A SORT OF MONTHLY-ISH ROUND-UP OF THE BEST POP CULTURE, CREATIVE NEWS, AND STUDIO WORK SEPTEMBER 2022 CURATED BY
BRIEFING
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POP CULTURE ROUND UP
“CULTURE IS A WAY OF COPING WITH THE WORLD BY DEFINING IT IN DETAIL.” — MALCOLM BRADBURY
But the release of Season 4 is also dragging up something ELSE from the past – a 37-year-old song. Singer Kate Bush has garnered legions of new fans thanks to Netflix's "Stranger Things" selecting her 1985 hit "Running Up That Hill" as a score for a crucial scene starring the character Max Mayfield. It’s been reported that she has earned $2.3 million in streaming royalties in the month since the show's latest season was released.
And if the ‘almost-a-cult’ sensation of Stranger Things has a strong enough grasp on pop culture to make an ear worm out of an 80’s song…what else can it do?
And while you’re out there, you might just have yourself a "Stranger Things summer", where you take a step back to smell the roses and use radios, cycle as transport, and avoid the screens.
So yeah…we don’t need to ask if you’re excited for the final season. We’re all LIVING for it.
POP CULTURE ROUND UP
How about giving pizza lovers the option to order their favorite pie…with their mind? Domino's has launched a genius new collaboration with cult favorite Stranger Things in the form of an immersive app, released to the masses via commercial. Added to that, when exploring the Hawkins National Lab within the app, there's a bunch of Stranger Things Easter Eggs to find.
And we won’t forget to mention that ‘Chrissy Wake Up!’ audio track dubbed from Eddie Munson’s iconic horror scene that we’ve all been hearing as a trending TikTok audio…for MONTHS now.
The cultural impact of this series cannot be understated…
If you decide to grocery shop, you’ll somehow find frozen waffles in your cart because El made you crave them. (Yeah- Eggo reports that sales have increased since the 2016 release of Stranger Things.)
And if you decide to get some new ink, you might join in with thousands of other fans who are getting El’s number tattoo’d on themselves.
Once again, things are getting STRANGER. A new problem is beginning to surface, something long-buried, something that connects everything...
WHAT PEOPLE ARE WATCHING STRANGER THINGS
The gate between the 80's and present day has been opened... when you head outside, you'll see at least a few mullets.
If you do decide to turn on your T.V., you’ll see the cast on every mainstream talk show.
Who DOESN’T like to spend their free time watching the drama-filled chronicles of beautiful women find televised love?! Season 19 of The Bachelorette premiered Monday, July 11th. Except this season, they took a note out of OUR playbook and added an ‘S’ to the end of their show title – yup, BacheloretteS. Rachel Recchia AND Gabby Windey are out to find love from 32 eligible bachelors. Die hard fans of the show aren’t sure how to feel. “This is NOT the Girlie Season I was promised. This is the part of the girls’ trip when we all realize that we stayed one day too long.” At least the season DOES have two leading ladies who have developed enough of a sense of self to navigate the unknown. This season’s plot seems very invested in doing everything it can to throw this process into utter chaos, but Gabby and Rachel are going to sit down, assess, and fight through it.
If you need to find a ‘hunka-hunka burning’ love in preparation for the cool fall weather that’s closing in on us, just go see Elvis on the big screen! Starring Austin Butler as Elvis and Tom Hanks as his manager Colonel Tom Parker, the new movie outlines the King of Rock and Roll’s pathway to fame. We’ve heard good reviews about the cast’s ability to portray the bumpy emotional experience of stardom. But it’s not without sacrifice. Butler recently opened up about the methods used by producer Baz Luhrmann to embody the authentic headspace of a young Elvis performing for the first time: “When I was on my first day in the recording studio, Baz had all the executives and everybody from RCA, who were back in the offices, he brought them into the recording studio and he goes, 'I want you all to sit facing Austin' ... and he told them to heckle me. When we were filming this moment when Elvis first goes on stage and he's getting heckled by the audience, I knew what that felt like," he said. "I went home in tears that night. I really did." Dry your tears Aus----er, Elvis. You’ve silenced all ‘suspicious minds’ about your talent as an actor.
