BBDO New York created and just released a series of print ads for the flooring company Armstrong. Each ad was photographed by Norman Jean Roy and features celebrity look-a-likes to emphasize their It only looks like the real thing tag line.

From Advertolog.com:

The campaign uses the theme “It only looks like the real thing” to show the upscale appearance and quality of Armstrong’s laminate floors. To highlight the theme, each execution features professional look-a-likes for well-known celebrities Lucille Ball, James Dean and Marlin Brando.

The photography is beautiful, natural, impeccably produced, and right in line with Roy’s style. Check out more of Roy’s work here.

Click and enjoy.

Photo by Kelly Campbell

Joshua Ferris’ debut novel Then We Came To The End is a funny and deliciously detailed story about a group of coworkers at an ad agency in Chicago.

It’s a fun read, especially for those of us who work in and with ad agencies.

One of my favorite parts of the book is when one of the agency employees Jim Jackers — struggling to come up with concepts for a particularly difficult campaign — calls his ornery old Uncle Max (who has graced Jim with ideas in the past) seeking new ideas and inspiration.

Max gives him a good idea and Jim tells him “he’d missed his calling.”

“You should have been a creative,” [Jim] said.

“A creative?” said Max.

Jim explained that in the advertising industry, art directors and copywriters alike were called creatives.

“That’s the stupidest use of an English word I ever encountered,” said Max.

Jim also told him that the advertising product, whether it was a TV commercial, a print ad, a billboard, or a radio spot, was called the creative.

Then,

Sometime later in the afternoon, Max Jackers surprised Jim by calling him back. “You folks over there,” said Max, “you say you call yourselves creatives, is that what you’re telling me? And the work you do, you call that the creative, is that what you said?” Jim said that was correct. “And I suppose you think of yourselves as pretty creative over there, I bet.”

“I suppose so,” said Jim, wondering what Max was driving at.

“And the work you do, you probably think that’s pretty creative work.”

“What are you asking me, Uncle Max?”

“Well, if all that’s true,” said the old man, “that would make you creative creatives creating creative creative.” There was silence as Max allowed Jim to take this in. “And that right there,” he concluded, “is why I didn’t miss my calling. That’s a use of the English language just too absurd to even contemplate.”

With that, Max hung up.

[Excerpt Copyright 2007 by Joshua Ferris]

One of the greatest validations of what we do as artists and creatives is having an agency, design firm, marketing department, or a publication bring you on for a project or an assignment based of your style of work. It’s happened to me and it feels great. And I love seeing it happen to others.

Photographer Richard Renaldi has a distinct style: very natural, solemn, and sensitive. Especially with his photographs of people.

© Richard Renaldi

© Richard Renaldi

© Richard Renaldi

Renaldi recently wrapped up working on a campaign for Microsoft and McCann (the ad agency) that is all him.

Microsoft ads photographed by Richard Renaldi

On his blog Renaldi writes:

In the end I am so happy…that [Microsoft/McCann] produced an entire advertising campaign of real people in eight by ten large format with all natural light- all extremely rare and unusual in this business especially in the digital age.

What’s even better is that they chose Renaldi to photograph it based on his style and vision, which is making photographs of “real people in eight by ten large format with all natural light.”

It’s a perfect example of good things coming your way when you stay true to your vision, are honest with and about your work, and make it your own way.

Poster by MODE for AIGA Charlotte

AdCharlotte.com points us to a super-cool poster the folks at MODE designed for an upcoming AIGA Charlotte event with designer Stefan Sagmeister.

Sagmeister is on the road plugging and talking about his book Things I Have Learned in My Life So Far and will be doing just that here in Charlotte on April 21, 2008.

About the poster:

For [Stefan Sagmeister’s] lecture tour stop in Charlotte, the AIGA was in need of a poster promoting the event. Inspired by the spirit of social discovery in Stefan’s book, MODE asked various individuals around the city to share some of their own personal maxims, which were captured in their very handwriting. The individuals were chosen at random and photographed over a 10-day period at 30 different locations around the city. They represent a variety of ages, social statuses, races, professions, religious beliefs, and life experiences. The final piece was elevated to greater social level and beyond design circles, having a reciprocal relationship between the city of Charlotte and Stefan.

Cheers to designer/photographer Maxim Vakhovskiy for the great photos.

Photo by Diane Arbus

Susan Sontag with her son David Rieff photographed by Diane Arbus in 1965.

Rieff writing about Sontag in his recent book Swimming in a Sea of Death:

“If I don’t believe in my own work,” she once said to me after one of her books had received a particularly disdainful review from a writer who made much of how seriously my mother took herself, “why should anyone else?”

© Armando Bellmas

Musician Ken Vandermark is the subject of an aptly titled television program called Musician. I stumbled upon this show recently on the Ovation cable network. It was great to catch a glimpse of Vandermark at work, at home, and on the road.

Vandermark is devoted to his craft, true to his vision, and is driven to make it successful both creatively and professionally. He’ll always be an important figure in my own creative/professional endeavors (especially since he was one of my first “clients” way back at the beginning).

Play on, KV.

The Vandermark 5 “Aperture (For Walker Evans)” (6:45)
from A Discontinuous Line

I recently read Brian Morton’s novel Starting Out In The Evening and was struck by this passage on “the glory of choosing your own life, even when it takes ruthlessness to do it.”

You seize your freedom in a spirit of rebelliousness, exuberance, defiant joy. But to live that choice — over the weeks and months and years to come — requires different qualities. It requires that you turn hard, turn rigid. Because it isn’t a choice that the world encourages, you have to wear a suit of armor to defend it.