COMMUNICATION ARTS TYPOGRAPHY ANNUAL 5
Ditte Isager Emiliano Ponzi Local Projects 180la Device Creative Collaborative Exhibit
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by Julie Prendiville Roux
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n an eponymous nutshell, ad agency 180LA is itself a 180: transforming the assumed into a fresh perspective. Thankfully, the clients it attracts have transformation stamped into their own brand DNA. And along the way, 180LA has created compelling, concrete examples of how agencies might fluidly move their clients’ stories from broadcast to online to print to experiential, never dropping the thread. Travel, entertainment, athletic prowess, cars, music, recreation—these are all jumping-off points where 180LA takes routes less obvious. In 2012, for example, Chicago Bulls player Derrick Rose was the youngest MVP the National Basketball Association (NBA) had seen. 180LA client Adidas— whose identity is wrapped into honoring athletes and providing the equipment, opportunities and experiences to help each player be his or her best—sponsored Rose, and it was a magnetically exciting time. Then, in a crushing blow, in the first round of the NBA playoffs, Rose tore his anterior cruciate ligament (ACL), one of the main ligaments that keep the knee stable. An ACL tear is a devastating injury for a weekend warrior and is potentially life-altering for an elite athlete. His banner season ended in that one moment.
“I’ll never forget watching the game at home that night,” says Ryan Morlan, global director of communications at Adidas. “180 and I were on the phone immediately, talking about what to do. It was decided that we should embrace the moment. Follow Rose in his recovery.” That very night, the cameras started rolling, giving fans, and the world at large, access to an athlete who was at the top of his game—as he
struggled to get back up. The project, “The Return of D Rose,” turned into a documentary-style package of emotionally compelling messaging—a 60-second television spot; a weekly, six-episode web series; a Facebook presence; and a Twitter feed, #TheReturn. Rose is searingly real through all of it, from the buckling pain of rehabilitation to the uplifting glimpses of recovery. Throughout the campaign, fans tweeted nearly sixteen million messages of encouragement to Rose. A season and a half later, Rose was back on the court, but thanks to the campaign, Adidas was never out of play. It was transformation on many levels—Rose showed what an elite athlete who falls to an injury has to endure, lifting the veil for fans worldwide; fans were able to personally reach out to their hero; and Adidas gave a real-time life lesson in truly honoring an athlete, and not just on winning game days. William Gelner, 180LA CCO and a managing partner, says, “Doing good and doing good business aren’t mutually exclusive. Whenever there’s a chance for us to do good, we’ll go there.” For Sony, the agency turned an assignment to create a single banner ad into a film project that positively affected gifted science students in Compton, an economically depressed section of Los Angeles. “Today’s Sony VAIO laptop has more computing power than the first Apollo rocket to reach the moon,” Gelner explains. “So we decided to use it to build a rocket.” The agency recruited eight students from the California Academy of Mathematics and Science, a high school in South Los Angeles, and paired the academically gifted students with a mentor who guided them in designing,
Captions were provided by 180LA. William Gelner served as executive creative director on all projects shown. Right: “During the first round of the 2012 NBA Playoffs, Chicago Bulls player Derrick Rose tore his ACL, ending his season. While most brand sponsors would shy away from that grim reality, we helped Adidas embrace it. By following every detail of his injury and his recovery process, we made sure that D Rose was top-of-mind for fans even when he wasn’t on the hardwood. Our fully integrated campaign utilized the hashtag #TheReturn to activate audiences through a website, social media, a 60-second TV commercial and six webisodes that aired weekly.” Matthew Woodhams-Roberts, art director; Dave Horton, writer; Grant Holland/Gavin Milner, creative directors; Peter Cline, executive producer; Adidas, client. 46
Typography Annual 2015
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POSTERS 1 Cedomir Kostovic (Springfield, MO), typographer/designer/ art director Bienal del Cartel Bolivia, client Invitational poster and a tribute to renowned poster collector Rene Wanner. “To make the curved letterforms, I drew them on sheets of transparent foil, rolled the sheets into tubular shapes, then photographed them with a phone. I traced the images’ letterforms with Adobe Illustrator, then colored and arranged them on the poster to spell the name ‘Rene Wanner.’ The multicolor letterforms represent a collection of diverse poster genres with diverse origins.” 24 × 34, limited edition digital on Epson Cold Press Bright Fine Art paper. Typefaces: Myriad Pro Bold, Neue Helvetica LT Std 77 Bold Condensed.
2 Iwona Rypesc-Kostovic, typographer/designer/art director Iwona Creation (Springfield, MO), design firm Zvono Gallery, client “This poster was designed for an exhibition of prints about the life and death of the Countess Sophie Chotek von Chotkow und Wognin, best known as the wife of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, whose assassination in Sarajevo in 1914 started World War I. In the poster, the countess’s name is ornamented with Schwabacher typography and filled with the delicate texture of embroidered historical handkerchiefs to represent different stages in her life.” Typeface: Bruce 532 Blackletter by Intellecta Design based on a typeface designed in 1882 by Bruce’s New York Type Foundry.
3 Jessica Svendsen, designer Michael Bierut, art director Pentagram (New York, NY), design firm Yale University, client “Since 1998, Michael Bierut’s ongoing series of posters for the Yale School of Architecture have followed simple design parameters: one standard size, black and white, and all type, in hundreds of different fonts. Designed by Jessica Svendsen, this 2014 poster announcing the school’s spring lectures and exhibitions features custom typography, rendered as a single, continuous strip of tape that twists and folds in on itself to form dimensional lettering.” 22 × 34, 2-color, offset. Typeface: News Gothic.
4 Kjell Ekhorn/Jon Forss, typographers/designers/art directors Non-Format (St. Paul, MN), design firm Tokyo Type Directors Club, client “The Tokyo Type Directors Club Exhibition showcases the most outstanding work from the 2014 Tokyo TDC Annual Awards, hosted for the first time in the United States, by Concordia University St. Paul, Minnesota. Non-Format’s poster is a follow-up to the design it made for the Tokyo TDC exhibitions in Japan. The design features a special 3-D TDC image and custom typefaces created specially for the project.”
5 Leland Maschmeyer/Tom Wilder, designers Collins (New York, NY), design firm Type Directors Club, client This poster promotes the Type Directors Club 60th International Typography Competition. 36 × 24, 1 white foil, 1 holographic foil, black paper stock, foil stamped, offset. Typeface: Prestige Elite.
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TYPEFACE DESIGN 1 Carolyn Porter (White Bear Lake, MN), typeface designer P22 Type Foundry, foundry “P22 Marcel Script is named in honor of Marcel Heuzé, a Frenchman conscripted into labor during World War II. During the months Heuzé was in Germany, he wrote letters to his beloved wife and daughters back home in France. Heuzé’s letters contain both beautiful expressions of love and extraordinary testimony of survival within a labor camp. The goal was to create a font that retained the expressive character of Heuzé’s original handwriting.”
2 (series) Kosal Sen, typeface designer Philatype (Philadelphia, PA), foundry “Lovato was born from the lack of contemporary typefaces that use Latin, or triangular, serifs. Whereas most Latin typefaces take their classical proportions from inscriptions and calligraphy, Lovato is more geometric in construction. Included in this type design is a wide range of weights that showcase different personalities, from a delicate light to a commanding black.”
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