Sep 28, 2019
Friday Fives, Vol. 96
Every Friday we highlight five things we have on our radar that we think should be on yours, too.
Here’s this week’s Friday Fives.
Lake View is a beautiful, 150-year-old cemetery in Cleveland with a very unique business challenge, their clients can be only one of two things, dead or a relative of the deceased. Lake View was hoping to expand its clientele to individuals looking to “plan ahead,” and their advertising agency, Brokaw, had the perfect solution. The company recently launched a hilarious new campaign poking fun at mortality to help potential living clients see a lighter side in purchasing your own grave plot. The campaign refers to itself as “death-positive,” encouraging viewers to see their deaths as just something that’s part of life. This campaign is a brilliant way to make the very morbid process of buying one’s own cemetery plot into something that can be considered with humor and a chuckle and presents a wonderful way to reinvent a company’s image through advertising. I know I’ll be purchasing a plot eventually, because, you know. — KD
Cooking may be an essential skill, but those of us with an inane talent for it can easily be called artists as much as they’re called chefs. While each meal may require a certain science, the customization, experimentation and conceptualization required to create fresh, new recipes surely require as much artistic talent as fine artists. The right drizzle of sauce can be Pollock-esque, and any type of deconstructed dish can call to mind Rothko or Picasso. Esther Choi, known for being the founding chef of the famous NYC Korean fusion restaurant Mŏkbar, is launching a playful, Bauhaus-inspired cookbook with recipes that are just as delicious as they are works of art. Inspired by a 1937 avant-garde menu designed by László Moholy-Nagy for Bauhaus architect Walter Gropius, Choi hopes to seamlessly combine experimental art direction with satirical recipes. Each delicious recipe has its own satirical name, such as Yokonomiyaki, Quiche Haring, Rem Brûlée, and Robert Rauschenburger. Choi’s new book does a brilliant job of pushing the traditional cookbook to a new frontier. — AD
A more inclusive world of dolls
I can remember playing with Barbie as a kid, dressing her in horribly mismatched outfits and cutting her hair against my mom’s will. I liked how feminine she was and wanted to be a part of her Barbie World. But I was lucky, as a young, cisgender girl there were tons of toys that were relatable for me. Many children don’t get the chance to feel represented or reflected by their own toys to a severe lack of inclusivity. Thankfully, things are starting to change. Mattel, the manufacturer of Barbie, just launched a new line of gender-neutral dolls called Creatable World. Following the launch of their successful new line of barbie dolls coming in a variety of body types of skin tones, Mattel has launched this new line of dolls to continue making the world of toys more inclusive for children of all genders and racial backgrounds. Creatable World comes with a kit that has a wide variety of options for hair and clothing that any doll can be dressed in, allowing the child to identify the doll anyway they want. It’s great to see this shift in such a gendered toy market. — SS
Starting this week, Uber is testing new interfaces, one of which ditches the familiar map and little black cars and instead presents essentially two buttons: Get a Ride and Order Food. By making its Uber Eats service a part of the main Uber app, they hope to catch up to more popular food delivery competitors. This redesign could also help solve the problem of app overload. If downloading another delivery service app was a reason you didn’t use Eats in the first place, Uber just removed that hurdle. There are different versions of the redesign out there, ranging from the new 2-option screen to a simple Eats button added to the current interface. In fact, we saw different versions on phones here at the office. It seems that Uber’s design team will collect feedback on what riders (and eaters) prefer before rolling out the update to all users. — LO
Raise your hand if you grew up with Lego. Do you remember the mystification that came with seeing a piece a million times when you didn’t need it, but having it disappear when you did need it? Have you ever considered the nuances of Lego? The way you can only bend the characters back and forth from their waists, how the items they carry are disproportionately large, the different hairstyles…etc. All of these quirky qualities appear in Lego’s first brand campaign in 20 years titled “Rebuild the World”. Lego’s internal team alongside French agency BETC teamed up to “send a positive political message about the power of creativity to enable change.” If you have the chance to watch the short video, you definitely should. You’ll notice very lego-specific quirks, characteristics, and peculiarities you’ve experienced before, and when brought to life in a fantastical world with real-world actors, it pokes your brain in a brilliant and nostalgic way. Just go watch it, you’ll see. — MC²
