Compiled by Janet Hamilton
Possibly the first use of origami for advertising is a 1934 single-sheet promotional circular giving directions for folding the Flapping Bird out of a preprinted, red square. The model was identified as a flying horse, the trade-mark of the Standard Oil Company of New York, Inc., a Socony-Vacuum Company.
Back in the late 40's to early 50's, Harris Oil Company distributed sheets of paper, printed on both sides, that folded up without cutting, into the Mobil Oil Pegasus.
The June 3, 1996 issue of Forbes has an Eddie Bauer ad with a diagram for a paper airplane (Figures 1 and 2). Figures 3 and 4 are other completed planes.
A poster at the Bank of Montreal in Peterborough in mid-1996 included fold marks to make a plane, the idea being that the bank was as fast as a jet.
"If an Origami artist can make 800 shapes from one piece of paper, why do telemarketing companies keep coming back with one idea every time?" The cover of this three part folded card stock advertisement from February 1997 showed a crane folded from green wavy striped paper. The inside highlighted three critical areas of expertise which are supposed to apply to Origami as well as the touted the Harte-Hanks company's services: Design, Test, and Solve. Accompanying the headings for these three areas were folding diagrams. The company's website is http://harte-hanks.com
In the Lucent Technologies 1997 Commemorative Calendar, the page for March had a picture is showing several modular origami pieces with lots of origami frogs by Aldo Putignano. The message was about money being the paper that shapes the banking industry.
Around May, 1997, McDonalds distributed a little cardboard ad that worked like a flexagon and flipped from "Do you believe in Magic?" to "When you believe in magic and I hope you do.." to "You'll always have a friend wearing big red shoes" to "Ronald makes it magic!" There were a total of 8 sides, but only 4 were readable.
Large modular origami models resembling Fuse octahedrons were spotted hanging in the display windows of the Saks Fifth Avenue store in Portland, Oregon in November 1997.
In March 1998, HP's JetSend website featured an animation of a paper airplane. A piece of paper comes out of a device and then gets folded into the airplane form.
Klutz(tm) Books sent out a "mini" spring catalog in April 1998. The cover of the catalog was designed to be cut out and folded into a fortune teller.
A Crate & Barrel summer sale catalog July 1998 shows origami models (a crane in one photo and a fish and a book in another) as props on one page. About the same time several Crate and Barrel stores in New York City featured origami boats in the window displays.
In September 1998 Kennedy Center (Washington DC) mailed out an Imagination Celebration brochure describing upcoming performances for children. The brochure was illustrated with paper airplanes and contains one model with folding instructions.
The Eskimo Pie web page from April 1998 had a link to "Cooltivities" which included 3 games involving origami. One has gobbling creatures folded from the wrappers and the others have a football and a pog folded from the boxes.
Disney used origami in promoting the movie Mulan in May 1998.
An four-page brochure from Harrods Department store (London) advertising jewelry showed an origami bunny on the front. Its eye was a piece of jewelry with four pearls. The other pages featured two swans, an elephant and a crane among the jewelry pieces. No date, but blurb says "as seen in Vogue." And From Paul Jackson: “This is one of my commissions, originally an 'advertorial' feature in Vogue. The photographer was Lord Snowden, a top fashion/portrait/still life photographer and former husband of the Queen's sister, Princess Margaret. Vogue had had their concept for the shoot (paper furniture) approved by the companies whose jewelry was being featured, but on the morning of the shoot Snowden decided he didn't like it and asked me what animals I could do!! It was one of my more nerve-jangling days, trying to think of models he would like, that I could make perfectly on the spot first time (due to the extreme pressure of time), which would look good under camera and which did not have negative symbolism in any of the world's affluent cultures. Everything seemed to come out OK, though. Phew!!”
A brochure circa September 1999 had Intel advertising their platform solutions with the text "Let the innovation begin". It included nine examples of origami. Joseph Wu provided the models, including a bird, pyramid, airplane, geometric shapes, and three original models of a cell phone, lap top computer, and desk-top computer.
A living window display drew huge crowds outside IBS The Technology Center at the Waldorf-Astoria (at the corner of Park Avenue and 49th Street, New York City). Office worker "Jason" goofed off, made personal phone calls, folded origami, read magazines, ate, and did everything else but work. The giant window display was designed to demonstrate how efficient the Ericsson CyberGenie phone system can be for small businesses and home offices. The living window display ran October-November, 1999.
