Zarb, meaning bizarre in French slang, is a relatively new Champagne brand that was introduced by agency THEY two years ago. An understandable brand name, if your plan is to turn the traditional champagne market upside down. Instead of becoming cautious or even apathetic, THEY wanted to convert the economic crises into something positive; hence Champagne, a drink you have when there’s something to celebrate. The Zarb bottles were turned into a creative medium by asking different artists to design their own bottle. This December the agency launched a new series, named Deep Black, using the wonders of the underwater world as inspiration. The first bottle (left) shows a photo of a squid taken by deep sea photographer David Shale. The second and third bottle (middle and left) show pictures of two mermaid-like creatures. The middle one is designed by underwater photographer Zena Holloway and the one on the right is a collaboration between Holloway and costume designer Vin Burnham. In December a pop-up store in the Amsterdam Berenstraat exhibited the new collection. Several other artists were asked to create special edition magnums. What a great idea. And if you thought it’s ‘all play and no work’, you’re wrong. The brand is slowly expanding its distribution around the globe. A lesson to be learned for all agencies that still have the feeling that the economic crises is putting them out of business; you can simply create your own – after all, you are a creative agency.

Dawn has transformed its season’s greetings into this bottle of vodka. And since the agency has a strong feeling for branding, it is called Modka, using the inverted ‘m’ from Dawn’s logo. A nice collateral advantage of this name is that they could claim the URL modka.nl. On this dedicated website all the internal correspondence on how Modka came into existence is disclosed (“modkaleaks”). And that’s why the 100% organic grain vodka (bottled by Rutte & Zn) is dubbed ‘The most transparent vodka in the world’. So if you ask yourself, which font they used for Modka, you’ll find out on the website that it’s “45 point Pippin Regular”. It also reveals that the bottle does not contain “0.375 ml”, which would be a drop, but 0.5 liter (the mistake was due to a dyslectic art director and sloppy AM) , that the website cost Dawn €888, and many more trivial facts. We hope the Modka tastes as clean as it looks.

American Express – together with Cultuur-Ondernemen (‘Culture-Entrepreneurship’) – organized a design contest for the new ‘cards welcome’ sticker that shows which businesses accept Amex in Amsterdam – not very many we’ve always learned. The designs were to convey the essence of Amsterdam’s DNA. There were 86 entries, 31 nominees, and 5 winners. Last week the winners were announced at the Supperclub. The design pictured is the winning design of Thomas Clever and Gert Franke. They used the Andreas crosses from Amsterdam’s coat of arms in a pointillistic fashion. The second winner is Maja Bouwer, who combined Mondriaan with Amsterdam’s tolerance. The third winner is Sylvia Stølan, who was seemingly inspired by Van Gogh. And the fourth was Nina Zulian, who depicted Amsterdam’s canal houses in a fairly abstract style. Saliently 4 out of the 5 winners were born outside the Netherlands, which shows that apart from Mondriaan and Van Gogh, Amsterdam also raises non-Dutch ‘artists’. We guess it also proves that people feel easily at home here. Anyway, a nice example of consumer generated content – though the word ‘consumer’ doesn’t show quite enough respect for these guys.

This very basic phone, branded John’s Phone, was created by Amsterdam agency John Doe. As it is the most simple mobile phone you can imagine, it is dubbed ‘dumbphone’ – you cannot even text with it. But it’s also made with a sense of humour, since it carries a pen and small address book (at the back) to write down (sic) mobile numbers. The phone’s simpleness gives it a stand-by time of three weeks. And since the phone is also made of soy it’s (partly) bio degradable. John’s comes in different colours and this week a golden limited edition (picture) will be released at the luxury department store De Bijenkorf. The phone is not the first product John Doe has created. With the brand From The Supermarket (“Buy it, and it’s yours”) the agency already made Japanese styled water cartons, t-shirts, and even a scooter called Toni Electroni. John’s Phone could be very successful for its simplicity and the fact that it combines design with eco, but its limited ‘smartness’ could just as well be the nail in its coffin. Only the future will tell. In any case John Doe has once more put itself on the map quite smartly.

