Skin Tone Not Included

April 3rd, 2008, 7 Comments »

After they linked to my old blog post on Michelle Branch’s posterior, I subscribed to a blog called Photoshop Disasters. It’s pretty much exactly what you think it is. This has been the most entertaining example thus far:

What's Wrong With This Photo?

How did everybody miss that? Looking at this product shot, I guess that it’s supposed to be an orange-ish undershirt. But it still looks way too close to Caucasian skin tone to be acceptable.

Here’s my thesis (based on the larger originals on this page): the models were originally baring their midriffs. Somebody got a little nervous about being too risqué, so they erased the navels and Photoshopped in some undershirts. They just picked the wrong colour. Why else would they have the models’ shirts fluttering up just so?

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A Variation on Childhood Cereal Boxes

July 19th, 2007, 4 Comments »

In Canada, pretty much all of our packaging is in both official languages. For some reason, cereal boxes have become the synecdoche for this phenomenon.

As I’ve already alluded to, you get packaging in all sorts of languages here. Some are only in Maltese, some only in English, some English and Maltese, some only German, some German with, like, 15 languages in the fine print. The variations are endless.

Having never visited the Middle East, and generally being somewhat naive about all things Arabic, I was pleased by the linguistic combination on our gelatin package.

One Side English

The Other Side, Arabic

And, yes, it was made in Malta.

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