The Miami Heat and Dallas Mavericks will reprise their NBA Finals matchup from last season on Christmas Day, the first day of this shortened NBA season. The Heat will likely get to watch the Mavs celebrate their Finals victory again before they tipoff their new season.

LeBron James, who says that it took him two or three weeks to start coming out of his depression after the Finals, isn’t going to enjoy the show too much.  Something he will likely enjoy is the launch of a special design for his ninth signature shoe with Nike, the LeBron 9, which is slated for release on Dec. 31st.

The Huffington Post reports that Nike is putting a little bit of Miami flavoring in the $170 shoe by commissioning locally-flavored art from one of the city’s coolest artists, Alvaro Ilizarbe, who goes by the name Freegums, for one version of the shoe.Continue reading...

No ink, no paint, and 100% cellulose paper. Too little ingredients for a bus ad for a big brand like ABSOLUT, right? Wrong. Those ingredients are what artist Simon Schubert and the brand's marketers feel best represents purity, or, "ABSOLUT Purity".

ABSOLUT Vodka is featuring the poster, above, in an Avenue de l’Opéra bus shelter in Paris. It consists of a single sheet of blank paper using only folds and shadows playing off lighting. That means no ink, no chlorine, and no color. The dramatic poster is meant to portray the multi-sided bottle the brand produced for holiday imbibing and New Year's ringing in, an eye-catching limited edition gift.

See more of the campaign in the video below:Continue reading...

Soccer in African nations has played a big part in Puma’s global marketing in recent years. That partnership has just taken another huge step forward with the unveiling of 10 new uniforms for 10 different African nations and a new exhibit at London’s Design Museum that showcases the new football kits.

Uniforms in a design museum? Well, they’ve all been designed by a “renowned artist from the Creative Africa Network, a PUMA platform connecting and promoting artists from and in Africa,” according to a company release.Continue reading...

Here it comes. You can’t avoid it. It’s “the most prestigious art show in the Americas.” It’s Art Basel, the annual art festival that takes over Miami Beach as soon as it turns nippy in New York and other climes. This year it's running from Dec. 1-4, pulling in “more than 260 leading galleries” from around the world, according to its site.

When you put that kind of art into that kind of location, a whole lot of money is likely to change hands. And where there is money, there is opportunity. At least, that’s what the folks at Christian Dior seem to think. So they set up the company’s very first pop-up shop in order to take advantage of the number of moneyed folks who will all be in one small geographical area.

Don’t think the space is going to be little, though. This pop-up is 3,100 square feet, “an explosion of fluorescent color and visual stimuli, a meld of Plexiglas and endless video screens” with “mannequins (that) sport black wigs dip-dyed in party pinks and purples,” according to Women’s Wear Daily. There’s a nail salon in the back and a food truck out front that serves French pastries and coffee. There’s a photo booth and rotating DJs and a game night that will feature “pinball and foosball tables” that have “designs inspired by the various necklaces, rings and bangles in the collection.” Naturally.

The pop-up isn’t the only ground broken by the iconic design house. The featured line is the first to be a partnership between Dior and an outside artist, German Anselm Reyle, WWD reports.

When Dior initially asked, Reyle didn’t exactly jump at the chance, WWD reports: “I waited a bit at first because it’s not the usual thing for artists to do such a collaboration,” he says, according to the site. “I had to think about it.” Three days later, he agreed.

Prices on the fluorescent-camouflage items in the Dior x Reyle collection, by the way, “range from $310 for a resin bangle to $4,500 for a metallic lambskin Lady Dior,” Women’s Wear Daily reports. Naturally.

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Leading British actor Joseph Fiennes, renowned for his rendering of Shakespearean language, recently teamed up with rising grime scene rapper Devlin to orchestrate Sonnet 129, the Bard’s most famous, as seen above (high volume recommended!).

The challenge: find common ground between Shakespearian poetry and modern street language. The result, to be featured on Devlin's next album, is part of the New Thinkers Index, an interactive digital campaign from Hyundai, resonant of their brand positioning, "New thinking, new possibilities."Continue reading...

Keith Haring was called “the Michelangelo of the New York City subway,” after five years of adorning train cars with his earliest signature chalk drawings alternately regarded as graffiti or pop art.

His bold, vivid lines and colors came to symbolize his enduring themes of life and unity. Fulfilling Haring’s desire to make his work widely accessible, his two original Pop Shop boutiques — one on Lafayette Street in New York’s Soho neighborhood, founded in 1986 (back when Soho was the hub of NYC's art world) and another in Tokyo — sold volumes of his designs and memorabilia including floor-to-ceiling murals. 

While the Keith Haring Foundation maintains an online Pop Shop, for a limited time only, a retail Pop Shop is back with a special encore installation at Pace Prints opening October 13.Continue reading...

Ben Stiller is using his Hollywood muscle (and powers of persuasion) for charity.

Tonight in New York, along with art dealer David Zwirner, a stunning array of contemporary art goes under the gavel for a great cause. The art auction begins at 7 p.m. Eastern and is expected to bring between $7.5 million and $10.5 million.

The Christie’s sale includes 26 works from artists such as Jasper Johns, Jeff Koons, Chuck Close, Cecily Brown, Paul McCarthy and Cindy Sherman, with each work expected to sell between $200,000 and $1.5 million plus.

All proceeds from the Artists for Haiti auction will go to Haiti-specific charities operating in the country including Architecture for Humanity, Partners in Health and Sean Penn’s J/P HRO. 

The genesis of the idea came from a trip to Port-au-Prince earlier this year, where Stiller’s charity, the Stiller Foundation, has been building schools. Stiller last month promoted his foundation in an SEO-savvy campaign that spoofed pal Jennifer Aniston's fame.Continue reading...

The above mural in Los Angeles was the winner in Dr Pepper's Pepperland Contest, conducted by deviantART over the summer.

Founded in August 2000, deviantART is the largest peer-to-peer online social network for ‘Deviants,’ aka the 18 million members who upload and share their original art works ranging from traditional media to digital and pixel art, films and anime, racking up page views of 43 million unique visitors monthly.

deviantART teamed up again with Dr Pepper for a “How do YOU Drink Your Dr Pepper?” contest that left the pages of online social networks and jumped to the walls of Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Users submitted 2,105 entries over three weeks and campaign analytics showed that entrants pushed their mural ideas via Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Live Journal, Stumbleupon and Reddit “to the tune of about 15.9 million total impressions.”Continue reading...