Great Design! EF: Live the Language

If you like good clean design and fan­tas­tic video work, check out the great cam­paign “Live the Lan­guage” for the com­pany EF Inter­na­tional Lan­guage Cen­ters, which is, accord­ing to their website,

…is the world’s largest pri­vately held edu­ca­tion com­pany that spe­cial­izes in lan­guage train­ing, edu­ca­tional travel, aca­d­e­mic degrees, and cul­tural exchange.”

See Ad Credits…

I’ve only embed­ded the “Paris” one, my favorite, but you should really check out all the videos in this campaign.

• Barcelona
• Bei­jing
• Lon­don
• Los Ange­les
• Paris
• Syd­ney
• Van­cou­ver

The cam­paign was cre­ated by the Swedish Agency Camp David, and I love, love, love these ads. They are beau­ti­ful, no doubt, but more impor­tantly they totally sell the idea of travel. What I mean by this is, that when we think of trav­el­ing to a for­eign coun­try, what do we think of? Not the lit­tle annoy­ances of lost lug­gage, spend­ing too much money or the dif­fi­culty in find­ing the rest room, no we think of adven­ture, new vis­tas (lit­er­ally and fig­u­ra­tively) and even romance.

These ads are per­fect because they func­tion as a gor­geous short hand for the mythol­ogy of travel; they show you exactly what you expect to see, what kind of expe­ri­ences you want to have and the life chang­ing per­spec­tive you will gain. Watch­ing these amaz­ing ads is sort of like implant­ing mem­o­ries of a sum­mer study­ing in a for­eign land with out leav­ing your com­puter. Kind of like Total Recall’s Blue Skies of Mars.

I am very impressed with the art direc­tion of these spots, all the ele­ments of the pro­duc­tion enhance and sup­port the over all theme of “Liv­ing the Lan­guage.” They are beau­ti­fully shot with a photographer’s sen­si­bil­i­ties, enhanc­ing both the allur­ing loca­tions and actors. The music is catchy, hope­ful and wist­fully evoca­tive of expand­ing hori­zons. Also, as a typophile I par­tic­u­lar­ity loved the clas­sic yet vibrant typog­ra­phy. Note how each ad uses typog­ra­phy to sell the idea of the city with­out being cliché. The pro­duc­tions are cer­tainly top notch.

All adver­tis­ing is, at some level, manip­u­la­tive, but in this case I don’t mind, because one, I am aware it is mythol­o­giz­ing travel and two, I love that myth. Mythol­ogy is the way we humans orga­nize our fears, desires and hopes. They are ways we explain what we go through in life and what we hope will hap­pen. These myths mat­ter, as Joseph Camp­bell so elo­quently explained. As these ads remind us, there is plenty of adven­ture left to have in the world, it’s just right out­side and all we have to do is open the door. Or, I sup­pose, if you’re on a bud­get and have broad­band just click play. Either way, it’s a good way to look at the world.

You can check out the com­plete series and more cool videos on EF’s Live the Lan­guage YouTube Channel.

Paris Com­mer­cial Cred­its for EF Inter­na­tional Lan­guage Cen­ters.
Directed by Gus­tav Johans­son (gustavjohansson.com)
D.P: Niklas Johans­son, fsf (niklasjohansson.com)
Typog­ra­phy: Albin Holmqvist (albinholmqvist.com)
Music: Mag­nus Lide­häll (twitter.com/?magnusthemagnus)
Pro­duced at Camp David (campdavidfilm.com)
Client: EF Inter­na­tional Lan­guage Cen­ters
Cam­paign site: ef.com/?livethelanguage

Polyphemus Gives Odysseus’s Men a Hand

Design Some­thing Every­day: 12/365

Here’s a lit­tle sketch for my design some­thing every day project. Imag­ine your­self as one of clever Odysseus’ men in the cave of the Cyclops, and one-eyed Polyphe­mus, son of Posei­don, reaches down to devour you, or as Samuel But­ler grue­somely put it in his translation:

The cruel wretch vouch­safed me not one word of answer, but with a sud­den clutch he gripped up two of my men at once and dashed them down upon the ground as though they had been pup­pies. Their brains were shed upon the ground, and the earth was wet with their blood. Then he tore them limb from limb and supped upon them. He gob­bled them up like a lion in the wilder­ness, flesh, bones, mar­row, and entrails, with­out leav­ing any­thing uneaten.” — Homer, The Odyssey Book 9, trans. Samuel Butler.

