If you recognize the slippers above it may give you a feeling of nostalgia, at least it does for me. They are the famous Taiwanese 藍白拖 that are so important they have a Wikipedia entry in Chinese. Now that summer is here and school is out I can once again wear them, and get odd looks from Hoosiers.

I haven’t posted for a while, because of the hectic end of the semester. I will now be a senior! I am moving out of my apartment and heading north to Fort Wayne until school starts back up in the fall. Here’s the catch, I won’t have immediate access to the Internet which is going to be interesting, as I’ve taken surfing the web every day for granted.

I was at the post office today mailing a textbook I sold on Amazon when the guy next to me was being explained how to track his package online. The guy replied, “What? Online?” Then the clerk said, “You know, the web.” Everyone around watched in awe as the man thought it over for a while he asked, “You mean like computers and stuff? I don’t got a computer.” What a wake up call. Sometimes I forget the Internet used to not exist. The guy looked a little like this:

For those of you who stumble across my website while I’m gone I recommend checking out the resources page for a list of links related to advertising and design in China and Taiwan. Also I strongly recommend checking out Alltop - China. I will be back in the fall, eager to get online and continue posting about design and advertising in China and tweaking my website. I need to fix some things, like the fact that my site looks like crap in Internet Explorer.

Filed under: 2008 Olympics, Advertising, China, Design, Graphic Design, Hong Kong, Illustration, Japan, Korea, Photography, Taiwan, Typography | Post a comment

From the Wall Street Journal

Filed under: Advertising, China, Design | Post a comment

Yet another ad in Coca Cola’s campaign for the Beijing 2008 Olympics.

via MadisonBoom

Filed under: 2008 Olympics, Advertising, China | Post a comment

One of the most popular Chinese actresses stars in this ad for Mercedes. She is known for movies such as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and House of Flying Daggers. Smooth…

via trendhunter

Filed under: Advertising | Post a comment

Thanks to TheDieline for some more Japanese packaging design.

Filed under: Graphic Design, Japan, Typography | Post a comment

A very nice article about the state of Chinese graphic design was just posted a couple days ago over at PingMag. Click here.

Filed under: China, Graphic Design, Typography | Post a comment

For some news a little closer to home, Renny Gleeson, global director of digital strategies for renowned ad agency Wieden + Kennedy (invented “Just do it” for Nike, and does work for Starbucks, Nokia, EA etc.) gave an inspiring talk at Indiana University yesterday. It was a basic overview of the digital advertising scene and how business models and strategies are adapting to the evolving environment. The benefit of attending these talks is the opportunity to hear from someone who is actually in the business and is targeting their talk towards you (in this case students). It is a whole different feel from watching TED talks.

Gleeson touched on hot topics like viral and social networking which are seen almost everyday on advertising blogs and sites like Adage but what stood out the most of course were the examples he showed. He ended his talk with “I want to see a ghost.”

He touched on something that happened in China that I was not aware of, a phenomenon much like American Idol called Super Girl. This TV show which allows viewers to vote via text message gathered a massive following in the hundreds of millions, resulting in the Chinese government forcing it to shut down. Why? Because this could teach the people of China that mass collaboration can change things. Personally I feel the future of Chinese communism looks grim, in the age of information the government can only hold the people down for so long. We’ll see what happens…

Filed under: Advertising, China | Post a comment