Always outnumbered. Generally overdresssed.

Wednesday, March 04, 2009

Dogger and Blighty




I've been looking at the ads for Blighty for my next piece in Good Housebreaking. I had to nick this photo off Flickr* because I couldn't find a better reproduction anywhere, and the ones I took with my mobile phone looked too much like art.

Both of the tube ads are great, the TVCs less so. This one gets extra points for being hugely unoriginal, but still great. It's worth enlarging it for the details - because it has some very high quality comedy writing in it. Campaign gives the agency and art director as Watermill - I can find no such agency online. There may still be an agency in this country in 2009 that has no website, or there's the barely conscionable possibility that the hacks at Campaign have done zero fact-checking and just published the press release they were sent, in which case it doesn't actually exist and is just newsbiscuit writer John O'Farrell and a highly paid freelance designer.

The art direction is lovely too, with the crumpled patina and the handwritten elements. Also good use of the eponymous Eric Gill's, Gill Sans - properly spaced caps and everything. What, after all, could be more British than an incestuous, paedophile, dog-fucking, converted-papist typographer?

*Update - the PR sent me a proper one. Thanks.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yes, I like these too - I know that that the Waters of Water mill is infact Dave Waters, aka "Big" - formerly of DFGW and previously the brilliant, and in my mind still undervalued GGT.
I have seen the Watermill business card which is great - it's based around something else that fits right into your wallet - currency! And at present market values is probably worth more than a GBP and slightly less than a euro.

william said...

I met Dave Waters once on the D&AD course. He was so nice it was like he was on ecstasy - but really good ecstasy he wasn't gurning or anything just saying "you all seem like really nice people" in this incredibly disarming way.

Also, go to bed Pauly.

Anonymous said...

I believe that the Watermill is indeed Dave Waters and his partner Bertie Miller.
They have just created this film for a bespoke tailors. check it out.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPvupLbS0q0