These outdoor posters were created by Dawn for Triodos Bank. The first two posters say ‘Use your head’ and ‘Follow your heart’. At night – when the lights in the JC Decaux outdoor furniture are on – both posters change into the third poster. Dawn worked with Christian Borstlap, who recently won a Dutch Design Award for the Dutch ‘Children stamps’ he created (here’s the commercial that came with it). We like these posters. They clearly stand out – both in tone and look – in a landscape of banks that all of sudden (not very credibly) en masse listen to their clients and offer ‘revolutionary’ consumer friendly products. Still it feels like a bit of a missed opportunity. Triodos Bank is the only bank that can honestly claim not being greedy. And while the sober style matches with this insight, the message feels kind of empty. We usally use our head and heart, but why should we bank with Triodos? We hope that in the rest of this campaign they’ll show a bit more of the aggressiveness all the other banks used to sell they’re lucrative products.

Update: Dawn told us kindly that “this is the introduction kick off for the people who’ve never heard of Triodos”. As from next Monday Dawn will explain us why we should all bank there. We look forward to it.

As a gay friendly city Amsterdam is home to the ‘Roze Filmdagen’ – read: pink movie days (15 – 25 March). That’s how this promotional poster (click = full poster) came to feature Buddy and Pedro; two African pinguins that live in the Toronto Zoo and were found out to be gay. At some point the zoo decided to separate them – “what should our young visitors think of this?!” – and this caused quite a stir. Buddy and Pedro thus became a symbol for the freedom to love whoever you want. And that’s why Amsterdam based Dawn chose to make them an integral part of this year’s festival. They’re everywhere; on posters, in booklets, on t-shirts, and even part of the awards.

After having introduced our new columnists last week, this week we’re introducing a new item called ‘Inspiration’; Amsterdam creatives sharing their inspiration on a weekly basis. In order of future appearance we found the following posse willing to show us what they like, what fascinates them, or what they admire on a regular basis: Jennette Snape, art director at Dolly Rogers; Jarr Geerligs, art director at Selmore; Joep Beving, creative at Massive Music; Rick de Zwart, designer at Meneer de Zwart (and responsible for AAB’s visual identity); David Snellenberg, copywriter at Dawn; Johan Kramer, director at 328 Stories; Martin Pyper, designer at MeStudio; Reuben Alexander, creative at Buutvrij for Life; and Christian Borstlap, art director at Part of a Bigger Plan. Of course these people do more than just what their often somewhat rigitd title suggests (in art, music, photography, etc.) but you can read about that on their profile page, once they’ve posted their first contribution. Today Jennette Snape kicks off with an art piece she created herself. The title is “Inspiration lies in the eye of the beholder”; a nice kick off for this new genre, since it philosophies on what inspiration really is.

If you live in the Netherlands you probably know ‘Artis de Partis’; it’s an icon of the Amsterdam zoo and a cuddly doll for many Dutch kids. Two years ago Artis conceived an alien brother for Artis de Partis to promote Artis’ planetarium, called ‘Artis de Marsis’. The cyclope was a logical step to further exploit the success of Artis de Partis. When Dutchman André Kuipers – a big fan of the Artis planetarium – recently went into space with the ISS international space program, he decided to take Artis de Marsis with him, which led to this wonderful picture of Artis de Marsis in space. On top of this Dawn – Artis’ agency – created a goodbye film, a dedicated webpage where one can follow Artis de Marsis, and a special program in the Planetarium. The fans of Artis de Marsis will soon even be able to make an inflight call with Kuipers live from the planetarium. Engaging advertising in its truest form.

What a great film to promote the release of the ‘Air Balloon’ bag charm by Louis Vuitton. A ‘bag charm’ is a small icon attached to your Luois Vuitton trunk or bag that automatically traces your steps and thus becomes a memento of your journey – ‘charms’ originally are small jewelry icons hanging from a bracelet around the wrist. Louis Vuitton has been creating bag charms for more than 10 years now – according to LV some of them have become collector’s items. The film was created by Christian Borstlap – Part of a Bigger Plan – in his signature graphic style; black and white, crisp and clear, but with much eye for detail at the same time. The wonderful song Too Insistent by The Dø makes the journey complete.