Blacklist & Partners + Spade’s Visionary Spot

Blacklist director Saiman Chow produces a mixed media odyssey with Partners + Spade for fashionable eyewear purveyors Warby Parker. The unique, whimsical advertisement is Warby Parker’s first ever television commercial, and it will debut nationwide on Direct TV Thursday, September 20, 2012.

 

Warby Parker is quickly becoming known as the go-to destination for stylish eyewear among the fashion-minded crowd.  It’s also a brand people can feel good about supporting – the glasses are designed in-house, sold at an accessible price point of $95, and for every pair of glasses sold, Warby Parker distributes a pair to someone in need. 

 

Under the guidance of Creative Director Anthony Sperduti (Partners & Spade), Chow and crew crafted a tour through the collective Warby Parker brain. Inside you’ll find submarines, cheetahs, skylines, chess games, whiskey, binoculars, books, Indian psychedelic rock of the 1960s, and about a thousand other things (see if you can spot them all). Most importantly, you’ll find glasses. Perfect, superbly crafted glasses—at a very happy price.

 

Art directed by Alia Penner and featuring animation by Chow, Warby Parker’s first commercial combines three art forms— live film, collage, and animation—to tell the company’s story in thirty seconds. With its throwbacks to low-tech art forms, the ad fulfills Warby Parker’s core value of injecting fun and quirkiness into every endeavor.

 

The spot follows two eyeballs on their quest for stylish spectacles, while trying to keep their budget — and unicycles — balanced.

 

“We shot a sequence of models and unicyclists,” Chow commented, “and through stop motion, we were able to animate their gestural movements, but in a way that was still fluid.”

 

As the eyeballs ride, they pass bespectacled citizens enjoying their fashionable Warby Parker frames and indulging in activities with their newfound perfect vision. The two eyeballs ride home and use Warby Parker’s online site to order their frames and lenses, cutting out the middleman, thus saving time and money.

 

Blacklist Managing Director Adina Sales says, "We've been longtime fans of Partners + Spade and Warby Parker.  They have great taste and always make a splash with really smart and innovative thinking.  Saiman was really into Alia's work, and the project had the makings for a great collaboration.”

“Saiman's a really versatile artist,” Sales explains, “and loves working with multiple techniques. The collage aesthetic made good use of Saiman's knowledge of stop motion and graphic animation. We're really pleased with the results."

  

Credits

 

Warby Parker “Eyeballs Looking for Glasses” :30 Production Credits

 

Agency: Partners & Spade

Creative Director: Anthony Sperduti, Andy Spade and Griffin Creech

Producer: Jamie Arendt

 

Artistic Director: Alia Penner

 

Production Company: Blacklist

Director: Saiman Chow

Executive Producer: Adina Sales

Producer: Hana Shimizu

Art Director: Alex Mapar

Animators: Kristen Basile, Alex Mapar

Animation Assistant: Emilie Liu

 

Music Supervision: Search Party

Audio House: Heard City

Track Name: "Lekar Ham Diwana Dil" by R.D. Burman