Christmas Commercials

The holiday season has come and so have the holiday commercials. With 24 hour television and the Internet, we are bombarded with holiday commercials and Christmas jingles. But with the economy struggling, this Christmas season feels somber and a bit bleak. With millions out of work and struggling to get by, many are rethinking Christmas plans in fear that they might be the next one out of a job. I find it interesting this holiday season to see how commercials adapt in response to the bad economy. Some companies, like Walmart and K-Mart tend to understand what America is dealing with, featuring low prices and layaway. Target,s Crazy Lady commercials attempt to find something comical in the determined shopper, but these commercials just frighten me. Car commercials, actually only luxury car commercials, are the most interesting aimed only at wealthy, like this Lexus video below. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6sMZ-hiTOU&feature=related

This commercial reminds everyone why we hate the 1%. It's aimed at the young and beautiful and wealthy. Each time I watch it I find myself shaking my head in disappointment. As I watch news stories about the rich getting richer while most American's economic growth is stagnate, the commercial breaks show me what the wealthy people can do with all of their money. I suspect the car companies know we are pissed off when we see their ads.

The Crazy Target Lady commercial is supposed to introduce a bit of humor regarding the determined holiday shopper. It doesn't. I find the commercial annoying when it is always on. I'm not inspired to go to Target and I hope they retire her before next season.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4SD2NJUDWA&feature=related

The Bass Pro Shop Santa Wonderland commercial is the kind of extravaganza commercial that gets parodied on comedy shows.The commercial is directed at anyone nostalgic about family and when life was simple. It wasn't but there are plenty of people who talk about it. It's an effective ad with the economic problems of the day, and speaks to those people.  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpW8VyjinTM 

Cheers to twenty-four hours a day of Christmas themed shows and advertisement for the next 24 days. To all of the many many versions of Charles Dicken's Christmas Carol, to the unimaginable stall parodies of the classic claymation Christmas Classics, and to American Capitalism for destroying the true meaning of Christmas to millions of American. 

Happy Holidays Everyone!!!!

Black Friday

How desperate do you have to be to skip Thanksgiving so that you can stand in line and stampeed with the masses when the store opens. Why is Walmart always featured when the media wants to show dumb customers macing people or shooting people or punching people just to get the latest toy or electronic? Why?

This is an awful depiction of America. Our stupidity is what shines globally all over the world. The media doesn't focus on the brightest among us who have new achievements in medical science, engineering or the arts. No, it headlines, Crazy American Shopper Sprays Others With Mace Just to Get a X-Box. Black Friday is the start of crazy shopping exposes on television news reports. With the first one of these features, it is an official  announcement that Christmas shopping has begun. Now we will hear endless repeats of Christmas Music. Now we can watch 18 versions of a Christmas Carol (Muppet Christmas Carol being the Best) along with hundreds of other Christmas movies and television specials. Now is the season were we have to deal with the dreaded family if you haven't dealt with them over Thanksgiving.

I may not understand the whole deal with Black Friday and why people are willing to skip a holiday for the sake of saving a hundred or so dollars on a Flat screen TV or an X-Box. It has truly become a holiday in itself, like the Super Bowl. As a designer there is a bit of me that is excited, because it means that people would be hiring more creative people like me for designing ads but I don't think this is very appealing work. I'm gonna pass.

The Future

During these hard economic times I wonder how we have gotten to this point. How did we leave our infrastructure to fall in such disrepair? Our cities in ruins. Small town America is boarded up and 2 to 5 miles away is big giant box store with fast foods joints surrounding it along the highways. The Mom and Pop stores were the heart beat of small towns and now they are relics of the America that used to be. We are left contemplating a past that is oddly skewed by reruns of Leave it to Beaver and other Nick at Nite programing.

As a society we assumed that we would always have a work force filling our factories and office buildings driving this country forward.  We thought we would always be the consumers buying the newest shinny object out there.  As many are pointing fingers at one class or the other or one political party or the other, I think everyone is at fault for what this country has become because the decline has been happening for a long time now.

As a designer I can see that capitalism is still strong. We still buy shiny objects. Companies still hire us to persuade people to buy them. I really don't need an iPad, but it was pretty shiny and I wanted it. I have been working in a gallery and I find it interesting that people don't buy art too much anymore. I here this a lot from people. People don't want to spend their money on something tangible that could give them pleasure for a very long time. What they will buy is dinner. Dining out is the new shiny object. And just as we willing followed the shiny object pulling us away from our own communities and making us willing participants in destroying our own economy we continue to march along to the next and newest trend. 

The future will come, but it is unknown what the next shiny object is..

Miami Marlins New Uniforms

As a baseball fan and designer I have a fondness for the baseball uniform. The sports long history has brought many wonderful uniforms and an equal amount of really ugly ones. As the Miami Marlins, formerly known as the Florida Marlins, introduced their new uniforms to the public, not a lot of people liked what they saw. The logo is a bit too simplistic, the type is a bit modern, the color scheme is a bit too much to look at are some of the complaints by baseball purist. I think these criticisms  are unfair and make it difficult for newer teams to establish their identiy in a league that is many decades old. How do you represent your team and your city, while adjusting to the different styles of today? Miami Marlins, Arizona  Diamondbacks, San Diego Padres, Houston Astros and the Tampa Bay Rays  are all newer teams that have broken from the traditional baseball uniform of a two color scheme with serf and / or scripted type. They have radically different approaches that are representative of modern times. These teams don't have a past that they can look back at for history and inspiration.

The Miami Marlins are trying to represent their city with a color scheme that represents the vibrant community of Miami with art deco type. I can't blame them for wanting to represent the very details that Miami is defined by and yet it is held up to the scrutiny and disdain of the public. I see it as a radical and bold rebranding of a team that has been less appreciated by their very own fan base. Going into a new stadium with a completely new identity in a city that has a vibrant South American and Caribbean community should be exciting, but the Marlins are cursed by being located in a state that is home to half of the Major League baseball spring training facilities, and in Miami alone, a million or so Yankees and Mets fans. So they are criticized.  

Can the Miami Marlins have a solid and dedicated fan base? Can the owner and GM treat this team with a lot more dignity then they did the Florida Marlins? Not looking good.