fail

All posts tagged fail

Having been in the graphic business for over two decades, I look at things differently than your average guy would, I guess.
And I’ve seen quite a few weird and bad Photoshop jobs pass my desk.
Sometimes you wonder “but… but… HOW??? WHAT were they thinking??” Also sometimes you look at something and you simply KNOW there’s something odd, but you can’t really put your finger on it, because it’s not all THAT clear from the start.

Yesterday I was flying from Denpasar to Manila, a 4 hour flight. Cebu Pacific (excellent company, I’ve flown with them many many times!) has their own in-flight magazine, as many carriers do, and of course there’s plenty of advertising in it. I finished my book, so I had plenty of time to scrupulously go through the whole magazine. And really, when you look at things closely, there’s a surprising amount of really shitty Photoshop work out there.

There was one with a swimming pool, where people and chairs were copy-pasted in, with reflections and shadows in every which (wrong) way, dwarfs and giants living harmoniously together, there were really REALLY bad masking jobs, and so on.
I picked out one of many for you that caught my eye specifically.

This one, supposedly a very upscale real estate company, hired one of Philippines’ most famous models to pose in their imagery. Look how she’s holding on tight with one hand on the railing of the speed boat and with the other hand on the glass of wine.
Oh, but hang on…

Real estate advertisement

Real estate advertisement, copyright belongs to the respective owners.
Snapshot of the advertisement page in Cebu Pacific Air’s in-flight magazine.

Details of the real estate advertisement

Details of the real estate advertisement

So basically every element in this adverts is copy-pasted to make this composite of images. And it’s done badly.

I kept on snickering when I paged through the magazine. The people sitting next to me probably thought I was pretty weird 😀

As a marketing person I look at things. I look at commercials, I look at posters on the street, etc. I may not look at them in the same way as a non-marketing person would, but I think in this case it doesn’t matter how you look at it, it’s a fail nonetheless.

Commercial posters like this are supposed to be made attractive so that people will come running to your store / shopping center. So when I passed this poster on the street, rather than getting excited to get there my jaw pretty much fell in my lap, because it’s so disgusting…’

Kluuvi shopping center ad

Kluuvi shopping center ad. Copyright by and courtesy of the genius AD/Design agency that came up with this.

I was in the car, so I didn’t have time to read all the small print. It may just be that this is a (bad) joke or a poster for an animal protection group, but I don’t think so. It may be that they try to convey the message that they are environmental/animal friendly with what they offer.
But what I see is a big header “Eat & Joy” with a picture of a terrified cow that smells the rancid smell of fear and death of his fellow cows in the slaughter house and the realization that his/her fate is exactly the same. I don’t feel at all inclined to come Eat & Joy in Kluuvi after seeing this poster.
It’s tasteless and totally misplaced in my opinion.

But hey… Whatever floats your boat. Maybe Kluuvi is aiming exactly at the people who get off on these kinds of images.