MonKeyArtAwards

Photoshopping Isn't A Crime. Yet.

Lawmakers in Europe have introduced a bill that would require digitally enhanced images to be labeled with the warning: "Retouched photograph aimed at changing a person's physical appearance." Read more in the NY Times or, for those who prefer the news served snarky side up, here at Gawker.

Click on image to enhance its physical appearance.

Better Too Soon Than Never

These lookalike posters were sent to us by Orkaan, our far-flung poo flinging correspondent in the Netherlands.

Since the Perfume one-sheet was done way back in 2006, we think you will agree that the Dorian Gray poster qualifies not as an appropriation, but as a respectful homage.

Click on images to enlarge.

Graphic Designer vs Client

Gimme An F!

The Live Feed's Best & Worst Fall TV ads are HERE!

The Bottom Twenty

1.  Renegotiating payment after a job is delivered.

2.  Kickbacks.

3.  Representing someone else’s work as your own.

4.  Calling vendors for overnight/emergency/no-charge work after 6pm Friday for delivery by 8am Monday.

5.  Marketing-speak.

6.  The 80-hour workweek.

7.  Phony deadlines.

8.  The use of Photoshop filters as a concept.

9.  Job title inflation.

10. Kickoff meetings.

11. Tantrum addicts.

12. Coercing vendors to attend expensive charity functions.

13. Art directors as clients.

14. Clients as art directors.

15. Burbank.

16. Insultingly low budgets that they swear they’ll make up for on the next job -- forgetting that this IS the next job.

17. The proliferation of character posters.

18. Poncy art school weasels.

19. “Have fun with it!” as creative direction. 

20. The lethal mix of ambition and incompetence.

An Important Public Health Warning From MonKeyArtAwards

Superficial-typographic dermatitis (STD) is a virulent graphics infection that is highly resistant to most antibiotics. The initial oubreak appears as a noticeable serif font on the left cheek.

If left untreated, it soon erupts into an invasive bold typeface, spreading over one side of the face.

In its final stage, it mutates into a distressed grunge font, covering the head and neck with painful and unsightly capitol letters.

iPod. iFame. iDol.

Click on image to enlarge.

Pushing Pixels

If you’re like us, you spent a sizeable portion of yesterday’s billable hours gleefully reading the comments re: Takers that were posted on Photoshop Disasters and Perez Hilton and Geek Tyrant.

Now that we all view posters on our 24 inch wide screen LED cinema display monitors, rather than merely as we stroll past them in theatre lobbies or drive by wild posts on Santa Monica Blvd., we judge them on the arrangement of their pixels rather than the overall composition.

While we expect finishers and art directors to weigh in on the craptacular Photoshop skills of their comrades, we can’t help but grow dismayed at the sheer volume of nitpickiness we now hear coming from every Hinz und Kunz out there.

So, with the barbarians at the gate, we must say something here in defense of our brethren: as far as the strips on these characters go… well, who knows? We have all had the unnerving experience of being at a photo shoot with an actor or actress who, standing there before you in real life, looks just like a really bad headstrip.

No Takers On This One

If you’re like us, you can’t get enough of these smirky rat pack posers in their stingy brim hats and their shiny suits. So, at first glance, we were delighted when one of our readers sent us this he-manly poster. But our mood darkened when we read the accompanying lament, “I expect more from Sony, with all the $$$ they spend!”

Before you take this one-sheet’s key artistry to task, be aware that it’s already been raked over the coals at our beloved Photoshop Disasters  and even by the unwashed masses who read Perez Hilton.

I Can't Do A Disparate Campaign All By Myself

If Lionsgate's marketing strategy was to leave us utterly confused as to whether this was a movie about a florist, an optometrist or a disco queen, then let us be the first to say mission accomplished!

  Click on image to enlarge.

Marketing Weenie Watch

We Have Seen The Future Of Print Advertising… And It's On Computers

According to Variety, ABC is “hoping to attract a few more fanboys and gals” to its new show FlashForward by running print ads with codes that, when held up to a webcam, turn the picture on the computer screen into a 3-D ad.

"It appears to play right out of the ad," says ABC’s advertising and marketing veep Darren Schillace. "Once you watch all the videos, it's a 10-minute experience. In the normal world, you'd never spend 10 minutes with a print ad." 

Obviously Mr. Schillace is unaware of the 20 minutes we in the normal world devote to reading all those warnings listed in fine print in a Celebrex ad.

We picked up the October issue of GamePro to see this for ourselves and, as much as we appreciate the innovation, it remains, for all intents and purposes, a tune-in print ad: complete with a headline, visual, title art, date and time sign off and network logo. Given ABC's claim that their ad is savvy enough for the audience it is aimed at, it comes across as somewhat timid compared to the teaser for 9.

Ars Gratia Artis

If you’re like us, you’ve noticed a trend toward a mix of faux naïve drawing and photography popping up posters recently.

And now one of our readers has sent us this link to movie posters created back in the 80s and 90s in Ghana by “artists who were given the artistic freedom to paint the posters as they desired - often adding elements that weren’t in the actual films, or without even having seen the movies.” 

Sounds like a workers’ paradise, doesn’t it?

We’re not sure if these key art and crafts are truly primitive or just way ahead of the curve. 

 Click on images to enlarge.

Rainy Days And Mondays (And Photoshop Motion Blur Filters) Always Get Us Down

Orkaan, one of our many international correspondents, sent us this collection of rain soaked one-sheets:

And, as a special bonus feature, here are three movie with "Rain" in the title, yet no rain on the posters.

Click on images to enlarge.

Left Behind

Variety tells us that this summer is the highest-grossing summer ever in the history of domestic box office. And all those fired studio execs? Maybe they really were just a layer of expendable, inert gas after all.