Links:

The Odyssey, by Homer Trans­lated by Samuel But­ler via the Clas­sics Archive at MIT.
Free online audio ver­sion of the But­ler trans­la­tion of They Odyssey at Lib­rivox. Although it is great to read Homer, one should lis­ten to a good read­ing of his epics. Con­sid­er­ing that’s how most in the ancient world were exposed to them, I find it fun to lis­ten to them being read. It makes me feel like I am walk­ing in their shoes, er sandals.

A Map of the Underworld according Virgil’s Aeneid Rendered as a Subway Map

Design Some­thing Every­day 11/365: In honor of my love of maps, infor­ma­tion graph­ics and Vir­gil, I decided to imag­ine Aeneas jour­ney as if it were a sub­way map. So enjoy. Don’t for­get your sub­way token’s for Charon!

I have always loved maps, as a child I would look at our world atlas and pon­der the far flung reaches of the globe. Then I dis­cov­ered a his­tor­i­cal atlas at my school and real­ized that maps could not only take you hor­i­zon­tally across the globe but also ver­ti­cally in to the dis­tant past.

A period I found par­tic­u­larly fas­ci­nat­ing was the Roman Empire. I’d gaze at the maps show­ing the roads stretch­ing out from Rome like a web unit­ing the dis­parate cor­ners west­ern world under the the ban­ner of The Sen­ate and Peo­ple of Rome — SPQR.

The great poet Pub­lius Vergilius Maro, bet­ter known to us today as Vir­gil wrote his mas­ter­piece the Aeneid at the same time Rome was near­ing the apex of it’s power and con­fi­dence. This mag­nif­i­cent poem was writ­ten to, amongst other things, cre­ate a mythol­o­gized past for the Romans of the first cen­tury CE, par­tic­u­larly for Virgil’s patron, the Emperor Augus­tus. As such, the poem depicts the Romans  as a peo­ple not great at skill in art, des­tined to rule.

Let oth­ers bet­ter mold the run­ning mass
Of met­als, and inform the breath­ing brass,
And soften into flesh a mar­ble face;
Plead bet­ter at the bar; describe the skies,
And when the stars descend, and when they rise.
But, Rome, ‘t is thine alone, with awful sway,
To rule mankind, and make the world obey,
Dis­pos­ing peace and war by thy own majes­tic way;
To tame the proud, the fetter’d slave to free:
These are impe­r­ial arts, and wor­thy thee.“
–The Aeneid, Book 6 Trans­lated by John Dryden

This pas­sage takes place dur­ing a con­ver­sa­tion between Aeneas and his dead father Ancheises in the under­world. This is direct allu­sion to Homer and The Odyssey. In Homer’s work must his hero Odysseus must visit a cave where he will sum­mon the dead seer Tire­sias (amongst other dead celebs). By doing this he will gain the knowl­edge to com­pete his quest and finally reach the far shores of Ithica.

In the Aeneid, Aeneas has the same quest but he actu­ally has to travel through the land of the dead, instead of just wait­ing at the gate like Odysseus. This is one of the most impor­tant and vivid parts of the poem. His jour­ney has inspired artists and poets for cen­turies, now it has inspired a daily design and under­world sub­way map!

Links & Sources:

• The basic out­line of the map was taken from Alice K. Turner’s truly amaz­ing book A His­tory of Hell. It would be dev­il­ish of me not to rec­om­mend it.
• The Aeneid trans­lated by John Dry­den via The Inter­net Clas­sics Archive at MIT. The recent Robert Fagels trans­la­tion looks really good too.
• Free Audio Ver­sion of  The  Aeneid via Libravox.org (also the Dry­den ver­sion… yeah Pub­lic Domain!)
• Under­world & the After­life: A good arti­cle about Greco-Roman ideas of, well the under­world & the after­life via Car­los Parada of Greek Mythol­ogy Link. I used a lit­tle of this for the sub­way of the under­world map.

