Although the last time we heard from them, they were naked and covered in cockroaches, Stefan Sagmeister and Jessica Walsh of Sagmeister & Walsh aren't always rolling around in squalor. In fact, their latest campaign for Middle East department store Aizone is about as far from grimy as you can get: to promote the store's items, they've taken fun and frantic pop art sensibilities and brought it to 3-D life.
According to Walsh, the idea for the campaign came from the idea of taking an art style that is usually trapped on paper and applying it to the real world.
"The idea started when we were thinking of the concept of a painting or illustration and how oftentimes illustrators try to imitate reality in a 2-D form," explains Walsh. "So we wondered, what if we flipped the script, and actually made a three-dimensional environment look like an illustration."
Inspired by the art of Roy Lichtenstein, Sagmeister & Walsh's Aizone campaign uses bright fluorescents, bold geometrical forms, and lots and lots of cross-hatches and polka dots. Although many of the products in the shots are ones that Aizone actually sells, they are contrasted by brightly colored papercraft props of plants, lemonade pitchers, vases, and more.
The result is something like a comic strip sprung to life. In addition to a number of promotional shots, Sagmeister & Walsh also did a cute series of stop-motion ads, featuring Aizone products animated in a pop-art style. You can check them out here.