In the December 1999 edition of Viz (an adult comic book), there is a spoof ad for "'Tony Hart's (children’s TV presenter) Origami for Football (soccer) Hooligans". In the January 2000 issue of Viz magazine was a spoof ad for "Tony Hart's Origami Army Book".
Eurostar, which runs passenger services from London to the continent via the Channel tunnel, included a print and fold origami Eurostar train on their website. The design was by Paul Jackson.
At the San Jose Airport in 2000, American Airlines has a banner by the boarding gates depicting a giant origami crane.
The Laura Ashley summer 2000 sale catalog had two folded boats floating in a tub on its cover. They appeared to be folded from wallpaper.
Coca Cola had a set of 4
pre-printed bottle hangers with instructions to fold them into Christmas
decorations. The set included a
snowman, angel, santa, and reindeer.
The international Haagen-Dazs ice cream web site featured sending a "Virtual Ice Cream Cake" to anyone with email. Once the "cake" is sent, the next screen says "It's on its way" with a picture of a simple origami airplane. http://www.haagen-dazs.com/prevck.do
A fashion model was spotted holding up a red airplane on page 55 of a Neiman-Marcus catalog (10/2000).
Origami was well represented at the Fall 2000 COMDEX, the huge computer showcase in Las Vegas, Nevada. In a digital camera booth the film showed a Japanese kitten folding a crane, several cranes appeared in ads in other booths and an origami computer mouse was traded for some promotional items.
The back of a package of chocolate sprinklets (600 g package of Venz puur hagelslag in Dutch) had a reference toKen Blackburn's site at http://www.geocities.com/capecanaveral/1817, for lots of paper airplane folding models.
On 1/16/2001, an anti-drug origami billboard was spotted. The billboard had, from left to right, 3 origami models: a paper airplane, with the caption "2nd Grade," a cootie-catcher with the caption "4th Grade," one of those little triangular "footballs" with which one can play that flicking game, captioned "6th Grade," and the last one was a piece of paper rolled up into a joint labeled something like "Junior High.".
On 2/5/2001, a Tourism Canada commercial was reported that featured a map being folded into a variety of things, including a lighthouse and a person in a canoe. The final scene has the map being folded into a maple leaf.
In a radio ad for Mitsubishi, a salesman calls an origami school and tells them about Mitsubishi’s promotion of giving away a folding bike. The origami teacher asks what the bike looks like when folded. The salesman replies that it looks like a folded bike. The origami teacher is not impressed, until told that from the right angle, it looks like a taco.
Web advertisement that showed a 10 pound note folded into a paper plane. The ad states “Fly to New York City for just £10”. http://www.lineone.net/promo/offers/fly_to_newyork_bl.html
In Canada, 8/2001, shops posted advertisements for Extra (a sugarless gum). One featured a ribbon of cut out paper figures made from gum wrappers, and others showed origami angelfish and a couple of dancing children figures, also made out of gum wrappers.
The side of a McDonald's Happy Meal bag had printed square for folding an origami fortune-teller. (August 2001)
In the Nordstroms Dept. Store catalogue around November 2001 there there was an ad for Mat perfume. It shows the perfume standing on kind of a paperfolded stand and across the top it reads, “As with the art of origami, it takes the familiar and fashions it into something extraordinary.....Mat by Masaki Matsushima.....”
Transforming paperwork into paperplay. Origami was the
perfect vehicle for INDIO to communicate to Procter & Gamble offices
that e-forms would turn the tedious task of paperwork into
child's play. Starting with an announcement poster (that was so successful it
got translated into various languages), the campaign quickly spread into the
interactive medium, spawning entertaining pop-up windows to drive traffic to the
e-forms site. http://www.indiocrm.com
Anthropologie, a store that sells home furnishings and clothing. featured in-store displays in March 2002 that included origami fish.
An poster for Cadillac Fairview, a company that owns and operates a number of large shopping centres (malls) across Canada, showed an origami pegasus sitting on a lady's palm (01/15/2002).
