This is amazing. I won’t spoil it for you, click the picture above and have a go.

Every year at around this time, design companies up and down the country start to panic. The reason is the annual Christmas card, which is high stakes if you make your living from design and print. There’s no going down to WHSmiths to pick up a box of assorted designs, no, if you are a designer, even Auntie Mabel is going to expect something you’ve kerned yourself.

Step forward Ben & James, they’ve gallantly put forward some designs for us all to use. Just download the PDFs, run them out in the office after hours and Bob’s your Uncle. (Save a stamp by sending Bob and Mabel a joint card.)

Of course most Creative Directors would probably get someone else to print it for them. (Guys, it’s Apple-P to print). In the interests of fairness, you can see the only Christmas card I’ve ever designed here…

Found over at Creative Review Feed

Here’s something I came across while doing some research for a project this week.

Genius.

As those who know me will attest, I’m a glass half empty kind of guy, although I like to label it realism rather than pessimism. Anyway, it means that I have a soft spot for self deprecating humour, you know that very English under the radar sort of stuff.

I saw this on the tube the other day…

…and it made me think that negativity is underused in advertising. Ads always focus on positivity, sometimes to the point of arrogance or desperation, so it’s nice when they go the other way. Somehow it seems more sincere, even though it’s more contrived than ever. Maybe it’s a sign of the times. Bleak austerity Britain has had enough of Barry Scott shouting at them about how clean his pennies are.

Let’s think a little bit about Dixons for a minute. I can’t remember the last time I bought anything there, as everyone who knows their stuff buys the things they sell online instead. If you were the bosses of Dixons you must have been getting pretty worried recently as the whole retail experience moves into the ether, people flock to electricalbargainzRus.com and your stores sit there ironically eating up their own electricity.

I love the fact that someone really got under the skin of how people perceive stores like Dixons now and subverted it into a nice little well judged piece of despair.

And let’s not forget the past masters of the art, Marmite, who deserve some sort of advertising valour medal pinned to their chest for displaying adverts of someone actually vomiting their product.

Maybe it’s because I involuntarily dislike being sold to, or because I move in marketing circles, I can hear the squeal of the truth being stretched a mile off, but it feels like this sort of attitude gets through my defences much less opposed. I might not buy my next TV from Dixons but they made me smile. Perhaps I’ll buy a memory card or some blank CDs…

A new niche market for beach towels…

…results in an unsophisticated honeytrap operation by the local constabulary.

There’s a joke in here somewhere…

…well it made me laugh anyway. I thought it was an eggcorn, but no, it’s a malapropism.