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The popularity of Mad Men has been variously attributed to its highly stylized look, its explication of antiquated gender and racial norms, and nostalgia for a time when drinking and smoking were not sequestered to designated zones but instead celebrated in the workplace as necessary ingredients for a proper professional life. But much of Mad Men’s lasting appeal lay in its complicated relationship with nostalgia.

The post All gone to look for America: Mad Men‘s treatment of nostalgia appeared first on OUPblog.

Every woman dreams of finally finding the right bra, according to a Swiss lingerie manufacturer.

See if you can guess which one.

The "Ren & Stimpy" creator makes an unlikely promo for an Adult swim show.

A group of four animation industry artists will create different designs that will be voted on by the public.

The famed Japanese studio released its latest work today.

An animated short told on over 70 screens from a 2-inch smart-watch to a 65-inch curved HDTV.

Being asked to sell stale dried noodles in a cup must rank as an ad agency creative director's worst nightmare, but Japanese noodle cup maker Nissin found a smart workaround.

São Paulo-based Birdo Studio was selected to create Rio's 2016 Olympic mascots.

London-based Golden Wolf created this slick animated trailer to promote Horse's upcoming graphic novel release of "VANDROID."

As DreamWorks Animation CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg knows, there's lot of benefits to being President Obama's BFF.

Animation is good for communicating just about any message, even for encouraging dudes to touch their junk.

Chester Cheetah enters the world of the new animated feature "The Book of Life."

New York-based production house Dress Code produced the spot "Death to Mosquitos" for Terminix's new product Attractive Targeted Sugar Bait.

Australian animation studio Rubber House has completed a series of bumpers and idents Adult Swim.

While we await the release of Gary Trousdale's "Rocky & Bullwinkle" short, here's a new GEICO spot that pairs the Jay Ward duo with the GEICO Gecko.

It's Not How Good You Are, Its How Good You Want to Be: The World's Best Selling Book Paul Arden

I saw this one come in through the bookdrop and it caught my eye.

Mostly aimed at advertisers/marketing people with a broader theme for all, it’s some pithy platitudes in an excellently designed package.

I liked some of the advice--don’t hoard your ideas--give them out freely, make the most of the opportunity you have now instead of looking for the next one, don’t knock the competition, it’s ok to be silly, it’s ok to make mistakes. I also liked some of the more advertising-specific ones-- pencil sketches sell the client on the idea more than finished product, put your client’s logo front and center, don’t try to win awards*

But after awhile, it just gets pithy and clever and not actually worthwhile. BUT, it is very well designed. Clean layout, lots of big bold text and colors, and photographs for graphics and lots of classic ads as examples. I loved all the classic ads. There’s not a lot of text (the whole thing can be read in about an hour) and it is a joy just to look at.

*Here’s the explanation for “Don’t Try to Win Awards,” which I really, really like, even if it’s just something I tell myself to make myself feel better

“Nearly everybody likes to win awards. Awards create glamour and glamour creates income. But beware. Awards are judged in a committee by consensus of what is known. In other words, what is in fashion. But originality can’t be fashionable, because it hasn’t as yet had the approval of the committee. Do not try to follow fashion. Be true to your subject and you will be far more likely to create something that is timeless. That’s where the true art lies.”


Book Provided by... my local library

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If Ronald McDonald wasn't disturbing enough, McDonald's has unveiled a creepy-looking animated mascot in the United States called Happy. The Happy Meal box-shaped creature has rubber-hose arms, a huge set of realistic chompers, bulging eyballs, and the McDonald's arches as eyebrows.

What's the best way to encourage young people to vote? The Danish parliament (or Folketinget) decided that the answer was an ultra-violent, sex-filled Adult Swim-style cartoon. To encourage young Danes to vote in the upcoming European elections, the Folketinget commissioned a 90-second piece of animation starring a leather-clad dolphin-riding muscleman named Voteman who gets blowjobs from an army of women when he's not busy decapitating Danish people who don't vote. The reported budget for the piece was $30,000.

While animation is most often used as an entertainment form, it can also used to educate, and increasingly, to advocate for social causes. We saw animation yesterday for a gun safety PSA in the United States, and now we turn to Australia where Universities Australia is promoting its Keep It Clever Australia campaign to stress the value of public funding for university education and research.

The following two spots attracted my attention for the inventive ways in which they mixed live-action with animation: "Metamorphosis" for Hermès, directed by Julien Vallée of Vallée Duhamel, and "Inner Beauty" for Honda, directed by the venerable production team of Smith & Foulkes through Nexus Productions.

Leave it to PES, the whiz of the very-short short, to use the visual of a decomposing woman being colonized by insects as a way to sell earrings and brooches.

American food chain Chipotle eschews TV advertising and stopped using external ad agencies a few years ago, but when they create ad campaigns, they go all out. Their latest project is “The Scarecrow,” a game-and-film collaboration with Bill Joyce’s Moonbot Studios based in Shreveport, Lousiana.

“The Scarecrow”, conceived in collaboaration with CAA Marketing (a division of Creative Artists Agency), is a free arcade-style adventure game for iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch that encourages players to think about industrial food production and the processed foods that they consume. Players can win coupons for free Chipotle food if they achieve certain goals within the game. There’s also an accompanying short film directed by Brandon Oldenburg and Limbert Fabian, and music by Fiona Apple:

Like their earlier “Back to the Start” campaign, Chipotle’s “Scarecrow” campaign is being praised for putting across its message in an entertaining, classy package. Adweek says, “Branded entertainment goes doesn’t get much more well rounded or better executed than this.”

Moonbot, which won the animated short Oscar in 2012 for The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore, has created a lush and well-conceived feature film-quality universe for The Scarecrow. The golden-hued nostalgia that defines the studio’s visual aesthetic is a perfect complement to the environmental themes of Chipotle’s campaign.

This making-of video reveals some of the effort that went into creating The Scarecrow:

A little product placement can go a long way, as proven in Mitsuyo Miyazaki’s A Better Tomorrow, a short film about a pair of kidnapped orphans in a water-starved, not-so-distant future.

In the short’s third act, our young protagonists hop into a flying Lexus LF-LC (naturally) and escape their captors via an expressionist anime fantasy sequence directed by Koji Morimoto (Akira, Mmeories Animatrix) with music composed by Simon Webster. Produced by the Weinstein Company and sponsored by Lexus Short Films, the film premiered at Cannes earlier this year.

If you want to see the animated sequence by itself, here it is: