Holiday Kaleidoscope Cards For The Luxe Project Are Both Beautiful and Beneficial.

The Luxe Project is a new initiative that teams brilliant creatives with Luxe by MOO – and helps good causes as well. Their designs will be showcased for a month, and 100% of net proceeds will go to the designer's charity of choice.




This month's design is Holiday Kaleidoscope, a collection of postcards or notecards that feature Christmas and winter iconography as stylized snowflakes or mandelas. There is a different design on every Postcard or Notecard in a pack and they are available in various colors.





Designer Armin Vit of UnderConsideration tells Mohawk Papers that "I had just finished doing this faux redesign for Brand New where I did these funny “moustache mandalas“. I really liked the process of doing them and the result, so when MOO.com asked us to do the holiday card I thought it would be a good opportunity to keep flexing that idea. I asked my wife Bryony, who does these great charming illustrations, to do as many holiday “thingies” as she could. In about eight hours she had done about 20 or 30 of these things, then I obsessively arranged them in 12 different radial configurations, which became 25 different cards."



The Holiday Kaleidoscope collections benefit Blink Now, an organization that aims to do more than just make ‘quick fix’ donations – it empowers young people to come up with and achieve lasting solutions to poverty issues in their communities.





About the Designers:


Holiday Kaleidoscope was designed by Bryony Gomez-Palacio and Armin Vit. Born and raised in Mexico City both are graphic designers and co-founders of UnderConsideration, each with a decade of experience in various disciplines including corporate and brand identity, annual reports, business collateral, web design and programming, packaging, as well as magazine and book design.


About Luxe Cards:


Luxe are the gold standard of paper quality at 600gsm/32pt, everyone who receives one will experience a quality and weight like no other card.

Luxe, available as Business Cards, MiniCards, and Postcards, was designed by Product Designer Paul Thorogood to be the ultimate conversation starter. With that in mind, they invented a technology called Quadplex, (entirely unique to MOO) so that Luxe cards could look as spectacular as they feel.

UnderConsideration's set of ready-made 25 Greeting Cards is on sale right now and with their quick turnaround (about three days), you can still get them in time for Christmas.

Shop The Luxe Project here

Owen Wilson in The Killers' Christmas In LA , a 5 Minute Melancholy Mixed Media Music Video.

The Killers have shared their latest charity Christmas single, Christmas In L.A., whose proceeds will benefit the Global Fund to Fight AIDS. This is the eighth year that the Killers have partnered with (RED), the AIDS awareness organization founded by Bono and Bobby Shriver, to produce a Christmas single.



Directed by Kelly Loosli (who is the program director of BYU's animation program) , the mixed media five minute and 12 second music video casts Owen Wilson as a melancholy out of work actor who is dreading December 25th in Los Angeles. I'm not sure if this is odd or perfect casting given Wilson's suicide attempt in 2007 , which everyone seems to have forgotten. The lonesome video also features actor Harry Dean Stanton (below with Wilson) and animation by Loosli's students at Brigham Young University.




Watch the video below, and head over to iTunes to purchase "Christmas in L.A.," which features supporting vocals from Dawes.



The Killers

Saks Fifth Avenue's Dramatic 3D Light Projection Holiday Show and YETI Holiday Windows

On Monday, November 25, Saks Fifth Avenue's flagship store came alive with the unveiling of its iconic holiday windows and the debut of its Snowflake Spectacular, a dramatic 3D light show projected onto the façade of the building.


above: Saks' holiday mascot, a shaggy YETI appears in the projected light show as well as in the interactive windows.

Saks Fifth Avenue's annual holiday light show turned the façade of the iconic luxury retailer into a traffic-stopping festive 3D spectacle. Snowflakes, ice skaters, gifts and a Yeti all interact through a custom-built, six-projector system. Iris Worldwide developed the dramatic light show, which utilizes state-of-the-art imaging technology to create a vivid 3D projection that maps the holiday story onto the building's exterior. The show will continue every evening throughout the holiday season.



It's the year of the YETI at Saks with interactive the light show, holiday windows, mobile apps and more featuring the story of the legendary Yeti, who is rumored to live on the roof at Saks, making snow during the holiday season.



Each window depicts a scene from Yeti’s life, from his humble beginnings as an unappreciated snowmaker in Siberia to his starring role as a true snowflake artist in New York.












The YETI plush toy and the accompany storybook (shown below) are available from Saks Fifth Avenue


Spectators can add a personal touch to the window display too. Before arriving, visit saks.com/snow to discover your Yeti name and create your own snowflake, which can later be pinged from your phone onto the tableaux.



The mobile site was created by New York-based The Science Project, featuring artwork from renowned designers Marian Bantjes and Stefan Bucher.




Another special window features a holiday Cadillac. The "Frozen Escalade" prominently features the front clip of a White Diamond 2015 Escalade — a limited edition model offered exclusively to Saks customers. The display's vehicle will have functioning LED running lamps, which appears to be embedded and breaking through a block of ice.



Other Fifth Avenue windows will feature blueprint architectural drawings of the 32 Marian Bantjes snowflakes that have become synonymous with the holidays at Saks Fifth Avenue and will serve as the backdrop to the fashion featured in this year's windows.



Cookies featuring Banjes' snowflake designs were served to guests at the unveiling:


"It gives every one of us at Saks Fifth Avenue great joy to share our iconic holiday windows with the city of New York," said Richard Baker, governor & CEO of Hudson's Bay Co., parent of Saks Fifth Avenue. "The window unveiling is the official start to the holiday season here at Saks, and I am honored to carry the tradition forward with this celebration. Everyone — from resident New Yorkers to tourists — will be dazzled by this year's display."

images courtesy of Saks Fifth Avenue , Racked NY and additional information about the light display courtesy of Digital Signage Connection.

Harvey Nichols Hilariously Markets Christmas Shopping To The Selfish This Season.

They say it's better to give than to receive, but not at the marketing department in Harvey Nichols. Their new hilarious holiday campaign, ‘Sorry, I Spent It On Myself’ offers a range of ‘Ultra Low Net Worth’ (ULNW) gifts for those customers who understand that a little something for their nearest and dearest means a bigger something for themselves.


above: The tongue-in-cheek product range designed for the campaign includes mundane items like toothpicks, canned goods and gravel

The Harvey Nichols Christmas Commercials:
The campaign began with a teaser / preview of the new ULNW collection:



The above teaser was followed up with the commercial shown below in which, scene by scene, we begin to discover that in each case the suspiciously well-dressed gift-giver appears to have spent more time and money on themselves at Harvey Nichols, than on their loved ones, instead offering a present from the Harvey Nichols ULNW Gift Collection:



‘At this time of year it can be all too easy to get caught up in the spirit of giving. We hope that our new ‘Sorry, I Spent It On Myself’ Gift Collection will provide our customers with low-cost gifting options for others that will allow them to spoil themselves that little bit more this Christmas.’ said Julia Bowe, the Group Press & Marketing Director of Harvey Nichols

The full Harvey Nichols ‘Sorry, I Spent It On Myself’ Gift Collection
With a varied and competitively priced selection, there’s something for everyone; a Plastic Door Stop for Mum; Non-Swiss Biro Pen for Dad; and nothing quite says Merry Christmas like a packet of Authentic Lincolnshire Gravel.




The ‘Sorry, I Spent It On Myself’ Gift Collection became available in store and online starting Wednesday, November 27th. Sadly all online versions of these items are already sold out:

- Christmas Lunch in a Tin (with most of the trimmings)
- Non-Swiss Biro Pen, 81p
- Real Plastic Door Stop, £1.43
- Elastic Band Gift Set, £1
- Authentic Lincolnshire Gravel, £1.61
- Metal Plated Paper Clips, 99p
- See-Through Glass Salt Cellar, £1.73
- Sink Plug (Water Resistant), £1.13
- Multi-Bristled Toothbrush, 95p
- Toothpicks (100% Wood), 47p
- Genuine Wire Sponge, 96p

"This Christmas, a little something for them means a bigger something for you"
If you visit their special website, you will find, in addition to the commercial, a little slide show comparing the ULNW gifts side by side with something you could splurge on for yourself:



They also offer a free downloadable no frills "Sorry, I spent it on myself" Christmas card:

download the card here

Make your wish list here

 #SpentItOnMyself

Credits:
client: Harvey Nichols
Advertising Agency: adam&eve DDB, London, UK
Creative Directors: Richard Brim, Daniel Fisher
Published: November 2013

A Well Dressed Tree: 34 Fashion Designers Create Christmas Ornaments To Help Save The Garment Center.

The Made in NYC Designer Holiday Tree is an initiative to help Save the Garment Center. 30+ fashion and jewelry designers, including Anna Sui, Shoshanna Lonstein, Nicole Miller, Nanette Lepore, Malia Mills and Theia’s Don O’Neill have designed $30 ornaments that will be sold with all proceeds benefiting STGC, making good on a request by Caravan Stylist Studio’s Claudine DeSola, a longtime Garment Center supporter.




The participants make all or most of their collections in New York. The designers’ creations will be unveiled to the public on The Carlton Hotel’s holiday tree Dec. 5 with a tree-lighting ceremony with the cast from the Broadway show “Pippin.” Shoppers can buy the ornaments Dec. 4 to 18 in the hotel’s lobby. But I have a sneak peek at all of them for you right here.






The Made in NYC tree stands to raise interest in local designers, something The Carlton Hotel’s Victor Freeman has helped champion. DeSola said, “Our goal is to turn The Carlton Hotel into a fashion ideas hub where we can generate different projects from the holiday program to art projects to fashion week initiatives.”







Caravan Stylist Studio and The Carlton Hotel have also teamed with the social marketing platform PromoJam and launched a digital holiday tree Tuesday that will display Instagram pictures taken by participating designers of their holiday ornaments so that fans can have a closer look.


























images courtesy of Caravan Stylist Studio and Madeinnycholiday.com