WHAT PEOPLE ARE WATCHING
Abbott Elementary is taking Emmy nominations by storm. Literally….for *7* DIFFERENT designations. The mockumentary sitcom about an underfunded primary school in west Philadelphia was created by comedian Quinta Brunson, whose mother taught in the same institution for 40 years. With a rockstar AfricanAmerican cast and phenomenal scriptwriting, it has Parks and Recreation’s sense of community, Modern Family’s precision-tooling, Ted Lasso’s charm, but it is its own, hilarious thing. Despite – or, of course, because of – the truth its underlying tale of real-life deprivation tells.
ABBOT ELEMENTARY
SCENE IN ‘ELVIS’ REVEALING THE SECRETS THAT GO INTO MAKING KEY SCENES READ MORE ABOUT IT HERE
DIRECTOR BAZ LUHRMANN NARRATES A
AUSTIN BUTLER IN ‘ELVIS’
POP CULTURE ROUND UP
THE ANATOMY OF A SCENE
THE BACHELORETTE(S) SEASON 19
“BREAK
Sampled
Economic recession? Tensions in Eastern Europe? Neon clothes, big hair and Kate Bush’s ‘Runnin’ Up That Hill’ holding steady at #1 on Spotify? ….we’re back to the 80’s!
“KINGS & QUEENS” - AVA MAX
Sampled Freek ’N You by Jodeci ft. Raekwon and Ghostface Killah MY SOUL” - BEYONCE Show Me Lobe by Robin Stone CLASS” - JACK HARLOW Glamorous by Fergie
Sampled Physical by Olivia Newton-John
“FIRST
“PLAN B” - MEGAN THEE STALLION
“LOVE AGAIN ” - DUA LIPA Sampled My Woman by Lew Stone & the Mondeigneur Band
WHAT PEOPLE ARE LISTENING TO
“KISS ME MORE” - DOJA CAT
POP CULTURE ROUND UP
Sampled If You Were a Woman (And I Was a Man) by Bonnie Taylor
Sampled
But in reality, as we see/hear/experience trends from the past re-emerge, it reminds us that creative media is collaborative by nature. Creators and designers are inspired and fueled by the successful work of others, and borrow the bits that make sense to enhance their own ideas. This phenomenon made us take a closer look at music specifically, and how sample culture rules the day for new releases that have been topping the charts. (FYI – Sampling is defined as: the process by which a musician or record producer uses a portion of an existing song in a brand-new recording, looping it and layering it with new music in a new context.) Here’s a few songs you’ve probably heard on ‘Today’s Hits’ that have roots that go waaaaay back.
WHAT PEOPLE ARE LISTENING TO
It is this sort of “screw it all, let’s just dance” attitude which is the gift that Beyonce has given us here. The album is so packed with samples and interpolations from 50 or more years of dance music that it's near impossible to list them all. A Bossa Nova melody over a trap beat? Sure. 90s synth symphony hits paired up with afro-beats? You got it. It all flows together seamlessly. The transitions from song to song are something to behold. When listened to from front to back, you will be transported from wherever you are directly to the club floor—minus strangers’ sweat.
but I’ll do my best
the album
Enter “Renaissance,” Beyonce’s 7th Studio Album. We got our first taste of the album with the release of the song “Break My Soul” at the end of June. The song relies heavily on a sample 90s club hit, “Show Me Love” by Robin S., but it somehow sounds brand new. The lyrics, accompanied by vocals from Big Freedia, an iconic New Orleans rapper and the self-proclaimed “Queen of Bounce,” encourage us to “release…” our mind…the stress…the wiggle. It’s this theme, “releasing the wiggle” that “Renaissance” is built upon. The album is a wildly unbound celebration of dance music. We’ve come to know Beyonce as a perfectionist, meticulously serving up each and every note impeccably tuned and timed. And while this trademark is still present throughout “Renaissance,” there is something more urgent and undone here. In letting go, she has created some sort of primordial magic, imbued with BPMs and energy that will have your body out of your chair and moving before you’re even *consciously aware* that you’re dancing.
