Have a Coke and Smile.

So I just got home and I'm a mess.

Posting things on my blog and still managing good grammar while drunk is an actual talent.

I'm not even relying on predictive like I do in texts.

We had to choose a slogan from a selection and illustrate it. I chose

'Have A Coke And Smile'.

I wanted to make this project more interesting to myself, so I played with the idea of not endorsing the product, but rather to work with the idea of the simplicity implied by the slogan; as if everything that was ever wrong would be corrected by having a Coke. So I decided to work with some extreme scenarios, and ask if a having a Coke would really make it better.

My tutor Jim said Coke would never hire me to do an ad for them; I thought [and may or may not have said] that Coke won't, but Unicef probably would.

Below are some roughs; of homelessness, war and famine. I think the aesthetic in some of them is quite nice.

I should state that there was some rather nice white space around these images that are actually A3, but scanning on an A4 scanner forced me to pick the detail out.

Appreciate the considered composition please.

Below is a scan of the actual drawing I used for the ad, of three emaciated children.

One is holding a can of Coke. I knew that I was pretty much straddling the fence between bad taste, and intelligent political commentary. But I think the considered execution pushes it more onto the intelligent commentary side of the fence. It was never supposed to please, rather to provoke thought.

This is what the ad looked like when the slogan and ever recognisable Coca-Cola writing were incorporated into the page.

Rather successful if I do say so myself.

Controversial?