Unexpected places your designs have shown up

I know when I was doing work for Chantal Cookware back in the late 90’s early 2000’s they had paid for their tea kettles to be on the stove of almost every sitcom kitchen… it is very difficult to quantify that sort of thing. In that case it was very systematic and had a weekly viewing, so perhaps it sunk in when they saw that kettle at the local Williams-Sonoma… but it was a different world then. Viewership is so fragmented now and it is hard to predict what is going to be the next big Netflix show. Once a show blows up the costs get high obviously. You need to catch it early the way Under Armour did with Friday Night Lights. That by the way is one of the best product placements I’ve ever seen.

… I know this stuff is impactful to retail buyers who you can go in and say “you may have seen this product in such and such”.

Smaller brands can do really well with webisodes, even youtube sponsorships. My friends at Autodromo http://www.autodromo.com used to sponsor all of the video content for https://petrolicious.com Great brand alignment. On the flip, Movement watches sponsors a lot of the video content for Donut Media and it feels way too forced. There doesn’t seem to be an alignment between the brands.

Fisherman’s Wharf, SF. McGraw Edison floodlights I did while at Cooper Lighting way back in '98. Image from GoogleMaps today. Ha.

I heard an interview with Mike Judge (Office Space) where he discussed the red Swingline stapler. Apparently, they just spray painted a black stapler for the movie, because it would show up better on film. Swingline didn’t make one. However, after the film attained cult status, Swingline got so many random calls from people asking for “the red Swingline” that they decided to make one!

I guess it makes a difference, but it’s hard to know in advance.

That is hilarious. I’ve never heard that story before.

Watched a 2017 movie tonight on Amazon called “Magellan”. It’s set in the near future - the astronaut lands on the moon Titan and opens up his briefcase-looking tool kit and there’s my B&D PD600 screwdriver from 2006, all done up in flat white. That was a trick little tool that we designed to do a bit of everything and on it I designed elastomeric convex side grips that were an evolution on Oxo’s GoodGrips…to help a user keep the tool from torquing in their hand as they used it. It looked better in all white!!

Was at an art gallery opening last night and this was supplying the music.

I’ve seen the hand dryer that I designed in a number of new Tim Horton’s renovations. Maybe Richard or Jon could confirm if this is nationwide or not.

It’s pretty good for a nearly 10 year old design. The graphics don’t look too dated either.

nice, some good surfacing! … plus it is named El-Niño Turbo? Awesome.

Living, working, playing out of an Airbnb in Portland this week and the first thing I noticed when I walked in was two products I worked on :slight_smile:

I haven’t been in a TH bathroom lately…I’ll keep an eye open if I happen to be bound and gagged before being dragged into one :wink:

Was scrolling through Instagram the other day and saw another designer post a couple of shoes asking which pair to wear… I designed that bottom one in 2003. Hadn’t thought about that one in a long time!

Pretty stupid movie but I noticed an old friend in the obligatory “hacker” scene :stuck_out_tongue:


oh nice! :slight_smile:

One unexpectedly showed up the other day on the wrist of a person I was meeting with.

That must have been a surprise with only such a limited production!.. Did you know the guy had one?

R

At my old university. Walking my kid to her summer camp I came across this out in the wild. Sad to see it stripped of branding and all beat up…but hey, it’s an industrial vehicle. I wish I had gotten a better picture but it was behind bars.


I had no idea. It was only 30 minutes in that even noticed… he was just waiting for me to catch on. :slight_smile:

I stumbled across this Taiwanese stop-motion promo video with 2 of the transformers we worked on.

Watching Mission Impossible Fallout the other day and noticed a LifeProof iPad Case I did significant work on a few years ago getting some good screen time:

Oh nice! Congrats!