"Baudville: Putting Applause On Paper" catalog (team building & recognition products)
- the Baudville 2002 - Volume 90 catalog has frog based lilies
(James Minoru Sakoda's book "Origami Flowers") folded from Baudville's
certificate paper line, on the cover. http://www.baudville.com
On the website of a Portuguese advertising company, Sino Publicidade, was the instructions to fold a paper they sent to their clients announcing they are going to close for some days on vacation. http://www.sinopublicidade.pt/origami.htm
The US Airways September 2002 in-flight magazine had an
article about a house near Boston that is made entirely out of newspapers
folded/rolled up. The Paper House was built some 80 years ago. http://www.digitalcity.com/boston/entertainment/venue.adp?vid=64662
Instructions for the table and more in The Newspaper Everything Book- How to make
150 useful objects from old newspapers Vivienne Eisner and Adele Weiss - A
Sunrise Book , E.P.Dutton, 1975
The October 2002 US Airways in-flight magazine had a (mostly) origami lobster by Joseph Wu.
For those of you who are airplane aficionados, goldfish cracker buffs, or both, the Pepperidge Farm website has 5 airplane diagrams to download and print. They are good diagrams - clear and concise - and the planes are cute if folded from the paper designs they offer for printing. An option for just the diagrams is also available. http://www.pfgoldfish.com/flash.asp
Michael LaFosse did an origami display for Hermes of Paris in their Madison Avenue Store (New York, USA) in August-October, 2003. The display featured a 5-6 foot Pegausu and a flock of birds.
A Land’s End email ad 8/20/03
A FedEx ad states that “Tokyo
is closer than ever” and uses an origami crane folded from a FedEx envelope
(1/2004)
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The logo for the Italian film distribution company NEXO
includes an origami unicorn http://www.nexoclub.it/
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Jakarta was invaded by giraffes in March 2004. The ad campaign used billboards and TV commercials. The designer of the giraffes was Joseph Wu. Leong Cheng Chit had a hand in the production of the TV commercials. http://sg.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/markhor88/detail?.dir=fec1&.dnm=48d7.jpg
A simple folded shirt appeared on the Imagine Paper website
advertising “Paper Engineering for Marketing”. The company will print custom
logos to be folded into paper napkins.
http://www.imaginepaper.co.uk/
Robert Lang was folding figures at the DRUPA trade show (www.drupa.com) in DusseldorfGermany, May 6-19, 2004. He was at the booth of Norske Sog, a Norwegian paper manufacturer.
Origami on a rather nicely done page for Special K at www.specialk.co.uk/. Follow the links to Kutopia, then move the mouse cursor around the screen. Joseph Wu worked on the site.
The website for GlobalHealth has a logo of a crane with a
bandage on its wing (spotted May 2004). http://www.globalhealth.jp/
September 2004 - Bradley University in Peoria, IL sent a mailing that was folded into a double blintz base. When the sticker holding the four corners together was removed, three sheets of paper fell out, and then the envelope opened even further (the original blintz fold) to give more information about the season's theater offerings. The graphics were done on the diagonal, each corner being a different color, and the center square was white.
September 2004 - A bulk mailing from RE/Max Realtors had a page for questions asking how to find out what other homes are selling for in the area. The graphics on the page were their logo and a house folded from a dollar bill.
An ad for Yahoo mail showed a piece of paper being folded into Charles Esseltine’s VW bug (October 2004).
Make your own cut and fold Apple computer or iPod - http://www.theapplecollection.com/Collection/PaperMac/ . Not quite origami but interesting and the page also advertises origami books available at Amazon.com.
A simple paper hat was spotted on the on wrapping of Staples brand photocopy paper.
Spotted 1/18/2005 - The Spanish DVD and video distributor
CAMEO has an origami unicorn as a logo. There is an animation where the unicorn
is unfolded. http://www.cameo.es/ - click on
the logo to see the animation.
On 4/28/05, ad banners using animated origami were spotted on an IT news site. The ads were for HP computers, and included a flapping bird, a pig and a rocket.
HSBC Banking worked with Mark Bolitho and a London design
company on a modular origami piece similar to a 30-sonobe unit stellated
icosahedron. The final result has a slightly a slightly shallower pitch for the
points. The appeal of these models was was the scalability, so that 8 smaller
units could come together to create a larger solid, and look interesting. http://www.hsbcnet.com/hsbc/home/about-hsbcnet;brochid=SZ25A1OAUT2W5QFIYNKSMFQ
An ad for the HSBC gold Visa card has the card is folded into an origami hummingbird. It has interesting wings, and a tail which bends somewhat underneath the bird.