I
in
my favorite booty shakers. TOP “Alien5: “Church“Pure/Honey”,Superstar”,Girls”,“Cuff It”, “Move”, plus an honorable mention for “Energy”.
the
POP CULTURE ROUND UP
BEY JUST GAVE US ALL EXACTLY WHAT WE NEEDED
But since then, we’ve endured a lot. Polarized politics, an ongoing reckoning on race, a freaking PANDEMIC…it almost doesn’t seem like we live in the same reality as that day in 2016. Maybe… because we don’t? In this newsletter, we talk about “The Vibe Shift”. It’s a sort of hard left-turn in the trajectory of pop culture and social norms, likely brought about by the tumultuous last 5 years (a good chunk of them spent trapped in lock-down).
Ushered in by a new generation, Gen Z is replacing us aging millennials as those at the helm of “what’s cool”. What it really means is a return of early 2000s indie-sleeze mashed up with a little 80s excess. Think roughed up makeup and messy hair, accessorized with a little bit of “not giving a f*ck”. Smoking is cool again, and people are doing “bumps” of caviar. Is it nihilism, or are we all just ready to cut loose and have a good time? A little bit of both, perhaps. Does it feel like the natural response to two years of isolation? Or, are we partying our way through the apocalypse? Same answer.
LISTEN TO “RENAISSANCE” HERE!!! It’s
down to a list of “must
Remember that random Saturday in April 2016 when we all woke up to NEW Beyoncé??? It feels like a distant memory, because it’s been 6 whole YEARS since we’ve had a proper, full-length, solo studio album from our gurl, Bey. Sure, there’s the revolutionary film of the same title that accompanied “Lemonade”; her jaw-dropping, game-changing Coachella performance and accompanying album “Homecoming”; the soundtrack for the live action, “The Lion King” and stunning visual album “Black Is King”; her music collab with her man, Jay-Z, “Everything is Love”; and like 3 or 4 Ivy Park Apparel Drops…So, we get it…she’s been busy.
Like the disco ball that hangs proudly over this album, the music here is a full of reflections. It brilliantly pays homage to years of Black and Queer culture. Afterall, the mass market dance music we all know so well has its roots in both. In the same way that “Renaissance” has culled together a myriad of dance stylings, it seems also to summon us all back to the dance floor. Beyoncé's stated mission was to create "a place to dream and to find escape during a scary time for the world". Free your booty, and in doing so, free your mind, all in the name of self-care. Don’t feel guilty about allowing yourself a little pleasure. “Renaissance” is the first of what Beyonce describes as “3 Acts”, so we’ll be eagerly awaiting the rest, while we release the wiggle in the meantime. hard to narrow songs listens,” because feel strongly that should be taken as whole, to highlight
a
BY ZACH SHEFFIELD
WHAT PEOPLE ARE LISTENING TO
Start With This is a podcast gone creativity playground designed to put your ideas in motion. Not sure where to begin when you’ve got a great idea? Start With
What podcasts have you been listening to? Nah- BETTER question… WHOSE podcast have you been listening to? Because these days, it seems like EVERYONE has their own streaming platform for recorded conversation. Ashley Graham. Gwyneth Paltrow. Dax Shepard. Anna Faris. Oliver and Kate Hudson. Michelle Obama. Demi Mooore. That guy who lives two doors down and talks (at length) about metal-working.
Rebrandshttp://www.nightvalepresents.com/startwiththisThis.COUNTERCLOCKTRUECROMEPODCASThttps://counterclockpodcast.com/season-four/ACHANGEOFBRAND&thecreativeprocessbehindthem-http:/www.achangeofbrand.com
Looking for a new listen? Here’s some of our faves:
START WITH THIS
POP CULTURE ROUND UP
PODCAST
We call all agree that taking a scroll through the Apple podcast app or Spotify listings returns TONS of results. So how do you make a choice? One method is to check out podcast options that have shifted across multiple-platforms to enhance your listening experience. Take CounterClock True Crime Podcast, for example- not only can you listen to host Dehlia De’ambra take you through every detail of cold cases, but you can then check out her website and see crime scene photos, suspect video interviews, handdrawn maps and more. Podcasters are now taking storytelling to the NEXT level on other forms of media too-TikTok’s, Instagram stories, and YouTube videos. Savvy creators have figured out how to make podcasts work on other platforms that weren’t designed for them, leveraging search algorithms to meet new audiences, make more money, and expand into a medium that’s expected to grow rapidly in the coming years.
