Between 1966 and 1986 Californian sports brand K-Swiss sold only one model tennis shoe without ever changing it. Today K-Swiss reverently calls it the ‘The Classic’, because every other tennis shoe that followed was derived from it. And 44 years after its launch, and with the help of Amsterdam based agency Lemon Scented Tea, K-Swiss shares the shoe’s rich history in a story of 8 chapters. Under the campaign motto ‘You gotta know your classics’, every chapter highlights one of the unique aspects of the white leather tennis shoe. On top of that K-Swiss asked 8 designers across the globe to graphically interpret the ‘chapters’ on a poster; Mario Lombardo (Berlin), Value & Service (London), Cobbenhagen & Hendriksen (Amsterdam), Mark Owens (Los Angeles), Non-Format (US), Grand People (Bergen), Fabian Jenny (Zurich) and Sung Min Choi & Sulki Choi (Seoul). Only 400 copies of each poster were printed to give the whole project limited-editionesque exclusivity. We chose to share chapter ‘K’, since we guessed most people would like to learn where the letter ‘K’ comes from. And, believe it or not, coincidently we chose the artwork that is designed by Amsterdam based Cobbenhagen & Hendriksen. Here’s a passage from the copy that accompanies it: “K is for Kalifornia. We know, it defies all logic, deliberately misspelling the name of our home turf like that. But to the two Swiss brothers who designed the first Classic from their L.A. garage, calling their company Kalifornia-Swiss was the most logical thing in the world. It was their way of paying homage to a place that had welcomed them with a progressive, creative and playful culture – and limitless tennis courts”. You got to love this kind of designvertising that adds heritage, profile and sophistication to a brand.
Archive for the ‘Design’ Category
K-Swiss: the classic tennis shoe from Kalifornia
Tuesday, March 9th, 2010‘Tansu’ sneaker for Onitsuka Tiger
Thursday, February 11th, 2010Here’s a teaser for the new Onitsuka Tiger campaign made by Amsterdam Worldwide (AW). What a cool brand to work for. First of all Onitsuka always seems to give its agency carte blanche with respect to coming up with truly creative stuff. Secondly the brand proposition ‘made of Japan’ allows AW to draw inspiration from the rich Japanese culture. Every year the agency creates a giant sneaker with a special Japanese theme. Last year it was the Zodiac calender. This year the agency created an integrated campaign around the traditionally crafted ‘Tansu’ (a chest with box shaped drawers). It took a team of Tansu masters four months to handicraft the shoe shaped ‘Kaidan’ (step) Tansu, using techniques that date back from the time of the Samurai. Back in the days these chests were used both as a cabinet as well as a hidden ladder that made upstairs lofts look inaccessible – and thus not taxable – to the tax collector. But there’s more; the Onitsuka shoe works like a puzzle; the boxes must be unlocked in a specific sequence to unveil its hidden treasures. For those who cannot admire the real chest – on display in Onitsuka’s flagship stores – AW made an online version that invites the consumer to solve the puzzle. The project is topped off with special instore Tansu-themed materials. Talking about craftmanship…
Children Stamps with mature design
Thursday, November 5th, 2009Already since 1924 Holland has a tradition of Kinderpostzegels (children stamps). The stamps are issued once a year by TNT Post, distributed by school children throughout their neighborhood and sold with a surcharge. The money of this charity goes to projects that focus on the welfare of vulnerable children. Every year the stamp has a different theme and this year it is ‘let the children learn’. The distinctive and clean design of the stamps and this commercial was done by Christian Borstlap and brought to life by director Paul Postma. And the catchy music by Hopkins and Kenjamin tops it off nicely!
Big bank theory wins Dutch design award
Thursday, October 22nd, 2009Already in January we called this commercial about the Big Bank Theory by Dawn ’state of the art storytelling’. Last weekend the beautiful animation, made by Postma Graphics and Motions, won a Dutch design award for best motion design. A good excuse to show it again.
MVA organizes house crawl
Tuesday, August 25th, 2009
The Makelaarsvereniging Amsterdam, MVA (professional body of real estate agents), is organizing a house crawl – obviously inspired by the pub crawl. Especially for young urban professionals a busy job is hard to combine with the hunt for a new house. Thanks to this house crawl, invented by New Message, it is possible to see several houses in a single evening. And you even get a drink and a bite at every house you visit. How’s that for insightful efficiency! And we very much like the design of the sign that will be attached to the houses that join the MVA house crawl. No more explanation required; simply brilliant.
Brand NEW design for Amsterdam Ad Blog!
