Zactopia

Darker side of the moon

zactopia — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 00:45:59 +0000

Now THIS is Pink Floyd on acid. It’s like an LSD trip inside an LSD trip—like if Timothy Leary directed Inception.

Seems not even prisms are immune to the pressures of being a rock ‘n’ roll icon.

But who said self-destruction has to be ugly?

What would you name this piece? Maybe something terribly obvious like Suicide by Refraction. You know, so people get it.

Anyhoo, those technicolor brains kinda look like a sideways NBC peacock, only more gun-induced and ROY G BIV-ier.

See?

So go ahead, brain the rainbow.

The best thing to happen since corn syrup

zactopia — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 22:02:56 +0000

Not sure if you caught the SEC Championship this past weekend—in which my beloved University of Georgia Bulldogs (second only to my first love, the Michigan Wolverines) self-destructed against the LSU Tigers—but if not, know that the most dramatic scene of the whole football match happened at halftime.

As part of the Dr. Pepper $1,000,000 Tuition Challenge, which basically is a philanthropic smokescreen to divert attention from its starring role in America’s obesity epidemic, Dr. Pepper staged the Tuition Throw during halftime. The winner was awarded $100,000 towards his or her tuition.

Backstory complete, let’s get to the good stuff—which occurs 1:02 into the video below. Thank you, Ivon Padilla-Rodriguez, for making such a triumphantly pathetic remark.

“Dr. Pepper is seriously the best thing that has ever happened to me.” Are you fucking kidding me? It’s safe to say those words have never ever been strung together before in human history—and for good reason. She should turn into a pillar of salt substitute just for thinking that.

If this quote doesn’t become a meme or get parodied somehow, then we’re all just idiots. Myself included.

Animation, meet your Maker

zactopia — Sat, 03 Dec 2011 07:55:21 +0000

A classic treasure to some, a fresh breath of cleverness to the rest of us heretofore ignoramuses.

So simple. So entertaining. Endless (although the ending of this one is quite clever).

Gotta love the old school ribbons and sounds. Spawned a spate more too, and with good reason.

Sitting is overrated

zactopia — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 01:02:40 +0000

For those who forsook chess because of all that damn sitting and/or lack of counter space, welcome back into the fold.

Vertical chess set. Simple. Smart (nerdy, even). Tidy. A bit too Rockwellian-looking (’80s catalog model inclusive). But sit-proof. Brought to you by Hammacher Schlemmer.

by dint of LaughingSquid

Sidecar perfection

zactopia — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 20:40:59 +0000

I used to think nothing could beat the run of old Skittles commercials for consistently brilliant weirdness. But Wieden+Kennedy has certainly risen to the task with Old Spice. Take a leering glance at this new tour de force.

Agency: Wieden + Kennedy Portland
Client: Old Spice
Creative Direction: Jason Bagley
Creative Direction: Craig Allen
Copywriter: Andy Laugenour
Art Director: Max Stinson
ECD: Mark Fitzloff
ECD: Susan Hoffman
ECD: Icaro Doria
ECD: Guillermo Vega
Director: Tom Kuntz
DOP: Philippe Le Sourd

Shame on you, Spirograph

zactopia — Sat, 19 Nov 2011 23:46:49 +0000

Who knew toy giant Hasbro could be such a purveyor of false hopes?

Much like peewee sports, geometric drawing toy Spirograph has only ever fed children’s delusions of skills they’ll never have. Particularly after witnessing what Singaporean spiraling maestro Chan Whee Chong can do with a single spiral line and a Faber Castell pen—sans stencils.

And sans mistakes. It’s taken the 33-year-old Chong (by day an art director at Hamburg design studio Kolle Robbe) months to complete the fingerprint-esque treasures below, after having to start over each time he made an error. Holy mindfuck, right?

Splendid idea for a pen ad to boot, commissioning a crazy talented artist to make badass shit and singularly reproduce masterpieces like da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, van Gogh’s Self-Portrait and Vermeer’s Girl With A Pearl Earring with your product. So nice work on that.

We have ways of making you not barf

zactopia — Sat, 19 Nov 2011 03:46:01 +0000

They are a clever, even cerebral bunch, aren’t they?

Exorcism time

zactopia — Sat, 19 Nov 2011 03:34:58 +0000

Pray you’re not riding a chairlift with her 10 years from now.

Porsche police

zactopia — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 02:41:07 +0000

Yeah, I saw this today.

No joke. The pig inside it was legit.

Welcome to California, motherfucker.

I’m still trying to figure out why this state has a debt problem.

Unintentional kitsch

zactopia — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 00:41:00 +0000

Two separate pieces of signage going on here, both of which amuse me to pieces and could easily warrant their own blog posts.

However, since I caught them both in one fell snap of my digital film camera, the planets have aligned to give you a twofer. Huzzah!

Let’s start with the foreground (i.e., Un-towing), then move back and to the left.

Am I the only one who doesn’t understand what Un-towing means? What would be the opposite of towing? Pushing? Maybe it’s just a fancy, pithy, ass-backwards way of saying, “We push shit for coin”? If so, I could use a good, sustained shove. But I’m not willing to pay for it. So there’s the rub.

From a color perspective, I don’t understand the need for 6 different colors on the building, each with its own distinct stratum (including white as a color here, because it fucking is).

Looks kinda like they started painting, ran out of desire or scrilla, and were all like, “Hey, we got ‘towing’ up there. Let’s go huff some more keyboard duster until we fish out.”

Typographically, it’s quite painful as well. Mixing the serif and sans serif = bad idea (at least, in this instance).

Then there’s “We do: kitch.” In a word, brilliant.

In quite a few more words, I’m wondering which came first—the window or the paint job? Obviously they meant to say “kitchens,” but how did it all go down? I like to pretend they simply misspelled “kitsch,” which would be a nifty niche market to corner.

Does the gaffe undermine their constructional abilities? Yes.

Perhaps it’s a show-don’t-tell way of saying, “We don’t do painting, asshole.” One thing’s for certain: the colon is a masterstroke. It subtly hints, “We don’t do grammar either, fuckwad.”

O, the wonderful world of word fragmentation.

Guitar is dead

zactopia — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 02:00:51 +0000

This is you, after you experience the following game-changing keytar solo by Croatian superhero Belinda Bedekovic.

We should all aspire to be this expressive.

Painting’s just a waste of good canvas

zactopia — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 01:10:37 +0000

In case you don’t live in Paris, Berlin, Barcelona, Madrid or Milan—and yet somehow still appreciate artistic innovation—have a gawk at the Converse Canvas Experiment by Amsterdam’s talented-and-gifted digital shop, Perfect Fools (with obvious offices in Naperville, Illinois and Stockholm). This shit is hot, yo.

What the hell is this Converse Canvas Experiment? you think to yourself, expecting to be censured harshly for your ignorance (since I can read your mind).

Quite simply, it’s a screen made out of Chuck Taylor All-Stars.

More specifically, a robotic shoe screen that does nearly whatever you ask of it—like a good robot should— short of a happy ending.

But don’t take my word for it.

The benefits of childhood obesity

zactopia — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 05:54:38 +0000

1. You can make videos like this man-boobed, dancing Indian lad, wear only a penis bra and be more than a little creepy—and yet, come off as totally awesome and even become an internet sensation.

2. There are no other benefits.