Carl Bender

Designed by US artist Carl Bender the first thing that caught my eye was the similarity to packaging for Canon.  The concepts are part of a project aimed at making people aware of their responsibility as consumers to make sure corporations are subject to scrutiny. In his own words Bender’s goal with the Corporate Revolt line of products “is to encourage citizens to examine their response to commercial messaging and to play a more active role in determining the limits of corporate power in American society.”

That combination of slick packaging and sinister product also recalls the advertisements in Alfonso Cuaron’s pre-apocalyptic film Children of Men. The set design in that film is spattered with advertising and public service announcements about euthenasia, organ harvesting, surveillance and anti-immigration measures. It’s eerie stuff. Largely because the subject matter doesn’t seem nearly as far fetched as it ought to.

That work was done by UK advertising agency The Foreign Office who did an amazing job of fleshing out Cuaron’s dystopic vision of the future and the attention to detail you can see in the highlights reel for the film is just incredible. Some of the little motion graphics pieces get literally a second or two of screen time;

You can see more of Carl Bender’s work on his personal portfolio OkayBeta.com and you can read up on his thesis project on the Corporate Revolt website.

 
As an aside; I was quite surprised to find that LovelyPackage.com hadn’t been registered as a porn site.