Monday, July 27th, 2009
We are very proud to introduce our new visual identity. It is created by Meneer de Zwart. The reason why we wanted to change our previous logo, is that it looked too much like the city marketing logo of Amsterdam: I Amsterdam. We kept the original colours red and black, because these colours represent the Amsterdam coat of arms. The lettering in the logo is inspired by the Amsterdamse School, an architectural style from the 1920’s that is very dominant throughout Amsterdam. Many bridges still display the Amsterdamse School font. With the new identity we’ve also added two new sections to our blog: interviews and jobs. For the interview section we will ask Amsterdam creatives 9 questions about creativity, advertising and Amsterdam. The job section will display vacancies in the Amsterdam creative industry and give tips for expats that (want to) move to Amsterdam. In the next few weeks we’ll start to upload content to these new sections. And there are still some design changes to be made and technical bugs to be fixed, but we hope you appreciate our new design and would love to hear your comments.
Cannes: Draftfcb and 2009 get awarded
Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009
Draftfcb won a Silver Promo Lion for Upload Cinema yesterday. We talked about it before, since it already won a Dutch Spin Award and Silver Lamp. The concept is simple; it takes YouTube films to the big screen. The idea came from the desire to promote one of the smallest Amsterdam cinema’s (De Uitkijk), because it was on the verge of being closed down. Through a monthly theme a selection of ‘User Sent In’ web films is shown in De Uitkijk. Agency 2009 – changing its name every single year – won a Bronze Direct Lion for a fantastic employment campaign that was to find a designer for their studio. The agency made an Adobe CS4 (that was not on the market yet) look-alike packaging, dubbed Abode CS4 (Ad for most Brilliant and Outstanding DTP’er Ever). 2009 delivered the desirable, but fake sofware through an Abode delivery guy at the doorstep of the best agencies in town. There it would of course end up in the Studio, thus giving it Trojan horse power. The software in the box enabled designers to design their own resume and with a simple click they could send it to 2009. Brilliant campaign that generated lots of free publicity and – not to forget – made them find their new DTP’er.
Mainstudio wins golden ADC Cube
Tuesday, May 5th, 2009
Two Amsterdam agencies won a design award at the annual ADC Awards in New York. Mainstudio won a golden ADC Cube for restyling Mark Magazine (click on picture to see more pages), a magazine on contemporary architecture. And Wieden+Kennedy won a bronze Cube for the beautifully illustrated Nike Women book: ‘Here I am Stories’ – and also for Nike a bronze cube in the category print. A (small) compliment for our design scene, but a disgraceful score for the ‘capital of advertising’. How come? One of the reasons is that only a few Amsterdam agencies submitted their creative work to the New York festival of art directors. And when you realize how expensive it is to compete in all the international award shows, you can imagine why.
Typographic eye candy
Friday, February 27th, 2009This creative piece of eye candy really spoiled our senses. It was made by Cultural Oil (and directed by 60Layersofcake) for NBC Universal to promote the new Dutch digital TV channel 13th STREET – and its edgy TV series. Here’s another one – they made 5 in total. Interesting about this project is that Cultural Oil scouted the creator of the films, Dutch student Koos Dekker, through YouTube – this long tale channel is infested with (kinetic) typography films. Nathalie Brähler, creative director at Cultural Oil, told us that she likes to work with students, because they know exactly what’s state of the art in the world of multi-media and thus help the agency to constantly innovate. The project not only proves that the internet democratically empowers everyone to be discovered, it also shows that small, flexible, collaborating agencies have lots of creative potential.
Onitsuka Tiger: made from Japan
Thursday, February 5th, 2009To celebrate Onitsuka Tiger’s 60th birthday, Amsterdam Worldwide launched the Cycle of Life campaign, revolving around the Zodiac Race - this trailer heavily triggered our curiosity. The race is a Japanese legend about 13 animals racing each other for a spot on the Zodiac calendar. Apart from the animation, made by NY based Panda Panther, Amsterdam WW also built a diorama (miniature world) in the shape of a sneaker – part of the “Made of Japan” strategy. This is already the third iconic shoe they built for Onitsuka. The previous one, Electric Tigerland, was shortlisted for a Titanium Lion at Cannes 2008. This year’s life-sized sneaker is a typical Japanese landscape, with landmarks like Mount Fuji. The sneaker will be displayed in selected venues around the world. To integrate the campaign even further, the 2009 shoe collection is decorated with the Zodiac animals. All in all, this abundant flow of creativity makes us drool!