Banned Print Ads

It is a fact that many adverts never see the light of day. Standards often stop some of the more provocative or inflammatory concepts from reaching magazines, but shelters or billboards. So it shows that the best idea doesn't mean it will be the winning idea. But equally, getting your advert banned doesn't mean it won't generate interest... in fact in the mid '90's the Tango and Pot Noodle adverts tried to be so outlandish and obscure that they got banned as this got them more press coverage than the adverts themselves.

Here are a selection of banned press adverts... such a shame. (click on an image to see full size)

 

BBC Music Writers Top 25 Albums of 2011

As we get close to the end of another year all the critics lists start to appear. Music lists always interest me as it's interesting to see how many of those albums I have, it's a way of seeing if I'm in touch with the modern music media hipsters and also a way of judging how pompous and elitist  I think those hipsters are when I haven't heard of most of the bands.

Actually I know more this year than last.

But this list also allows me to look at the album cover design from the top 25 cd's (as selected by the BBC writers team).
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25 - Bright Eyes - The People's Key
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24 - Laura Marling - A Creature I Don't Know
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23 - Cold Cave - Cherish the Light Years
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22 - Trap Them - Darker Handcraft
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21 - The Decemberists - The King is Dead
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20 - EMA - Past Life Martyred Saints
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19 - Julianna Barwick - The Magic Place
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18 - Fleet Foxes - Helplessness Blues
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17 - Kate Bush - 50 Words for Snow
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16 - Anna Calvi - Anna Calvi
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15 - Gil Scott-Heron & Jamie xx - We're New Here
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14 - Drive-By Truckers - Go-Go Boots
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13 - Katy B - On a Mission
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12 - SBTRKT - SBTRKT
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11 - Björk - Biophilia
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10 - Iceage - New Brigade
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9 - Bon Iver - Bon Iver
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8 - Josh T Pearson - Last of the Country Gentlemen
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7 - Beyoncé - 4
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6 - Metronomy - The English Riviera
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5 - Tom Waits - Bad as Me
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4 - The Antlers - Burst Apart
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3 - The Horrors - Skying
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2 - Wild Beasts - Smother
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1 - PJ Harvey - Let England Shake

Another recording

Hi all,

I had Monday off work so I decided to try to record another song through GarageBand. This time I went for a bit of Bon Iver's Skinny Love. So I tuned to open C, set up a basic drum track and began recording.

Annoyingly half way through I lost everything when the laptop crashed. I should know better about saving regularly. But it was quicker putting it together the second time around (although my voice was pretty tired and flat at points by the time I got to re-recording the vocals).

Anyway, I'm happy with the results of my afternoons tinkering. You can listen HERE or go to the downloads section.

Enjoy.

New Recording

Hi all,

I have spent Saturday afternoon playing on my guitar. I started out learning my new Fav song (The A Team by Ed Sheeran) and then, seeing as I had some spare time, I decided to play on my updated GarageBand software.

A few re-records for the vocals, a bit of guitar, some backing vocals and a simple lead highlight and it was done.

Check out the downloads section of click here.

Pulp Simpson

Just a quickie. I saw these pics on ffffound and loved them.

Moch'a' Roll

Here is the latest addition to the design slide show.

I would like to say this came about in a Hollywood-esque moment when I was handed my Starbucks coffee while listening to Diamond Dogs or Changes on my headphones... but I can't. I can't even say  this came to me back in 1999 when I got into Bowie and coffee in a big way. It just happened as a doodle one day.

I wonder what other icons I can smash together? Kiss vs Hello Kitty? Spiderman vs Pringles? Lets just wait and see.

Average Font by Moritz Resl

"This project shows what a font would look like if it consisted of all typefaces installed on my system. Every character from a to z is drawn using every single font with a low opacity. In total there are over 900 typefaces in my library. I didn’t exclude the ugly ones."

I really like this project, it's such a simple idea that generates some really nice organic characters. They have a ghostly, ethereal feel similar to that of Blur or Fur-extra. I would love this to become an actual typeface but I suspect the use of all the existing fonts would through up some major copyright issue.

All characters on Flickr.