In our first post for the new year, I'd like to bring to your attention a little thing that Duane Reade is doing to NYers. If you're not familiar with Duane Reade, it is a local pharmacy chain here in NYC in the same vain as CVS, Walgreens or Rite Aid. First of all let me say this, because I haven't said it before on Word Vomit, but Duane Reade sucks balls for their new hideous designs. They're logo is wretched and the new color palettes they've introduced makes me want to urinate on the Pantone color book that was given to their graphic designer(s).

With that being said, not only have they introduced pastels of doom, they had the nerve to re-do their Spending Rewards Program. This was the only shining thing about the store. In these uncertain economic times, us NYers have come to rely on DR's rewards system. For every dollar you spend, 1 point is given. For every 100 points you get a, $5 coupon is issued. This was good. Those things came in handy, because you could get about $10 every month or so from DR, if you spent enough and sometimes you could. We've come to rely on them. It was a nice gift. Clearly, they saw this and decided to ruin it. So to pay for their expesnive and sucky store remodeling and to pay those awful graphic designers who changed their look, they had to go say fuck you NY and then proceeded to rape us in the face.

They had a mandatory change to the new RewardsFlex program. So this is how it goes now:

For every dollar you spend, 2 points are given. Pretty cool.

For every 500 points you get, $5 coupon is given out to you. Wait what the fuck?!

I roughly had to spend $100 to get $5 back. Now I have to spend $500 to get $5 back? Are you fucking kidding me? I have to spend $500 in Duane Reade? Best Buy doesn't even have the balls to do that and they sell fucking tvs and other shit!

For once I am utterly appalled by this and I wanted to channel my Jewish brethren and write a stern letter of disapproval and vow never to shop in their store again, but then I said to myself, where the hell will I shop at 1:OOAM when I need something? Fuck. Trapped like mice in a cage. Sneaky bastards. They've cornered me with this horrible points system. Do you know how long you could go before you'd spend $500 in Duane Reade? You could go months before you saw a $5 coupon. I'd rather not use it now.

Thanks very, much Duane Reade. I've never willing gotten raped in the face before until now and I've got to tell you -- if you're gonna be raping people in the face like this was Ozwald Penitentiary at least have the decency to have Christopher Meloni around. Fuckers.

Look, I love a clever ad as much as the next person, but come on... is the hairy asshole really necessary?

Also... think about the message here - 100% recycled AND you're pulling it out of someone else's ass. Not a big sell point!

Working nights has its benefits. Especially when you're riding the Long Island Railroad.

I often dread coming into the city during rush hour on Fridays (let alone coming to work period).  It seems that as my ticket price goes up, the seats on the train become less available. Thus, The T is stuck standing against the wall for the whole 45 minute trek into the city.

Us train commuters often find clever ways to take up our time while riding this boring, over-priced, transportation system. One way of keeping ourselves amused is by writing obnoxious things on the LIRR Posters.  (If they are still intact and not used as tape to repair the seat cushions.)

Which bring us to here... ( sorry for the long introduction but you know I love a great rant against the MTA.

You might have seen those posters plastered all over the place for the new Titanic exhibition in NYC. Well, while standing today on the train, I happened to peer over at one of the Titanic ads and this clever little caption was found:

"Look at the iceberg" (hahahaha)

Cynical yes.....

Yet, very funny. Bully to those clever minded railroad riders.

Shocking, huh?

I should preface this by saying: I am an American. I am also a New Yorker. I was here. I get it.

That said: I am also a graphic designer.

I've read a bunch of the comments (read: angry rants) about this ad - some of them just plain stupid and some with intelligent thought. I'm going to come right out and say it: I don't find it offensive or to be in poor taste.

Advertising and design are supposed to be shocking, thought provoking, and inciting. If you're not moved to some sort of reaction, then the designer didn't do their job.

Is it a touchy subject? Of course it is. Should we then avoid it at all costs because it might envoke a heated response? No. Absolutely not.

I think a lot of the issue people are having with the ad is actually in the tagline, which is this:

The focus isn't really September 11th, but the power of nature and our planet. People have argued that the ad should have focused on something like Global Warming and not the Tsunami, because, like 9/11, that would be an issue caused by man. I can understand that argument, but I also wonder if maybe they're missing the point.

