Artist Spotlight: Alan Macdonald

The commercialization of heaven, or what 17th century painters know about Diet Coke that we don’t.

Many have criticized the commercial burden of modernity, but few have done it with such quiet, haunting precision as painter Alan Macdonald.

His portraits populate the world of 17th century oil paining with contemporary brands, creating a sense of uncomfortable anachronism that drives us to such existential questions as the purpose of our modern lives and the void we’re all looking to fill with consumerism.

The paintings often feature lyrics from pop culture’s most iconic songs, immaculately chosen to deepen the impact of the imagery.

Much of his work is an explicit social commentary on vice culture, exposing drugs and alcohol as the true Mephistopheles of modernity.

And while some of his work has a sense of humorous sarcasm about it, perhaps the most unsettling thing about is the reverse Woody Allenesque comic distress that oozes from it — we may be making a mockery of it all, but deep down we know we’re still headed straight to the very peril we are laughing at.

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Pepsi: Can It?

How Tim Burton could’ve made $1 million today and why the road to social media is paved with good intentions.

The recent Pepsi redesign produced a new logo, fresh packaging and a slew of mixed response across the social web spanning the entire it-sucks-it-rocks spectrum — not quite the all-around applause last year’s award-winning new Coke identity got, but still an interesting conversation to follow.

The evolution of the logo alone sparked a heated discussion in the design community.

A multi-talented artist friend of ours loved the very first one best, declaring: “It looks like Tim Burton did it.” Which of course gives anything more street cred than any advertising can buy. And the guys at Make The Logo Bigger just launched a Design Your Own Pepsi Logo contest on Flickr for all the naysayers and smart-asses who think they know better than Pepsi’s $1 million design team.

Meanwhile, the ever-eager Steve Rubel of Edelman, Pepsi’s PR firm, got to spreading the word ever which way he could. First, influential social media types got a kit of 10 Pepsi cans showing the evolution of the logo, complete with a teaser note.

Then, a YouTube video popped up tracing Pepsi’s design history. And despite the questionable editing and the cheesy music choice, we found it somewhat endearing.

Rubel even set up a room on FriendFeed called the The Pepsi Cooler where Pepsi is inviting ordinary web users to help shape the company’s media future. An admirable, albeit misguided initiative as it seems that so far, the bulk of room members are professional social media all-stars. Heck, Chris Brogan is on there.

Also from the well-intentioned but misguided front: We came across this cool tag cloud in the FriendFeed room, showing responses to the redesign. No love link and thus no clue where it came from, just a random image hosted on the Amazon cloud server — but pretty neat nonetheless.

It may be smart of Edelman/Pepsi to actually stand behind the Flickr contest and hear what the design community has to say in the only language it speaks. After all, they put themselves on the social media table, so now it’s all fair game. And, sure, it could turn into a food fight — but they’d better be ready to join in and play.

But enough about our take. What’s your 2 cents on Pepsi’s $1 million redesign initiative?

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Artist Spotlight: Adrian Johnson

Because nothing non-awesome ever came from the U.K.

We’re suckers for awesome illustration. So we dig U.K. artist Adrian Johnson, whose work spans anything from editorial stuff for iconic publications like The Guardian, GQ and The Monocle, to advertising for big-timers like Vodafone and Canon, to animation for a number of top ad agencies, plus a ton of other killer artwork for clients like Scion, Computer Arts and 2K by Gingham.

Some of our favorites: The instant point made in Brand Whore for adidas / British Airways Business Life, the social commentary of Relocate for The Guardian, the category-defying Small Business Trip for MasterCard, the simple wit of Memories Are Our Fuel for Scion / Giant Robot, and the sheer awesomeness of Coolest. Fact. for 2K by Gingham.

via design:related

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