Taylor Swift wrote an exclusive song, “Carolina,” for the trailer and feature scenes.
If you ever do that old-school thing of visiting a book store in real life (OR checking out the top reads online), you’ve probably seen Where the Crawdads
But if we’re talking pop culture, we should mention all the ‘somebodies’ involved.
Sing by Delia Owens. The story outlines a young girl who grows up in a North Carolina marsh becoming a suspect in the murder of a man who once pursued her. AND it just came out as a feature length movie.
POP CULTURE ROUND UP
And even more crazy? The author is reportedly wanted for questioning in the case of a murder of an African safari poacher. Soooo yeah…there’s that.
Reese Witherspoon selected this book for her Book Club Reads and helped produce the movie.
SKIP TIKTOK, LET’S TALK BOOK TALK!
CREATIVE NEWS
CREATIVITY IS SEEING WHAT OTHERS SEE AND THINKING WHAT NO ONE ELSE EVER THOUGHT." – - ALBERT EINSTEIN
The only difference? Now, people are starting to notice. And saying “F-that’ in response.
CAN YOU FEEL THE VIBE SHIFT?
CREATIVE NEWS READMOREHERE!
This article by Tim Kreider is a response to an op-ed piece he wrote TEN years ago, calling for the end of the ‘busyness curse’ that seemed endemic at the time. He reports back that today, in 2022, things haven’t gotten any better- far, far worse, actually.
Millions are now pursuing what a punk guitarist has called “the C-minus lifestyle.” It’s a vibe shift. Living for the state of pleasure, rejecting corporate norms, breaking out of those everyday routines
As our team puts together content for this newsletter, we spend a decent amount of time checking out popular media outlets to get a pulse on what’s going on in the world. Digging through the droves of mass media out there, one headline featured in the New York Times really stuck out – It’s Time to Stop Living the American Scam.
“In 2022, everyone is still busy — worse than busy, exhausted, too wiped at the end of the day to do more than stress-eat, binge-watch and doomscroll — but no one’s calling it anything other than what it is anymore: an endless, frantic hamster wheel for survival.”
Thesystem.brand's new tagline, “Light Things Up,” guides the new visual system. Tabasco’s signature bottle is also updated, though the change is subtle, an understandable approach given the packaging’s near-century-long history. The diamond label gets cleaned up a bit, and the most notable omission is the “Made in the USA” in the logo. The brand’s color palette and typography are also updated.
IT’S GETTING HOT IN HERE!
If you’re a flavor freak, then you’ve probably got Tabasco sauce lying around somewhere in your kitchen. While you can expect the same classic recipe, you might be surprised when you pick up your next bottle. Tabasco didn’t have a unified visual identity across its brand, so it turned to agency Mrs&Mr to create a new global, unifying identity
CREATIVE NEWS
CREATIVE NEWS
Old Spice and Arby’s created a collab to promote the P&G brand’s Sweat Defense Dry Spray deodorant and the restaurant chain’s Half Pound Roast Beef Sandwich on a campaign around preventing the “meat sweats.” They created a 30-second spot narrated by the voice of Arby’s, Ving Rhames, features “Old Spice Guy” Isaiah Mustafa scaling the sandwich as if it’s a mountain face before falling on a packet of the chain’s Horsey sauce. And now, consumers can look the part. Meat Sweat Defense kits are now on sale, which include a roast beef-patterned sweatsuit, co-branded towel and sweatband, and two cans of the Old Spice antiperspirant, for $60 at ArbyShop.com.
OLD SPICE X ARBY’S: TAKE ON THE MEAT SWEATS
The commentary also points to an analysis done by the Science Museum Group, which showed how colors of more than 7000 objects changed over time.
