Plastic fantastic

You've got to love the sheer ingenuity of these street sculptures by artist Joshua Allen Harris. They're made from plastic bags and tied to subway grilles so that when the train whooshes past underneath, the bags come to life...



Someone will doubtless find a use for these to advertise something. Frankly, they'd be daft not to. But part of their appeal is how splendidly pointless they are: pure delight and nothing more.

(Via Boing Boing and the Wooster Collective.)

Better than 'SOLD'

I liked this for giving new life to an ancient and boring sign that we've all seen a million times. Rather as Innocent turned 'Best Before' into 'Enjoy by', Bray Estates have taken a dull, mandatory element of their material and given it a twist that makes you notice, and smile. All good for the brand, although the design could do with an equal injection of style.

A virulent infection in adland?

The latest VW and Audi ads seem to be evidence of a virus infecting the advertising world. The disease leads agencies and their clients to believe that they must make ads with lots of people busily building something related to their brand, in some suitably inventive way. Except they're all looking distinctly uninventive now.

The latest from VW:


The latest from Audi:


From Honda:


From Guinness:


From Orange (complete with hideously patronising oh-so-friendly Scots voiceover):


From Skoda:


I suppose it all started with Cog:


But why must a wheel, once invented (or at least ripped off), be reinvented so many times, for so many different brands? How lazy can you be?

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Update (3/4/08): I've just seen Johnson Banks' post on the same subject. Great minds, and all that - I promise I wasn't copying.