When I looked at this We Like section of our website, I was surprised to see that no one in the agency had written an article about what is, in my opinion, one of the greatest films ever made. Therefore, I’ve decided to give Avatar the Red C recognition it deserves…

Avatar has completely dominated the box office over the last couple of months and has now officially become the highest-grossing film of all time, making more than £1.15bn in ticket sales around the world. The only film to even come close to this figure is Titanic – also directed by James Cameron. For the minority who haven’t seen this sci-fi epic, Avatar is about humanity’s quest to export a valuable mineral from the distant moon Pandora – and threatening the existence of the Na’vi race in the process. The humans have to create a relationship with the natives and learn about their environment in order to persuade them to move habitat, and leave their valuable resources to them, so they grow Na’vi-human hybrids called avatars, controlled by genetically matched, mentally-linked humans. A soldier who controls an avatar then falls in love with the Na’vi princess – and it’s your typical Hollywood love story!

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Saul Bass was not only one of the great graphic designers of the mid-20th century, but also the undisputed master of film title design. With a career spanning over fifty years – which included collaborations with Otto Preminger, Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick and Martin Scorsese (among others) – the work he produced was consistently innovative. While always of the moment, Saul Bass’ work is as relevant today as it was fifty years ago as it continues to appeal to the audience’s emotions and intellect. Read more…

“How do you come up with those ideas?”

I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve been asked that question by friends or clients. It’s probably the most common question a creative person gets asked. Trying to define the creative process can be very difficult for most creatives, probably because the word ‘process’ implies that there is a series of steps that you follow to reach a solution… and we creatives like the mysticism that comes with the answer “it’s just something I can do… the ideas just appear in my head”.

Like it or not, though, there are processes that the mind goes through in order to generate ideas. I’m not saying that all minds follow the same process, but there is a basic process that the mind follows and because of the uniqueness of human beings and their life experiences; a 1000 minds can be set the same creative challenge and come up with a 1000 completely different answers.

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