For all the hype and bluster surrounding the Super Bowl, there really is no event quite like it when it comes to compressing the US national mood. The 60th edition of the NFL’s marquee fixture once again combined sport, spectacle and extremely expensive advertising – each 30-second spot reportedly costing an eye-watering $8 million –…
Capturing emotion is one of advertising’s great challenges. It gets even harder when trying to distil and represent the wow factor of an experiential campaign, especially when it has to sit within the frenetic scrolling of social or tight confines of a mobile phone screen. How do you convey the sensations, interactions and excitement of…
What happens when the architectural beats of The Chemical Brothers meet the ethereal folk-spirit of the North? Blend dives deep into the collaborative brain of Tom Rowlands, Aurora, and visual mastermind Adam Smith as they unveil their new entity: Tomora. By Blend Music Desk In the London underground, a “new beginning” usually smells of smoke…
In an era saturated with algorithms and fleeting trends, there’s a profound beauty in tracing the origins of youth communication. What connects the raw, visceral energy of a hand-cranked fanzine from the 70s to the curated digital realms of today’s online magazines and guides? For us at Blend and LUV, it’s not just a historical…
In the cyclical world of fashion, “heritage” is often used as a crutch. But for Gap, a brand that once defined the very fabric of the 1990s, looking back was the only way to move forward. After a decade of fading into the background of shopping malls, 2025 marks the year the San Francisco giant…
The post-pandemic landscape for the photographic industry hasn’t just been “challenging”—it’s been a gauntlet. For the last four years, image-makers have navigated a minefield of false starts, enforced hiatuses, and a survivalist hustle. Meanwhile, the traditional pillars of our industry—brands, agencies, and legacy publications—have responded by tightening belts and thinning ranks. By the close of…
Postmodernism was never just about style; it was about dismantling certainty and celebrating contradiction. In South London, Peckham has become a vivid stage for this inheritance. The now‑demolished Peckham Arch, built in the 1990s, was a civic gesture of postmodern playfulness: monumental yet ironic, a gateway that symbolised regeneration while mocking the solemnity of modernist…
Postmodernism emerged in the late 20th century as a rebellion against the austerity of modernism. It dismantled the grand narratives of progress and rationality, replacing them with irony, pluralism and playful citation. Today, in the digital age, this inheritance finds new resonance: our communication, our cities and our art are saturated with postmodern gestures, transformed…
Postmodernism was born as a rebellion against the certainties of modernity. It dismantled the grand narratives of progress, rationality and universal truth, replacing them with fragmentation, irony and a pluralism of styles. What once belonged to philosophy, literature and architecture now finds a striking echo in the digital age. Our communication, our cities, our art…
Christmas has always been the privileged stage for storytelling. We still remember John Lewis’s epic narratives, or Sainsbury’s’s subtlety when it transformed the memory of the Great War into a shared tale. Today, however, it seems brands have lost the plot. The campaigns of 2025 show us a different landscape: commercials that pursue aesthetics, mascots…