Kids bored with nothing to do? Here's a little project that will keep them busy. It just takes paper (a lot of paper), some help with cutting and about 245 hours. An MFA in art would help, too.

That's what happened when Audi asked graphic design artist Taras Lesko to create a paper version of its new A7. Using photos and drawings supplied by the brand as reference, he made more than 750 individual pieces out of card stock that he then printed, folded and glued together in painstaking detail.

His only equipment was a laser printer, two desktop cutting plotters, glue and an X-acto knife. It's all part of the automaker's "Bold Design" Facebook promotion for the new model — below, another example of creativity inspired by the vehicle's design.Continue reading...

You know him from his TV commercials; now you can apply to be the next James Dyson — provided you have a great idea that solves a problem, much as Dyson's solved the problem of vacuum cleaners losing suction as they pick up dirt by removing the bags.

The 2011 James Dyson Award is open for entries through August 2nd, inviting engineering and design students to develop problem-solving inventions. The award, run in 18 countries, "celebrates ingenuity and creativity" with the winner receiving £10,000 to develop their invention and £10,000 for their university.

Dyson, a champion of design and technology in education, is also sponsoring a competition to inspire children's inventiveness through PizzaExpress restaurants in the UK — first prize is a design workshop by Dyson's foundation at the winner's school.

Google has been getting more ambitious with its homepage logo tweaks — dubbed Google Doodles — this week. Tuesday saw an animated logo to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the first space flight, by Russian astronaut Yuri Gagarin.

Today, its homepage features its first video logo, with an embedded version of the 2-minute YouTube video above, an original ode to Charlie Chaplin on the eve of what would have been his 122nd birthday tomorrow.Continue reading...

For the Olive Garden chain of fast-casual restaurants, one of those teleporters from Star Trek would come in very handy right now. Because with everything Olive Garden is doing — from its new TV ads to a restaurant-remodeling campaign — they want you to whisk you to Tuscany.

The new commercials highlight the fact that Olive Garden sends dozens of its chefs to its culinary institute in Tuscany for training with those who create the genuine Italian cuisine that the brand attempts to duplicate in its US restaurants.

The chain also recently announced that it is remodeling 400 of its more than 730 locations over the next two years in an effort to reinforce its Tuscan heritage with consumers. The new look, called Via Tuscany, draws its inspiration from a Tuscan farmhouse, Olive Garden says, and features not only a brick arch and newly planted cypress trees, but also – you guessed it – Tuscan stone.Continue reading...

If they didn't know before, most people now realize that the screechy, nasal daffy voice emanating from the Aflac duck in its commercials for the last decade was that of comedian Gilbert Gottfried.

They also likely know that, in a masochistic move that bordered on financial (if not professional) suicide, Gottfried inappropriately tweeted some crass jokes about the Japanese disaster and was summarily dismissed as the brand's mascot voice by the insurance company.

Little did he know (or at least, care) that three quarters of Aflac's revenue comes from its Japanese business.

Aflac, meanwhile, is moving on. With an advertising mascot that has literally been the voice of the brand for a decade, it's not about to let the duck die — or even duck the controversy.Continue reading...

The tears are barely dry on the Motor City denizens who were inspired by Chrysler’s Super Bowl ad above (now knocking on 10 million YouTube views) and already the carmaker is having to defend its “Imported from Detroit” slogan against intellectual-property theft.

In the same week that Chrysler unveiled its own line of merchandise based on the “Imported from Detroit” theme of its Eminem commercial, the company had to file a trademark-infringement lawsuit against Detroit retailer Pure Detroit for using the tagline in its t-shirt designs.Continue reading...

Like members of some ancient tribe huddled around a big campfire, the first thought of Michiganders who were watching the second half of the Super Bowl on Sunday when the Chrysler ad came on was: This is good for our race!

The down-but-not-out depiction of a heroic Detroit in the Eminem spot literally had thousands in Chrysler’s hometown cheering and clapping by the time the two minutes were over — and millions more beyond.

From shots of local icons such as the Diego Rivera mural at the Detroit Institute of Arts, to an appeal to car buyers to consider luxury “imported from Detroit,” the spot's title, the ad was a veritable paean to why people still survive and even thrive in southeast Michigan.Continue reading...

A great keen communication / There was a new ad
A Super Bowl tradition / Audi's attempt to
Appeal to the nostalgia of a nation...

In a move that mixes a number of concepts, Audi has debuted a new 60-second TV ad meant as a prelude to the automaker's Super Bowl ad. The ad, Audi told us in its announcement, "taps into viewers’ notions of old luxury with the help of an unlikely literary inspiration: Goodnight Moon, the 1947 children’s book by Margaret Wise Brown" by mirroring "the cadence and rhyme scheme of the original." Audi's co-opting of the classic book follows a recent resurgence of its profile. But does it make any sense?Continue reading...