v0rtex, Trend Hunter

Pushing Limits of Emotional Advertising - When Are Ads Too Shocking?
All advertising is essentially superflous garbage, even the most creative image has at it's core no message other than "Buy this product". To divide advertising into pulp garbage and supposedly high art is a false dichotomy - an advert becomes a bad advert when it fails to sell product. If an advert violates the standards of taste and decency in the community in which it is shown then it will fail to sell product and thus be a bad advert.

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Mosaics With a Message - 4,000 Americans Dead
Perhaps it's becoming a trend because it's becoming easier to do - it's easy to find software online to take a folder of images and create a mosaic of another image from it. No skill involved. I can see this trend blowing up for a short duration then quickly becoming passe - like pop art, slogan t-shirts or blue LEDs - all trends which were innovative at their inception but, requiring little skill to replicate, died out quickly.

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Heath Ledger's Final Portrait - Vincent Fantauzzo's Painting
What an awful painting. Looks like the kind of montage you see airbrushed onto t-shirts at the local flea market except with Heath Ledger instead of Tupac or Scarface, and minus the diamante dollar signs. I'm sure the artist will be laughing all the way to the bank, though.

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For the Responsible Drug Addict - The Urban Needle Box
I can see places in Europe going for this (Amsterdam will probably love them), but unfortunately harm reduction - one of the few drug policies that works - is not popular in the UK and despised in the US. Putting these into public spaces will be met with howls of "but it encourages drug use" and "how will I explain this to my incredibly sheltered child?". Shame, as it's a good solution to a serious problem.

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Casual Luxury - Diesel Adds Black Gold Label
Didn't Diesel already try this a few years back with the StyleLab division? That had higher quality materials and a more avant-garde design, but got pulled after a few seasons (apparently poor sales). Funnily enough I'm wearing a pair of StyleLab jeans now which have lasted much longer than anything else I've had from the label...

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Coming soon!