The way I interpreted this tag was as making more of a statement on the power of nature versus the power of man. Yes, 9/11 was cause by man and most likely 100% preventable - not so much the case with a tsunami, however, I'm also of the belief that a good 70-80% of the things wrong with our planet are also being cause by man and probably in the same percentile for having been preventable (note: they're mostly no longer preventable - I do not believe anything or anyone can "save the planet" at this point, but at some point, they would have been), so the message I took from this was more along the lines of that old saying about a woman scorned - hell hath no fury like that of Mother Nature. If we don't respect and preserve the planet, she'll kill us - pure and simple - and nature has a greater extendible fist than mankind. We can only wipe out but a few, whereas she can take us all in one shot. Somehow, in this context, the ad makes sense to me - but maybe that's just me.

If the intent was to emphasize preventable tragedies, then yes, the written message could have been stronger - perhaps focusing on climate control or something that does have a direct link to our impact on the planet, rather than on the Tsunami (though there have been studies done on how human beings do impact the shifting of tectonic plates, none of the theories have been 100% conclusive).

The image itself is actually very well done - it's shocking, upsetting, provacative - pretty much things you'd want from an ad like this. It isn't glorifying a tragedy or saying September 11th wasn't horrible - it's saying that was horrible, and so is this.

I don't know. Maybe I've seen enough startling imagery in my career to make me immune to these things - or to have caused me to look at them from a rational perspective rather than emotional. I realize that analyzing as a designer is far different from doing so as a non-designer. That's not to say it doesn't bring out an emotional response from me, it does, but it's definitely not one of disgust and outrage towards those who created the piece.

FYI - the WWF has condemned the ad, saying they were unaware of its creation and publication, and rejected the concept entirely. The company responsible for the ad, the Brazilian subsidiary of DDB, has also issued an apology, stating that the ad never should have run to begin with.

It has also been revealed that there was a commercial created to accompany the ad, though it has since been pulled from YouTube and anyplace online we it may have been viewed. The print ad did win an award for public service from One Club, however, it has since been pulled from the site and no response has been given yet for why it was chosen.

I'm curious - what are your thoughts on the topic?

I guess they subscribe to the idea of subtlety being overrated.

Or maybe we're just a band of perverts. You tell us - what does this ad make YOU think of?

Was going through a couple of sites and happened to stumble upon this great designer.

Matt Elwood: Graphic Designer out of Newcastle. He's still finishing up his studies at Northumbria University.

Love his work!

• Great work on branding.
• Love the way he photographs his work for his portfolio .
• Layout of his site is just great.
• Well thought out concepts and ideas in all his work.

Check it out LINK

Macys and New York Magazine Advertisement - LIRR

I was amazed to see something different on the ride to work today.

Instead of the boring old,

• poorly created
• poorly mounted
• over pixelated
• and cheesy

rail road posters, to my surprise I saw beautiful flowing animation.

MTA's The Long Island Rail Road is changing over their traditional vinyl advertisements to new digital screens playing mini commercials.

Even though I enjoyed seeing how vandals creatively destroy, poorly created signs, I will not miss sitting on ripped chairs strategically mended together by vinyl cut-aways.  ( Cheap ass people piss me off )

As a Graphic Designer, I love the fact that companies are adapting themselves to new mediums and raising the bar on advertising. Yet, as an NYC commuter, this is not an investment I wanted to pay for with my 20% a year ticket increase. So you're charging me more on my ticket, to make more on your advertising. Then you have the gaul to cry poverty when your company is not making a profit. Something is wrong here, but I digress.

If you work in the city you must then be aware of all the JCPenney advertisements all over billboards, newspapers etc.. This campaign was created to promote their new and only store inside Manhattan.

Too bad they invested in a poor set of designers.

I don't know what's with Macy's, JCPenney's, Bloomingdale's, and all these large name department stores and their stupidity when hiring designers. Their hiring  process is tedious and long ( Plus, they almost always throw away good talent). You go through 5 or 6 interviews, your portfolio gets thrown to 50 different places. You would expect nothing more than great design.

And yet, you get a good old fashion case of the "WHITE CROTCH DISEASE"

For those of you who guessed "the black guy!" congratulations!

Valuable lessons taught at University of Wisconsin: If you don't have diversity, it's okay! You can just Photoshop it in later!

I fucking LOVE IT.

I was walking today to the train and I came upon this eyesore.

And no I'm not talking about Derek Jeter. I'm speaking about the huge piece of poorly written text taken over the middle of this extremely large poster.

The word is That's, not

TH

AT's

why don't you go ahead and add a hyphen, make it look more gaudy.

Also, can someone please tell me what is this advertising?  Baseball? Sports?

Don't bother commenting about the connecting Gatorade poster on the side, I already know about it. If you look at the two posters together, they are separate from each other and if they are supposed to be, then someone did a poor job of blending them together.

Sorry Jete, I love you and all, but this design sucks.