A flyer enclosed with Discover Charge Card bills had a picture of a money windmill, apparently made with 4 separate bills and a map tack to hold them together on what looks like a straw.
An online advertisement for a Norwegian Cruise Line Hawaiian cruise compared a traditional cruise featuring “activities like napkin folding or origami” to an NCL cruise with "Lifestyle classes that feature computers, finance, health and wellness, and more."
A web-based ad showing on the cnn.com site for Chrysler Town and Country mini-vans shows a woman folding up a laptop, the cover on a cell phone, the screen on a video camera, the base of an exercise treadmill, a paper plane, and then the seats on the mini-van, with a voice-over saying, "You've been practicing for this your whole life...".
12/2005 - Spotted on a sign over a building in Albuquerque,
New Mexico - a black origami duck over a yellow background. The sign was for Black
Duck Embroidery. http://blackduckonline.com/
2/2006 - An animated ad for Yahoo starts with a
paper plane made out of a $5 bill flying across the screen. Text fills in saying
"You are now cleared for customers".
Evi Binzinger's fish was used on the web page for the Ihr
Karstadt Restaurant with the text: "Fisch Dir was für unter 5 Euro". http://www.restaurantcafe.de/index.php?id=397&no_cache%20=%201&sword_list[]=fisch
Dutch Mill Bulbs featured some origami $bill flowers on
their fundraising web page, and the ad appeared in the March/April 20006 Scouting
Magazine, page 11. The web site also included a flash animation with the text
"Money Doesn't Grow on Trees. It Grows With Flowers!" , which then
changed into a picture or origami $bill flowers. http://www.dutchmillbulbs.com/index2.html
and http://www.dutchmillbulbs.com/program_fs.html.
A similar picture featuring a young girl was spotted in the American Cheerleader
Magazine.
Spotted May 2006 - the cover of the Paper Direct catalog
features origami flowers and leaves folded out of papers printed with flowers.
An ad on the Microsoft Partner Program website has a flash animation that starts with an image of a business card and with the phrase: "Your company has everything to go forward" then the card is folded into an airplane, and then it says: "but with a little help it could go farther" and the airplane is launched! http://www.microsoft.com/portugal/ http://www.microsoft.com/portugal/parceiros/isv/empower/
Product development company Fahrenheit 212, a division of
the advertising company, Saatchi & Saatchi has a website that starts with
two orange boxes. Choose the one labeled "Flash" and an orange origami
goldfish swims around the screen. If you choose the box labeled
"Trash" you start with a piece of crumpled paper. http://www.fahrenheit-212.com/
October 2006 -Virgin America Airlines had a "Name Our Planes" contest includes a page to try out your name on a paper plane. You input your proposed name and print out a paper to be folded into 2-piece an Airbus A320, designed by Robert Lang. http://www.nameourplanes.com/
American Express has an advertising promotion to pay monthly bills using their Blue card. There are photographs of a swan and a crane, diagrams for traditional models of a swan, rowboat, tortoise, and pig and some origami paper.
An ad for Rotary International by Romani Bros. dated
12/5/05 about symbols of peace has a segment where a piece of paper folds into a
crane. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-gBCVBBHqY
Fed-Ex used an origami man created by Yuri and Katrin
Shumakov as the logo for Fed/Ex Asia. He appears as an icon on the website, and
there is also a printable template for the paper and instructions for fold the
man and the traditional masu box (with Fed-Ex logos). It can be found at: http://www.shippingtoasia.com/
http://www.shippingtoasia.com/content/origami.php?countrycode=uk
R/GA (a film and media company) sent out a holiday card
that features origami and allows you to "make your own" (Flash player
required). http://www.rga.com/holiday/
December 2006- an animated ad on http://www.yahoo.com
for the Ford Edge SUV features folding/unfolding animations. The text associated
with the giraffe is "Endless Flexibility", the text with the horse is
"265 Horsepower" and the text with the hummingbird is "Available
Panoramic Vista Roof".
An ad done by Rez,
a design shop in Liverpool, consists of instructions for "bus ticket
origami" stuck on the back of bus seats. “The project is all about daily
rituals and interacting with the viewer, with the intention leaving a smile on
their faces by giving them something to do while they commute to work or study
on the bus.”
