Things that caught my eye this month

Creative inspiration for the advertising professional | October 2020

This re-do of the NYC subway map (and the story behind it)

This insurance spot from Allstate

These trompe l’oeil butterfly murals

This dark political satire

This story of the town that Hollywood is building outside Atlanta

This Oreo bunker

This play-doh for adults

This ad from Apple that shows you how the iPhone 12 will make you a cinematic genius

These trends in political logos

This interview of David Fincher

This look at how Singapore has changed over the last eight years

This “wear a mask” PSA in the style of the Mary Tyler Moore Show credits

This Q&A with Aaron Sorkin

These great sessions from Lions Live this month (you have to register to watch, but there is great content there):

• Ten years of Snickers’ “You’re Not You When You’re Hungry” campaign and the secrets behind its creative effectiveness
• This terrific behind-the-scenes look at TBWA/Chiat Day/New York at how they re-built their creative culture over the past three years
• This look at “lo-fi” creative and the role it plays in modern campaigns

These portraits (also, never let anybody tell you modeling isn’t hard work)

This look at Amazon’s evolving ad platform (that’s going to be a monster; we’re all going to be making ads for it, eventually)

This improvised-in-real-time song that seems to capture the mood of the moment and this movement piece that was inspired by it

The six templates of highly successful advertising

The man who invented college spam

This breakdown of influence on Tik-Tok

The pop-up-book techniques in this mis-heard lyrics video

This trick-or-treat robot

This session on Twitch with AOC

This history of the smiley face

This 2-minute Die Hard battery commercial (that’s sort of a mess, IMHO, but big-budget nostalgia commercials are a thing) and the behind-the-scenes story

This graphics package that explains how Covid is spread

This Oreo pride ad

These 25 “spectacular branding fails” from the past 25 years

This “sickwear” line from Mucinex

This unpacking of Ocean Spray and TikTok’s recent viral moment

This news that Jony Ive is working with AirBNB

These pictures of the Golden Gate Bridge

This look at TikTok and what it means for politics

This sand art

This round-up of political ads

This deep fake film from the South Park fellas

These self portraits

The story of what happened to the Castro Halloween party

Previous things that caught my eye: Early 2019 | Late 2019 | Early 2020| June 2020 | July 2020 | August 2020 | September 2020

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

John Kovacevich is a creative director in San Francisco. He publishes a weekly newsletter with bits of creative inspiration, just like the stuff above. You can see the newsletter here and subscribe if you’d like. You can read all his musings about the advertising biz here.