Design Something Everyday: Retro Stephenie

Day 7 and still design­ing, though 2 days behind sched­ule in post­ing. Be that as it may, in honor of tonight’s pre­miere of Sur­vivor Heroes vs Vil­lains my design of the day is a lit­tle WPA inspired retro-esque poster in honor of one of my favorite play­ers, Stephe­nie LaGrossa. Star of two pre­vi­ous incar­na­tions of the show.

She was a con­tes­tant dur­ing sea­sons set in Guatemala and Palau. In Palau she was the last sur­viv­ing mem­ber of her ini­tal “tribe,” a first for Sur­vivor. On Sur­vivor: Guatemala she placed sec­ond and was robbed of vic­tory by a petty and annoy­ing jury. Hope­fully, as in my dig­i­tal doo­dle, Pal­las Athena will be her aegis and like she did for clever Odysseus, guide her to vic­tory. Sur­vivors ready…

Sur­vivors ready?

Tools: Adobe Illustrator

Links: Pal­las Athena Clip Art via Arthur’s Cli­part

Design Something Everyday: Day 5: Bali Hai

I’ve been work­ing on stuff every­day, but I haven’t been post­ing daily, so I’ve got a bunch of stuff to put up.

The first of these is a dig­i­tal doo­dle of a song from the won­der­ful 1949 Rogers and Ham­mer­stein play South Pacific, Bali Hai. I was inspired by the pro­duc­tion I saw last week­end at Seattle’s Fifth Avenue The­atre. Of course, I was famil­iar with the song and the play mostly through the 1958 film ver­sion, but see­ing it live was a thrill. Bali Hai is a myth­i­cal and mys­ti­cal island that rep­re­sents an unat­tain­able par­adise. That image of a hazy dou­ble vol­cano island has formed a core of the Tiki and Poly­ne­sian Pop mythos.

The song is a clas­sic in Amer­i­can Musi­cal the­ater, and for me the best part is very influ­en­tial in the world of Tiki and P0lynesian Pop Cul­ture. Below you can see the won­der­ful scene and lis­ten to the song Bali Hai from the 1958 film, do you hear it? It calls to you..

Tools: Adobe Illustrator

Links:

• Bali Hai: Myth­i­cal and mys­ti­cal island, if you lis­ten it will call to you…
• 5th Avenue Theatre
• Rogers & Hammerstein
• South Pacific (1958 film)
• Tales of the South Pacific, the 1946 Pulitzer Prize win­ning  book by James Mich­ener, source for the film and musi­cal productions.

O Devine Poesy…

Mosaic of the Muses, Roman Museum of Sabratha, Libya. by Sebastià Giralt

Make this site live for us in its many bear­ings, O Muse…

In the great book “The War of Art” by Steven Press­field he details how he begins any cre­ative ven­ture by call­ing on the muses for suc­cess. He does this by recit­ing the open­ing lines from the T.E. Lawrence trans­la­tion of The Odyssey; when Homer calls on the muses to speak through him and aid him in recit­ing the tale of the return of clever Odysseus to Ithaca. This seems like a good idea to me, espe­cially for my first post. So here is my call on the nine muses for aid and inspi­ra­tion for this blog, port­fo­lio and podcast.

“O Divine Poesy, god­dess, daugh­ter of Zeus, sus­tain for me this song of the various-minded man, who, after he had plun­dered the inner­most citadel of hal­lowed Troy, was made to stray griev­ously about the coasts of men, the sport of their cus­toms, good and bad, while his heart, through all the sea­far­ing, ached with an agony to redeem him­self and bring his com­pany safe home. Vain hope-for them. The fools! Their own wit­less­ness cast them aside. To destroy for meat the oxen of the most exalted Sun, where­fore the Sun-god blot­ted out the day of their return. Make this tale live for us in all its many bear­ings, O Muse…”

- from the Odyssey, by Homer; Trans­lated by T.E. Lawrence