Design | Mad about Mads Berg’s retro

Mads Berg is a Danish illustrator. The lucky lad is based in Copenhagen – one of my favorite cities to hang out and feel out hygge – where he mixes just the right proportion of vintage poster with a modern twist. Sounds like a cocktail, right? A good cocktail keeps it streamlined and simple, but never fails to amaze, so it is a fair comparison.

At Home | Best café … is in your home library

Still from The Best Café. Yours. | U.S. Ad Campaign 2012 | Nespresso

Recently I caught up on some mindless, and lengthy, watching of the “Idiot Box”, and hence had some solid exposure to advertising. Not always a good thing, the latter, if I want to stop thinking-analyzing. Yes, such is my lot. Yet, the current ad campaign for Nespresso caught my attention in a pleasant way – not only because I can seriously abuse coffee – because it had the components I blogged about (!): a nice box of capsules (I own a machine but not the other paraphernalia, like the boxes that were part of the Year of the Dragon set that I coveted, key word here, some time back), Lana Del Ray’s “Blue Jeans” as a soundtrack, and a nice home library! Alright, maybe I can be easily marketed to after all .

Beauty | Photo retouching

Why oh why does this get done?

Beauty | Killing Us Softly: Advertising’s image of women

Back in early 2010, I had, let’s say, an interesting reaction to the latest, at the time, advertising campaign for Victoria's Secret, “Get ready for your all new body…”. It was full of nubile models (women? girls?), that were also glaringly skinny. Nothing new there, and this trailer sums nicely where it’s been, and still is, when it comes to the ideals of female beauty as promoted by the “Mad (Wo)Men”. Why do you think that Vogue Italia’s June 2011 Belle Vere spread piqued more than one person’s curiosity?  It was different. Closer to real, and still in shape.

Mad (Wo)Men, lemmie know when the brave new world truly arrives and you are card carrying members of the chosen humanoids. Won’t hold my breath though, Darlings!