This ad appears in the summer 2010 issue of Fashion Music Style, a very small British publication that focuses on music and clothing for the urban hipster set. I am not a fan of this particular arrangement of words and images, and my discontent exists on several levels. The script font is difficult to read, the back-lit effect on the copy and the product image (which I guess speaks to the "Born from a bar of Gold" tag line) looks cheap and cheesy to me, there are too many lettering styles going on at once, I don't really dig the haphazard composition of the foreground items vs. the background model (Why is she there? Is this a fragrance for women like her? Is this a fragrance for men so that they can get women like her?), and the branding/logo thumbnail in the upper left-hand corner is distracting and seems tacked-on. So ... why should I care about this product if they can't make an appealing- looking ad?
This image from the same publication heads off a short article about British pop artist Eliza Doolittle, whom I know nothing about and (judging from the description of her music as Lilly-Allen-esque) most likely never will know anything about. Despite my disinterest in the product she's selling, I really enjoy the way she is presented on the page here. The black and white graphic wallpaper behind her vibrates in an enthralling way and sets off her inky locks, and I like the primary color pallet--especially how the yellow of her bracelet is accentuated in the lettering and the seal in the lower right-hand corner. I love that font, round and fat like archetypal teenage-girl scrawl, and I like its tilted/off-balance presentation. I also like how the image is slightly over-exposed; everything on the page is very stark. Generally this page evokes youth and playfulness, with a little funky edge mixed in (all descriptors I'll bet her label rep uses when trying to push her music, as well).
For the next two images, I go to the land of album art. There are probably hundreds of websites devoted to ridiculous record covers, but many of them are just silly (i.e., not necessarily poorly designed). This cover, however, featuring former Jane's Addiction frontman Perry Ferrel, is just atrocious all around. I hate it when people have money to spend on good graphic designers and still end up with something that looks like it's really badly photo-shopped. Hate the color pallet. Looks like someone threw up Pepto-Bismol on a smurf. I have no idea what is going on in this image. And who's the chick with the yellow hair? What's the point? Lame.
I love love love this album cover. I bought it, not just because of the personel involved with the project but because I just couldn't tear my eyes away from the way it's put together. I adore that font and the crispness of the geometric image underneath the text. The composition harkens back to the way jazz album art used to be dealt with (text on top, image beneath with a line demarcating a boundary between the two). I like the right justified text in the upper right-hand corner. In general, the austerity of the black and white image and letters is (for me) utterly eye-catching. I can only guess that, with a name like Zurich, the designers thought referencing Dada might be a cool thing to do. It's so severe and minimal, and it makes me happy to look at it!
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