COY Blog

The lovely Nicole Yershon tweeted us a couple of days back with this image.

It’s top copywriter Jerry Gallaher (www.cliveandjerry.com) sporting a 16 year old Sprote T-Shirt.

Sprote was a short-lived company formed back in the 90s and made up of me and my old mate Chris Palmer.  Our logo was an amalgam of both our faces (the handsome bits supplied by yours truly).

It just reminded me how much I like designing T-Shirts.  I’ve done tons over the years, even for rival production companies.

Here’s a selection from the archives as well as our latest creation (available from the Coy! shop, when we get round to opening it…we’ve been a bit busy lately).

You thought we’d shot something that’d won a black pencil didn’t you?

…Sorry about that.

What actually happened is that ace reporter Jim Davies called up and asked if we could shoot a portrait of him that reflected his standing as a serious (black pencil winning) writer.

We did just that (with the help of our ace photographer Sean)… and then we shot this other picture too…

STOP PRESS… Jim very eloquently says nice things about us here http://totalcontent.blogspot.com/2011/06/pencil-portrait.html

Trawling through the archives the other day I came across this…my chocolate starfish.

It’s the concept that didn’t quite make the grade when we designed the novelty chocolate/showreel box for our mates at Blink Productions.

I wonder why they turned their nose up at it?

There’s a lot to moan about at the moment.

We all have to work a lot harder for a lot less dosh, no one’s allowed out to play at lunchtimes any more, that woman from Sidcup in the research group never understands the directors cut, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc.

Still, there’s also a lot of other stuff that contributes to making this job marginally better than stacking shelves at Morrisons.

One thing in particular still gets my trousers twitching even after all these years.

I love drawing daft pictures and then seeing them magically transformed into the real thing. It’s a squillion times better than anything the Careers Officer ever suggested.

…that woman from Sidcup still gets on my tits though.

This may not be the newest news but we think it’s definitely worth another mention.

Last year Paul Belford and Sam Renwick at This Is Real Art called us with a tasty photographic brief.  One of their clients (trendy fashion label ‘Sibling’) needed to flog a range of knitwear with a horror theme.

The idea was to get various models wearing the jumpers and then scare the pants off them. The tricky bit was making the fright big enough, and then capturing that initial moment of terror.

Sean got to work designing a special blacked out booth to surround his camera and then went about commissioning Adelphoi music to custom make a spooky bit of sound design to put the willies up the models.

You might have read about it on the Creative Review blog a few months back, where one sharp commenter suggested that the process might have benefited from including some girls….

Well here’s the longer version of the making of (night vision) video, which we think confirms that it wasn’t a bad suggestion.

Concept – Sam Renwick and Paul Belford, Agency – This is Real Art, Photography – Sean de Sparengo, Producer – Miss Sara Cummins, Sound design – Adelphoi Music, Retouching – Oliver Carver, Videographer – Miguel Ragageles.

Ned Corbett-Winder and Martin Latham, two lovely creative people from M&C Saatchi came round to COY! Studios a little while back to talk about Surfers Against Sewage.

They wondered if we could help them create some images to promote this very worthy cause and of course we answered in the affirmative.

Before we knew it we were all standing on the beach at Camber Sands having a mass-debate over whether the large turd should go on the head, on the shoulder, or be sliding down the face.

Sean (de Sparengo) our brilliant photographer/director pulled all the stops out and delivered a shit shot and a rubbish one. (He shot a radioactive one as well, but that last sentence wasn’t as funny with it in).

Concept – Ned Corbett Winder, Martin Latham, and M Denton esq, CD – Graham Fink.

Photography – Sean de Sparengo.

Retouching – Oliver Carver.

Production – Miss Sara Cummins, Victoria Lorkin-Lang, Dara McDonald.

A Large Evil Corporation are actually a small but perfectly formed animation company full of nice people.

They’ve been our mates for ages and we’ve done stuff together like the Creative Circle Adland film etc, etc, etc. In fact we even came up with their name and identity (you might have seen it in last years D&AD annual or winning a gong at Design Week).

…Anyway, the latest addition to their ever growing collateral is being delivered to creative departments right now, in the form of this subtle collection of bags’n’tags. They’re designed specifically to carry showreels and various other goodies, including the all new ‘A Large Evil Corporation’ T-Shirt. (We designed that too).

Design – M Denton esq, Photography – Sean de Sparengo, CGI and Image manipulation – Oliver Carver, Typography – Andy Dymock, Wardrobe – Spencer Horne at Handsome Folk, Hair and Make-up – Bernie Long, Catering supplied by Miss Sara Cummins.

Welcome to the all new COY! Blog. This is your host and COY! director M Denton Esq reporting all of the latest COY! news and occasionally some insight (not always intelligent unfortunately) about advertising, design, fashion, advertising, style, scooters, socks, advertising and the world in general.

There will be loads of celebrity guest bloggers invited to write here, mainly because as you can read, I’m operating at the very limits of my 1972 grade 2 English O-Level. There’ll be lots of pictures, films and mini–broadcasts to look at for the same reason.

Feel free to comment, even if you don’t like what’s being posted (I’ve never been adverse to knockers).

Anyway, here we go. . .