What do John Milton, Salman Rusdie and Frank Zappa have in common? They’ve all written adverts.
Yep. It might come as a surprise to the purists amongst you, but there’s a whole raft of notable novelists, poets, scriptwriters and lyricists who cut their literary teeth as copywriters. So what could advertising have offered these talented writers, aside from a steady income?
There is a theory that John Milton, author of the epic poem, Paradise Lost, was also the writer of the first ever trade advertisement to appear in the UK press. In September 1658 in Mercurius Politicus, the progovernment newsbook of which he was editor from 1650, there was an advertisement for a ‘China Drink’ with purported health properties:
You, your wand and an adventure. Sounds deeply suspicious. But actually it’s the basic principle of a new live-action role-playing game called MagiQuest.
MagiQuest is your story, your adventure, your imagination brought to life. So says the blurb. It’s certainly unlike anything you’ve encountered before. Playing the part of a ‘Magi’ – kind of like an apprentice wizard – you have to complete quests, find gold and, here’s the really good bit, challenge your mates to wand-to-wand duels.
Jeanloup Sieff was born in Paris on the 3rd of November 1933. He first started taking photographs at the age of 14, after being given a camera as a birthday present. He wanted to be a film director, but became a freelance reporter were he started working for Elle in 1955, he was just 22. In 1956 he progressed as a fashion photographer and by 1966 he worked with magazines such as Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, Esquire, Glamour, Paris-Match, plus many more. He won a number of prizes, including the Chevalier des Arts et Lettres in Paris in 1981 and Grand Prix Nationalde la Photographie in 1992. He believed that if he had not received a camera as a birthday present, that he may have never been a photographer. He sadly died in Paris on the 20th September 2000 aged just 66. Read more…
Barbara Kruger was the first truly postmodern artist that I discovered as an art student. Being a fan of thought-provoking art and literature and having experimented with text and image collages I was immediately struck by the power of her work. Barbara Kruger is a conceptual artist known for her stark photo-and-text collages that appropriate the language of consumer culture to comment on it. She became an artist in the early 80’s after working as head art director on Conde Nast magazines. Her art continues to speak the language of magazines and advertising, and, in addition to appearing in galleries and museums, it can be found on billboards, T–shirts, and shopping bags. She used the skills she gained as a commercial art director to stunning effect with her provocative ‘found’ black and white photographic images, slashed with red stripes of text bearing now instantly recognisable slogans such as “I shop therefore I am” and “Your body is a battleground” delivered in her trademark Futura Bold Italic typeface. These iconic works masterfully employ the look and feel of propaganda, but directly raise questions with the viewer about values, taste, stereoypes and materialism.
Imagine a museum of British Design and Art that has over 100,000 items for you to view… but rather than walk round this museum, you can get round it with a few clicks from a computer mouse! Welcome to the Visual Arts Data Service (VADS)… the online resource for visual arts and design.
VADS has provided services to the academic community for 12 years and has built up a considerable portfolio of visual art collections that are freely available and copyright cleared for use in learning, teaching and research in the UK… and now this entire collection is available to view online.
If you’re an avid watcher of the Royal Variety Performance Show, circa 1998, here’s a face you might recognise, if not the name – Ennio Marchetto. Described by some as a living cartoon, and by others as human origami… on a cold and wet October Sunday I went to see if he could brighten up the dark evening (and cheer up my hangover from the night before) with his colourful performance.
For one night only, Marchetto was performing at the Lowry Theatre in Salford Quays. The show opened as the low murmur from the audience settled in, curtains already open and a bright light lit stage that looked like the cleaner had forgotten to sweep. From around the corner, a sleepy paper caricature (paper pyjamas, paper wig, paper candle) yawned and stretched its way to the front of the stage. The audience had silenced themselves for the evening’s performance and as Marchetto blew his paper candle out, the lights in the auditorium switched off. The show had begun. Read more…
One of the great things about my High School in Bradford wasn’t the fact that we were taught by Nuns and Priests… no it was the fact we had a Dark Room. Growing up I loved photography and so developing my own photographs was a natural progression for me and I would find that I could easily fly through a few hours thanks to some good music, a dark room and some recently taken black & white pictures that were snapped on my trusty Pentax ME… a camera I still own and love today.
