia Elbers
Copywriters: Henning Patzner, Timm Weber, David Wegener
Illustrator: Mick Brownfield


Mark Jacob's 2009 Cruise Collection for Louis Vuitton in collaboration with artist Tanya Ling


Prada's latest lookbook for Fall/Winter 2009, done in partnership with Rem Koolhaas.

To do that we have to respect the sophistication and interests of our audiences, and create branding that honors and celebrates their culture. One way to do that is to create public and private places that entertain, stimulate, inspire and engage people. They can be physical or virtual destinations, or both. They don't have to reach everyone. They simply have to touch their target audience, and that touch, too, can be physical or virtual, or both. These spaces may or may not sell anything directly, but they have to be embedded in the community.


Where the Wild Things Are pop-up store at space15twenty



Living Light is a building facade of the future that displays air quality and public interest in the environment. It is a permanent outdoor pavilion in Peace Park, across from World Cup Stadium in Seoul, Korea. The world is too intelligent to be told what culture is – we have to feel it. I think it's no longer sufficient to put up a sign (whether it is moving or not) that tells people what to do. Our job is much more difficult now. We have to become our message.

1 Comment: By bfaulkner November 12th, 2009 01:38:44 pm

Yes, I agree it is important to not just think about the end user, but how to incorporate the user into the overall story and make them an interactive element to guide the story/brand into many different directions. Thus, as the experiential world moves forward not only will it be important to hold an audiences attention and cut through the white noise, but also just as important, if not more so, is to gain instantaneous feed back on how the message/the brand is resonating with the target audience. For if this new paradigm shift from the broad to the targeted, from the top to down to the bottom up approach is going to survive audiences will need to feel a personal connection with the story and be able to feel they belong to a personalized culture. Well done blog. Keep up the good work. Brandon

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