"If you feel like the world seems increasingly colorless, you're not just imagining it. Take cars, for example.
Greyscale colors now make up three quarters of cars produced globally, compared to less than 50% in the past,” - @culturaltutor (Twitter).
Various creators on social media have recently made claims that the use of colors has decreased in everyday life—and with good reason. Trending threads use side-by-side images of cars, the interior of houses and even a McDonald's outlet to show how the use of vibrant colors has decreased since 1970s and '80s.
Change has also occurred in all kinds of industries, from interior design, where the garish colors of bygone times have been lost, to fashion, where the clothes we buy have also faded over the years. People have decided to wear neutral colors and leave the vibrant prints of other times. The current trend seems to be minimalism — peeling away the layers of color in favor of a more refined look. We have once again found ourselves designing with a single color scheme in mind — or, in what has often been the case in the 2000s, no color scheme at all.
CREATIVE NEWS
ATTACK ON COLOR
2022
CREATIVE NEWS
-Tom May
READ ABOUT MORETRENDS HERE!
Art comes from the inside. Influenced by the world we live in, priorities among the design community have shifted. There's been a marked move away from 'hustle culture' and the material things that have validated us in the past, toward measuring success by how happy you actually are. Some say eclecticism in design is on the way.
DESIGN TRENDS
“Inspired by the wild west of the early internet, this approach looks to move away from harmony and towards a joyful clash”
Overall, it looks like 2022 is going to be infused with more brands moving toward
Does 'more, more, more' fit a rejection of overconsumption? Maybe we'll see more real and unrefined aesthetics. Maybe, we’ll see more human truths.
BRANDS IN MOTIONS
Does a clean and stripped back style fit a notion of pleasure and self-indulgence?
“It feels like static graphics aren’t cutting it nowadays - it’s move it or lose it!”
-Martin Widdowfield
THE NEW WILD WEST
STUDIO WORK
“DESIGN IS INTELLIGENCE MADE VISIBLE.” — ALINA WHEELER, AUTHOR
Our Retail Planning and Store Design team is on a continuous mission to innovate the physical look of Sheetz stores, as well as improve the customer experiences that happen within them….and they’re crushing it! Here’s a look at what they’re working on:
The creation of a new prototype model has opened big, exciting doors for the team. Now, it’s possible for them to alter store layout and move fixtures in real time, see new signage and graphics before production, visualize product on gondolas and shelving, AND create video walkthroughs for a full 360 view of store floors. Looking toward the future, this new technology could provide an opportunity to integrate with Augmented or Virtual Reality for a full hands-on experience.
SCAN THIS QR CODE TO TAKEA VIRTUAL WALKTHROUGH
RETAIL PLANNING TEAM
MEDIASOCIAL
DINNER FOR BREAKFAST? WHY NOT?
It’s that attitude and idea that we wanted to capture for the new artwork on our roving billboards, aka the Sheetz Fleet. We’ve bringing this attitude to life through a series of custom photos, designed to fit the unique size of the trucks. These scenes show our customers breaking free from the ordinary through amazing combos of super-craveable food and drinks.
Why the Sheetz Not? Is all about encouraging our customers to ask “Why Not?” and then just going for it. MOZZ STICKS ON A BURGER? WHY NOT?
NOTSHEETZTHEWHY GRAPHICSFLEET
Sheetz is a place where you can go big without judgment, and because of our unique offer and quality products, you never have to settle.
Together with the copy, we’re able to create stories of liberation that cover off on a variety of reasons to believe, experiential need states, and product offers., which when added together paint the full picture of what makes us the ultimate one-stopYou’llshop. see this new artwork IRL in the next couple of months.
VANSPRINTER
LIFESTYLEIN-STORE CONTENT
8.31 FALL FAVORITES MILKSHAKES
8.31 2/$6 BREAKFAST SANDWICHES
4/$6 SELF SERVE COFFEE PROMO
NEW SHEETZ POP FLAVORS
THAT’S ALL, FOLKZ. BRAND STUDIODESIGN SEE YA AGAIN IN A COUPLE OF MONTHS…ISH. ;)
