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New Campaign for BI-LO Invention Convention

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BI-LO, our grocery store client, sponsors an event every year called The Invention Convention. Basically it’s a science fair for midlle-school kids in Greenville County, except instead of homemade magnets and volcanoes, all of the entries are original inventions. The kids are asked to think up some useful device that solves an actual problem. And it has to be an invention they can actually make. So no flying cars or water-powered engines. All entries have to be real, practical, simple inventions. Last year the winner was a girl who invented a little pouch that held her insinulin monitor and hung discretely from her bra. Simple. Yet very cool.

Our assingment was to create posters and billboards for the event. I worked with Chad Patterson, a great freelance art director and illustrator. We thought it would be fun to show what kind of inventions could potentially be entered in the contest. The three executions that comprise the posters are our favorites from the list. Remember, this is advertising to kids and their parents, so we weren’t going for high-brow humor. It was a fun assignment.

Here are the posters.




And here are the billboards.



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Everlost

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A wonderfully imaginative Young Adult novel. Between mortality and the afterlife is a place called Everlost, a dumping ground for children who get tripped up while traveling toward the “light at the end of the tunnel” following death.

The novel begins with a fatal car crash. Two young teenagers, one from each car, die in the accident and bump into one another on their journey to the afterlife, knocking them off course and sending them cascading into Everlost. There they meet another “afterlight” (their term for ghosts) stuck in Everlost. The story that follows if moving and fun and incredibly creative. Everlost is a universe adjacent to, but much different than, our own. How the children adapt, struggle to survive, and find their place in such a new and often menacing world is a wild read. Very recommended.

Two More Epson Posters

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Here are the two other Epson posters I failed to include in a previous post. These are my least favorite of the bunch. But I still like the photography.


New Campaign For Epson

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This is a new poster campaign I did for ScanSource. We were advertising an Epson receipt printer. It’s supposedly the fastest receipt printer on the market, speeding up the checkout line and getting people out the door quickly. The big idea for the campaign was to showcase those people who typically slow down the checkout line and suggest that that the Epson TM-H6000 printer can handle even the toughest (slowest) customers. Kind of a silly campaign, but we had fun executing it. Jason Locke was the art director. Lon Murdock out of Charlotte was the photographer. The talent were mostly out of Atlanta. We picked a name for each of them: The Check Writer, The Credit Princess, The Piggy Banker, The Smooth Operator, The Heavy Couponer, and The Bulk Buyer. I think you’ll be able to identify who’s who.




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Robert Crais

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It all started last year with THE TWO-MINUTE RULE. In a word, it blew me away. Well, okay, that’s four words, but suffice it to say it wowed. I was introduced to who I know consider “the man” of crime fiction. If you’ve never read Crais, don’t start late at night if you have to get up early the nest morning. You will lose sleep. In fact, sleep with suddenly become so inconsequential that you may forget to go to sleep at all. The man does it all: (1) Openers that start with a bang, usually literally. Before you even know what’s going on, you’re running, people are dropping, guns are firing, cars are crashing. Who knows? It could be anything. But whatever it is, it’s like chewed gum on the sidewalk, once you step in it, you can’t walk away. You’re stuck. Riveted. (2) Characters you love instantly. Elvis Cole and his tough-guy, sunglass-wearing partner Joe Pike feel a lot like Spenser and Hawk from the Robert Parker novels, only cooler, younger, and with LA street smarts instead of Boston old-school smarts. LA Requiem is one of the best dern novels I’ve read, I think. Classic. A keeper. Lauren has been chewing through these as well. We bought a big lot of Crais novels over the internet, and she’s read them all. She’s hooked. You would be too if you gave them a shot, which I strongly suggest you do. That is, if you haven’t already.

This was my first Elvis Cole experience. Not a bad one to start with. Elvis and Joe go after some seriously messed up bad-guys who have kidnapped Elvis’s girlfriend’s son. Detective work at its best.

In THE WATCHMAN Joe Pike agrees to pay off a debt by taking a dangerous security job: protecting a Paris-Hilton-like playgirl from the mysterious hired thugs sent to kill her. Non-stop-actiony goodness. Like all of Crais, it keep me guessing for a long time. Best of all is Joe Pike himself. The man makes Bruce Willis in the Die Hard movies look like a cub scout.

War of Gifts by Orson Scott Card

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This is a Christmas book, but don’t let that fool you. It’s not The Christmas Box, no happy-go-lucky aw-shucks Christmas story here. It’s Battle School. Which means it gets ugly. Very bad things happen to people. Which means it’s Orson Scott Card at his best. Ender fans (ie. people like me) cannot, should not miss this one. One of the best opening chapters of Card’s I’ve read in a while. Go. Buy. Give to a friend. It’s wonderful. Oh, and did I mention it has Ender in it?