A mid-week laugh..

Stevie Wonder as a hamster?

We can't quit laughing at these witty images, we saw on Dog Milk created by Takkoda.

Blue means trouble ?

Like opening a box of crayons when you were little, colors can always cheer us up. Especially on gloomy day like today.

Fast Company just featured What Colors Mean across 10 Cultures a infographic designed by David McCandless. When designing for international clients what an important tool. Interesting to know happiness is represented by red in Eastern culture but yellow in Western culture. Or the standard color for mystery is purple ?

Maybe Pinkergreen should reconsider opening our Asian branch since green represents evil. Hmmm....

Who says it's not easy being "green"...

Today marks the 40th anniversary of Earth Day. In honor of this very 'green' day, Pinkergreen would like to salute some of our favorite eco-chic products that we use to help reduce our carbon footprint.

Bite Bags - founded by a local Bostonian, these are reusable and machine washable produce bags created to make grocery shopping more eco-frienldy. According to Bite, the average shopper uses an estimated 260 produce bags each year.

"I am not a paper cup..." - To cut back on paper and $$$ bring your coffee from home! Decor Craft Inc. created a eco-friendly and resuable thermal porcelain cup to look like it came straight out of the coffee shop.

Nalgene Bottle - 8 out of 10 plastice bottles used in the U.S. become garbage or end up in a landfill (Container Recycling Insitute). BPA free, trusty and durable, I think I still have the same one from college.

MBTA - While we all love a good Sunday cruise in the car, despite all the hassles, the T is still our favorite mode of travel for commuting.

Neenah Paper - We make an effort to use an FSC certified paper for all of our print projects. Lately, we're in love the luxurious feel of Neenah Classic Crest.

Envio-Sak - Again, to make shopping more eco-friendly, and add some pizazz, Envio-Sak is a great alternative to a plastic bag. Plus they won't rip on your way home. We always keep them tucked in our bags for a quick trip to CVS.

Murphy's Oil Soap - While doing some Pinkergreen spring cleaning we noticed one of our long-time favorite cleaning products, Murphy's Oil Soap, is actually almost 100% biodegradable.

Zipcar - Urban dwellers rejoice! Some of us are signing up for Zipcar this summer, and when you enter code "orange" as a new customer you get $50 in free driving. Now that's an incentive.

What are you doing green today?

Pom Wonderful ?

The other day while driving on I-93 I spotted a new billboard ad titled "Cheat Death" from POM Wonderful (As shown above). While I think the POM Wonderful's new campaign is a clever solution for promoting the health benefits of drinking the juice, the shock value of a noose trying to draw attention made me a little uneasy. Maybe it's the recent media attention with the suicide of a Massachusetts teen in reaction to being bullied, but the overall tone left a bad taste in my mouth. The recent billboard ads have been featured in major metropolitan areas including: Boston, Chicago, DC, LA, Miami, and Toronto.

I guess it wasn't just me who was turned off by the ad, turns out POM has already received a fair amount of complaints throughout the various markets concerned that it was not a appropriate subject matter. On a more positive note POM has decided to pull the "Cheat Death" ad and replace it with other ads used in the campaign. Really surprised that one made it through testing at all…

A more serious look for Exdepia.

Last night I was booking a plan ticket for a weekend trip to Chicago. After searching the best offers, I decided to book my ticket through Expedia.com. Ticket prices aside the one thing that completely caught me by surprise was that Expedia re-designed their logo ! Turns out I am a little late to notice but the updated look was launched in January 2010.

As one of the pioneers sites for on-line booking, Expedia has positioned itself over the years as playful and quirky ( think of the jingle Expedia dot coooooom). I see no problem in adjusting your logo to become better defined, just don’t give up the equity that has been built around it. In the case of Expedia’s redesign I feel they lost their originality for something with a more corporate, less travel friendly feel.

Print isn't dead…

It's alive and kicking! And singing, and walking, and swimming– even flying in these new commercials from Go RVing and ATT. I love seeing how designers are incorporating print back into their animated TV spots, funny how something as "old-fashioned" as flat illustrations feel fresh and modern when they're intertwined with video and music. Even though I saw these collage-style TV spots during consecutive commercial breaks during the Master's this weekend, I didn't even mind the trend. As long as I'm concerned, anything is better than another Tiger commercial…

Beautiful Angle

I came across Tacoma-based print shop, Beautiful Angle, after Googling "vintage nautical" for inspiration for a client project. They have a bold aesthetic and really lovely sense of color that does feel, well a little "vintage"– go figure. Tacoma Screw even reminds me a little of a Lester Beall poster.

It's all Black & White...

KAPITAAL from STUDIO SMACK on Vimeo.

Featured on Fastcompany.com “Kapitaal” is a short animation that literally puts it in black and white, how much branding and advertising we see everyday. All we have to say is WOW !