Leonard Savage

Things are heating up for the facebook icon personal project. Latest was Trend Hunter. Pretty high score overall for the work. More and more traction for these little icons, and a valuable learning experience for how to spread work on the blogs.

Click on the icon to launch the TrendHunter site.

After several months of freelance with Scholz and Friends Praha, we managed to finish our relaunch for Wustenrot. In the Czech market, most people do not know that Wustenrot offers a full range of financial services products and insurances. As a brand, they are perceived  to be a bit old fashioned. Before beginning a line of harder sell product advertising, we wanted to launch with a two week “image” campaign, letting people know that “right now” wustenrot has products and services that would come in handy for just about anybody in just about any situation. Special thanks to director Roman Valent and Boogie Films for their hard work on the image spot… shown below in the english language translation.

Image Spot

WUST_IMAGE_

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Follow-up Posters

While producing the TVC, we shot the same scenarios as still so that we could support the image spot with printed material. The stunning pictures by Jan Rambousek capture the spirit of what we wanted with the brand to be… humorous, visually stunning and modern in execution. With the strong orange branding, our small image campaign has already made a huge impression on the market, resulting in record visits to the website and stores, as well as a strong sense of internal pride and purpose within the Wustenrot company.

Just to give a small idea of how the materials looked out in the field. Quite a nice impression, especially in dreary, mid-February Prague.

Metro system tunnel

Here is an interesting piece. This is the longest billboard in Europe… and we took over the whole thing.

Magistrala Billboard

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Life Insurance Product campaign follow up

A few weeks after the image launch, we will begin a series of product spots promoting Wustenrot unique online life insurance products. The spots carry on the “prave ted” campaign line from the image spot, and highlight how Wustenrot comes in handy “right now” for people who find themselves (or put themselves) at risk. Again, special thanks to director Roman Valent and Boogie Films for pulling off a small production miracle.

Wustenrot_Witness_English

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Wustenrot_Campers

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Wustenrot_Hockey

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Print Campaign

Once again,a great series of pictures by Jan Rambousek. Shot on set in-between takes from the TVC.

Bus Shelters

We were able to sneak off two really interesting interactive bus shelters. Each one was motion sensor activated to respond to people standing in the shelter. First is a video we did for the case study.

Wustenrot Ambient

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"right now, someone is 1 in 3,000,000"

Standing under the cloud area triggers a flashing light and thunder sound

"right now someone is in the wrong place at the wrong time"

 In this shelter, the sound of smashing piano is triggered by a motion sensor within the shelter.

Click to enter the class

When you don’t think things through, you have no idea what to expect.

-me

 In a fit of occupational angst this past November, I signed up for a Hyper Island digital class. I knew next to nothing about the school, its format or what I was expecting to get from it. But I had heard from someone that it was “really cool” and “quite helpful”. I don’t remember who it was that told me this… nor do I think the conversation got more in-depth, but it was enough for me. (Authors Note: I quite my job and moved to Prague 5 years ago because I heard someone say Prague was beautiful, though I hadn’t actually bothered myself to look at pictures… so “half-cocked” is a tendency of mine) Also, the school is Swedish, which means it has to be awesome. And it is expensive, which means it has to be good.

Finally I can move on with my life.

I was told by someone close to me who has known me and my work for many years “Leo, you are about the only person left on earth who still does this” Well, I hope that’s true. For the first time in nearly 8 years, I have to seriously show a portfolio in order to build my name here in Greater Europe. So far the freelance plunge is paying off with some great new work on the table with my new S-Friends here in Prague (stay tuned for updates as we get closer to production, I am excited!!!) But so far the best part of going “freelance” has been the chance to reconnect with art direction, design and ad-craft. I love Creative Direction, but MAKING something that can be held in the hands still has a particular joy for me. Being rusty from 6 years of meetings and keynote presentations and rush deadlines, it was hard going at first. But after nearly 3 months of stressing and formatting, the books are bound, photographed and ready to go. So enjoy the pics and if you would like one, just email and if I can accommodate it, I will be happy to send along.

Here are the promo cards that are inserted inside. There are 9, so each book will have a random selection.

Chladek Fridgi is here.

We worked with IMG in Sao Paulo on a few projects this year and I would like to link up to the final version of a film teaser we did with them. Click the link here and check out Kinder Fridgi and Kinder Magnets. Special thanks as well to my brazilian Art Director extraordinare Felipe Franco who worked hard with them and got a beautiful result.

So the facebook icons are getting some really big love. Over a hundred blogs have linked to them around the world. The biggest to date so far… Wired.it. Really great. Click on the link here to see them…

I am a bit of a geek.

I have been a fan of epic fantasy novels since I was young. Starting with Lloyd Alexander when I was 9 and 10, and Tolkien during high school, I like to pick up a longer series every few years as a way to pass the inordinate amount of time I spend on planes and trains. Last year I discovered Steven Erikson’s “Malazan” series. It blew me away. A staggering work of vision, storytelling and concept,  I powered through about 9000 pages in 6 months. (even working 70 hours a week…) This year, the 10th and final book came out and I got about 4 pages in before i realized I had missed/forgotten/underestimated so many subplots from the previous books that were necessary to understand going forward. So I decided, during my summer off, to re-read the series. Along the way, I have decided to do a “poster-like object” for each book, capturing some aspect of it in a cool way. The goal is not to do some dungeons and dragons style fantasy trope, but to instead do something genre-irreverent (which I think was the spirit of Mr. Erikson’s books). Obviously, you need to read the books to get the concepts, so these are really for fans. If you have never read the books and these intrigue you, I suggest you try out this series.

So here are the first two of what I hope to be 10-15 visuals.

Book 1: Gardens of the Moon.

Book 2: Deadhouse Gates

Here’s some fun with Dragnipur while waiting on inspiration for Memories Of Ice.

Finally, cracked the third “poster”

Book 3: Memories of Ice

House of Chains.

Karsa is a seismic event.

So our Octavia 360 site is getting some love and recognition. Nice after all our hard work. We got a bronze the local art directors club here in Prague, and also a “site of the day” from Design Licks. Here is the entry video for the cyber awards in Germany. We’ll see how we do.

and the design licks site of the day

The success of Chladek in rasing awareness for Kinder refrigerated snacks led to other opportunities to expand the semi-freddi world. We developed a follow up promotion by created a series of Chladek inspired magnets.  To launch them, we created an on-line “Infinity Fridge” where the on-line community could take play with magnets on virtual refrigerator door. The more magnets that are created and uploaded, the bigger the door gets, ever expanding to accomodate the building of the worlds largest refrigerator magnet collection.

Here are some screen grabs, just in case the site is pulled down this year…

Savage Custom Tube Amps

“Made the way they used to.”

My father has a small business making classic style tube amplifiers. He makes each one by hand using old vacuum tubes that he has collected over the years. This past Christmas, I was home and saw the collection of boxes those tubes came in and was really inspired. As I love “found object” design, as well as great “bad” type, I wanted to take a stab at a campaign inspired by these boxes as well as my dad’s “old-fashioned” approach to his amps. These are the first three, and I hope to follow with another three, as he has some opportunity for small space advertising in Rolling Stone magazine. Special thanks to Radovan Subin for his nice pics.

“From before Nipplegate. Hell, from before Watergate.

“From back when Marilyn was Marilyn and Manson was Manson.”

“Sound from before M became TV”