Amsterdam agency The Stone Twins (great website and ditto portfolio) designed the new visual identity for the Design Academy Eindhoven (DAE). The press release explains: “The idea behind the bold graphic signature began with the ‘E’ of Eindhoven – and was conceived to be customised by the hundreds of students and staff of the academy. By handwriting the words DAE within the three bars, there are infinite permutations of the logo. In addition, users are also invited to own and personalise it by employing different messages or slogans”. The same kind of language is used for the subtitles in this introduction film. But obviously these ignorant people give less sophisticated answers when asked what they think of the new logo of the DAE. I.e. the subtitles don’t match with their answers. We actually like this one – the other way around; well known designers are asked what design is, and the  voice-over doesn’t have a clue – a lot better, but you need to speak Dutch to be able to fully appreciate it. These shorts were created by some students (Eva Storck, Karlin Tuinte and Kevin Cools) of the ‘Man and Communication’ department of the DAE.

Though Zack McDonald recently left KesselsKramer and moved to Sid Lee, he wanted to share his last KK project with us. Together with Christian Bunyan, designer Angela Lidderdale, and Happy Pets, he created INK. The book is about tattoos and people’s often unusual motivations for getting them. The tattoo stories are quite diverse and well written, featuring drug-fuelled trips to Thailand, Scottish teenagers running amuck, and the world’s most precise tattoo artist. Each story has inspired a special one-off illustration by Swiss designers HappyPets. INK appears in a limited and numbered edition of 250 – you can order the book here.

Design agency VBAT has won a golden Graphis Award with its retail design for the Dutch SNS Bank. We’re not too familiar with the Graphis award, but the website looks pretty distinguished. And if we judge the design, it does look…uhm…very, very colourful. So we definitely believe that this new retail environment will do a great job in separating the bank from its competitors. It might even be able to make SNS the sexiest bank in the Netherlands – though personally we’d rather go for reliability these days. One thing we would like to advise SNS though; please do create some matching advertising, cause if you ask us what the SNS brand is all about, we wouldn’t have a clue. In our mind, the brand is fairly insignificant.

Last night Amsterdam won 2 golden design Lions. Amsterdam Worldwide for its Onitsuka Tiger Tansu sneaker (picture) and FHV/BBDO for its black Mars packaging (almost) without the iconic Mars logo. Consumers received a sheet of letter stickers to create their own text on the Mars bar. The jury was charmed by the fact that Mars dared to change its world famous packaging so radically. In Cyber Amsterdam won 2 bronze Lions. Achtung! with ‘Public Polo‘ for Volkswagen and Kong (again) with Stanislav for the Ministry of Justice. The day before yesterday we got 2 silver outdoor Lions. Again, one for MINI Christmas box by UbachsWisbrun/JWT and one for Interbest, created by Y&R Not just film. Indie won bronze in radio for Dance4Life.

Source: Adformatie

KesselsKramer is known for every now and then creating stuff that is not necessarily made to sell products. It just makes its employees – and the world around them – happy. Take for example this website, called ‘All the banners of the web’. It was sent to us by Zack McDonald from KK, with a little note: “Unless you are a newborn baby, a prisoner of war or a pet rock, banner ads are an inescapable part of your life. You see them every day, yet you don’t know anything about them. Not really. Now is your chance to get to know Vertical Rectangle, Wide Skyscraper, Micro Bar and the rest of the gang. Learn about their fears, their desires, their ambitions, their fetishes. See them as the unique individuals they are, rather than the anonymous annoyances you imagine them to be”. So when you click on a banner, you can read about its personality. For example the rectangle (a banner we sometimes – but not very often – use on our website) is described as: ‘Rectangle likes to party hard’. Apparently it’s a female, cause ‘sometimes she kisses a stranger’. And if you think that is a bit trashy, you don’t have to worry, since ‘she rarely goes all the way with someone she just met’. Besides, ‘her friends are just catty little prudes with sticks wedged way far up their butts’. And this is just one of the banners. If this site is to sell anything, it is KesselsKramer’s creativity.

Amsterdam design agency DAY won two red dot Awards this year for the in-store design of the Van Gogh Museum shop here in Amsterdam (click on picture to enlarge) and a Nike Store in Paris. Both designs also won the additional honours of ‘best of the best’ and ‘distinction for high design quality’, respectively. We’ve checked out the red dot design website and if you see how many categories and awards there are, it’s hard not to win any. Having said that, we very much like what the design agency did with the Van Gogh shop. And, while we’re at it, recently Dutch interior design agency UXUS has been appointed to design the shops for the Tate Modern. That is, both for the existing Tate Modern as well as the impressive Herzog & de Meuron extension.