One of the many Photographers that I studied at this time was a guy called Robert Capa, who was best known as a Photojournalist and documented wars including World war 2, The Arab-Israeli War and the First Indochina War. One of the reasons I loved his photographs was because of how he went against technical considerations when it came to photography and instead focused on capturing ‘the moment’… and boy! What moments he captured.
Everyone knows that buying CDs is on the decline and when it comes to owning music… digital is the way to go. But you have to credit the people behind The Muisc Tee for getting us to part with our hard-earned green stuff for something more than just a digital download.
The Music Tee is a new product line that combines digital music and fashion in one eye-and-ear-catching package. Music Tees are high-end t-shirts that feature album art and a tracklist. Each shirt comes with a unique code that can be used to download a digital copy of the album associated with that Music Tee. This enables people to discover and purchase music in fashion retail environments, then hear and wear an album!
Banksy is probably one of the most famous artists alive. His stencil-style ‘guerrilla’ art became his trademark along with his strong anti-war, anti-capitalist and anti-establishment messages. His first pieces appeared on the streets of Bristol and London in early 90’s and many more have appeared around the world since.
Although his art carries strong political messages they are also quite amusing and daring… in 2006 he left an inflatable doll dress as a Guantanamo prisoner in Disneyland to bring attention to the conditions of the terror suspects. He’s also believed to have smuggled a fake picture he created of a smiling Mona Lisa into the Paris Louver museum and hung it near the real one.
What do you think of when you hear the words YouTube? How about, the good, the bad, and the ugly? Sometimes it’s really ugly, sometimes confusingly, you get all 3 in one movie. While YouTube is undoubtedly the place to go to get as many eyeballs on your video as possible, I’m sure I’m not the only one who wishes there was a magical button to filter out the mobile phone uploads of last nights party, the offensive comments and get straight to the really good stuff. Well, there isn’t. But there is Vimeo, a place where you can find a community of passionate filmmakers, along with the likes of Moby, Royksopp, Kanye West, film director Michael Bay, and even the White House, uploading their stuff in high definition.
Last edited by Andrew Campbell on October 7, 2009 at 11:40 am
Trackbacks are a way to notify legacy blog systems that you’ve linked to them. If you link other WordPress blogs they’ll be notified automatically using pingbacks, no other action necessary.
Custom Fields
Name
Value
Add new custom field:
Custom fields can be used to add extra metadata to a post that you can use in your theme.
You, your wand and an adventure. Sounds deeply suspicious. But actually it’s the basic principle of a new live-action role-playing game called MagiQuest.
Barbara Kruger was the first truly postmodern artist that I discovered as an art student. Being a fan of thought-provoking art and literature and having experimented with text and image collages I was immediately struck by the power of her work. Barbara Kruger is a conceptual artist known for her stark photo-and-text collages that appropriate the language of consumer culture to comment on it. She became an artist in the early 80’s after working as head art director on Conde Nast magazines. Her art continues to speak the language of magazines and advertising, and, in addition to appearing in galleries and museums, it can be found on billboards, T–shirts, and shopping bags. She used the skills she gained as a commercial art director to stunning effect with her provocative ‘found’ black and white photographic images, slashed with red stripes of text bearing now instantly recognisable slogans such as “I shop therefore I am” and “Your body is a battleground” delivered in her trademark Futura Bold Italic typeface. These iconic works masterfully employ the look and feel of propaganda, but directly raise questions with the viewer about values, taste, stereoypes and materialism.
Imagine a museum of British Design and Art that has over 100,000 items for you to view… but rather than walk round this museum, you can get round it with a few clicks from a computer mouse! Welcome to the 
One of the great things about my High School in Bradford wasn’t the fact that we were taught by Nuns and Priests… no it was the fact we had a Dark Room. Growing up I loved photography and so developing my own photographs was a natural progression for me and I would find that I could easily fly through a few hours thanks to some good music, a dark room and some recently taken black & white pictures that were snapped on my trusty Pentax ME… a camera I still own and love today.
Banksy is probably one of the most famous artists alive. His stencil-style ‘guerrilla’ art became his trademark along with his strong anti-war, anti-capitalist and anti-establishment messages. His first pieces appeared on the streets of Bristol and London in early 90’s and many more have appeared around the world since.
What do you think of when you hear the words YouTube? How about, the good, the bad, and the ugly? Sometimes it’s really ugly, sometimes confusingly, you get 
Discussion