Curated for Ad's Sake #4: Jacobi Mehringer
Art Director & Viscount of Visual References on light, ghosts and transience 🕰️
Great people in and around advertising have great taste in art.
I wanted to know what turns them on, so I asked them about their artistic fascinations and inspirations.
🧑🎨 You’re welcome.
Jacobi Mehringer is an Art Director based in Portland (W+K). Founder of the Creative Collective, fuck. He’s currently every advertising creative and director’s new best friend since he launched Eyecandy – a treasure trove of visual references and techniques to make any deck or treatment sparkle. He’s curated a beautifully detailed list of his artistic loves for us, so let’s not faff about.
Let’s get it ☕
🛋️ Light-inspired art
Light is the medium I'm most fascinated with, so an artist like James Turrell has always peaked my interests and inspired my work as well as my life. My flat, the clothing I wear, and the work I create has subtle hints of lighting and color pops that I attribute to my love of light, colors, and shadows. If you aren't familiar with Turrell, his Retrospective is a great biopic on his life.
👟 Sneaker Design
I love how concentrated sneaker design has to be. You have your base structure. Now how many different variations and iterations can you create based on this structure? I think it's super interesting. You know it's gonna look like a shoe. But how is this shoe going to stand out? Both in an athletic performance aspect, but also in a fashion-forward aspect. Side tangent. Phil Knights 'Shoe Dog' is one of the most inspirational books I've ever read. Inspired me to start my own creative collective.
🎥 Visual Techniques
This one's probably a given, but I have always had a fascination with visual techniques that go beyond our expectations when watching something. Directors like Spike, Anderson, Tarantino, Wong-Kar-Wai, and Edgar Wright are high in my book for how they have created new techniques (.e.g Double Dolly / Spike Lee or Step-Printing / Wong-Kar Wai) I recently read Tarantino’s 'Cinema Speculation' which is a great peak inside his mind and why he makes the decisions he makes.
🎮 Video Games
Huge gamer. I often get a lot of my inspiration from the games I play, whether conceptual or technique driven. I recently got an idea for MLB from playing the indie game Atomic Heart.
👻 Ghost Signs
Big fan of architecture. In my neighborhood there's lots of Ghost Signs which is what old painted advertisements on buildings from the 1900s are called when you can just barely still see them. I collect a lot of old stuff. Books, mostly. It's wild to look through them and kind of tangibly touch history. My flat is filled with stuff like that.
⏳ Temporary Art
I'm utterly fascinated by chefs that turn their food into an art form. I think there's something really special about putting so much care into something that is designed to be destroyed (eaten). It's the same feeling I get when I see beautiful beach art. I think there's a beautiful message in creating something beautiful in something temporary.
That's our lives isn't it? (ed. you just blew my third eye wide open Jacobi 🤯)
🤖 Generative Art
Finally, I'm constantly being inspired by generative art. Apps like Midjourney and Runway blow me away for their ability to take a simple prompt and turn it into art. We're on the precipice of an entirely new field of thinking. New jobs. New industries. New tools. It's exciting. I find myself just getting lost making AI art and loving it. I'm also in the middle of writing a book, and I've been able to use Midjourney to build out concept art for my idea which has been absolutely incredible. The below as an example (no spoilers for the script).
Looks like the Tiananmen Square protest, but the brave student is standing up to one of Kanye’s beast trucks. Truly a dark vision of the future. YEEZY 2024 must not be allowed to happen!
Thanks Jacobi 😘 You can follow him on IG and Eyecandy too.
Who would you like to see curate one of these? Don’t be ashamed to suggest yourself…
DMs are open! 💌
Follow along on Instagram 💅
Here’s some other thingamajigs that I’ve found interesting of late:
🫠 A video essay on Vibes Movies.
🏆 The International Bank Note of The Year
🎸 A brief history of Punk zine Sniffin’ Glue
🙅♂️ The decline of the literary bloke
Thanks for reading!
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😘 Jonathan