An animated ad for Yahoo finanance has dollar bills folding
/ morphing from a car to a diamond ring to a tropical island http://finance.yahoo.com/
Feb. 2006 - Origami figurines were used in the Sax 5th
Avenue holiday catalog. They were not offered or sale, but were used as
backdrops for the other featured items.
SolidWorks eDrawings software is pitted against Mr. Norio Torimoto, origami expert, to see which can produce a robot faster. The video on the website is a time lapse of the competition, and you can order your own origami robot kit as well. http://www.solidworks.com:80/pages/programs/torimoto/index.htm
A web advertisement for women's bras uses the traditional origami fortune teller model. There is an interactive model where you can "play" and get your fortune! http://www.barelythere.com:80/teller.asp
The Media Edge, an advertising company in India, has a new logo. "The new logo that the agency is launching is in lines with the theme of origami, the Japanese paper art form. On peach-coloured square paper, marked with dotted lines as in a typical Origami paper, the name TME appears in white at one corner. ... TME’s new identity is based on the premise that one can make innumerable forms and solutions. all of which emerge from the same starting point - a perfectly square piece of paper." http://www.dnaindia.com:80/report.asp?NewsID=1090442
To launch its new "paper-less bills" initiative, utility company npower (UK) has commissioned Japanese origami expert, Mark Bolitho, to create unique origami sculptures out of bills. The first 10 customers to sign up will be invited to send in a picture of their own home or business premises to be recreated by Mr Bolitho, and the first the first 100 customers will receive a commemorative, bespoke origami sculpture made out of their final paper bill. http://www.worcesternews.co.uk:80/mostpopular.var.1352787.mostviewed.greener_way_for_settling_your_bills.php
June 16th, 2007 - spotted in Macy's Bridgewater Commons
(Bridgewater, NJ) was a table setting display featuring a crane mobile and
cranes on the plates:
July 2007 - A website about credit unions has a page titled "Learn how to make your money do good things" that features 8 origami designs from dollar bills. Instructions by Linda Mihara. http://www.creditunionswork.org/ http://www.creditunionswork.org/origami/origami00.cfm
Uwishunu -- pronounced "you wish you knew" -- uses online, print
and outdoor ads to promote the city of Philadelphia. 3-D origami posters can be
found in New York, Baltimore, Boston, Providence and Washington D.C. Creative
consists of four tear-off posters showcasing original Philly art that people can
collect. http://www.uwishunu.com/
Joseph Wu worked on an ad campaign for the Subaru Impreza. At the end of the
flash presentation is a section called "the garage". There's an
engineer on the floor playing with origami models. If you click on the link, you
get the opportunity to open a crease pattern for the vehicle. http://www.imprezaenvy.com/
http://www.imprezaenvy.com/downloads/2008ImprezaOrigami.pdf
Shaw Communications in Canada has a website that features an animated origami
pterodactyl and a T-Rex "billosaurus". http://www.tameyourphonebill.ca/
November 2007 - On the Burger King web site (www.bk.com)
after the flash media has loaded, hover over "Explore" and then click
on "menu", an origami car is folded from a wrapper in fast action and
pulls up to an origami drive-through. The kids menu becomes a cooter-catcher/fortune
teller. The BK crown selection shows a wallet. The BK cinema selection shows an
origami movie projector. The BK table guest shows an origami table and chair.
November 2007 - A recent Western Union ad on AIM (AOL Instant Messenger) showed what appeared to be paper airplanes folded out of dollar bills flying away, to illustrate that Western Union is a way of wiring money.
Wycliffe Bible Translators has in ad in their newsletter and on their website
that starts, "How to use a Bible you can't understand. Idea #145:
Experiment in Aerodynamics." The accompanying picture is a page from the
Bible folded into a simple airplane. http://www.wycliffe.org/
December 2007 - Qwest Business Solutions has an origami gallery that folds and unfolds
several models, including a beetle(?), bird, fish, plane, rabbit, suit, turtle,
and boat. The paper being folded states "Get Qwest. Get Nimble."
Robert Lang folded the figures for the camera, and then the animation department
attempted to replicate the folded model using 3-D animation tools. Go to
this website to see the animations: http://www.qwest.com/business/origami.html
A window display in an opticians office was a whole dress and a fan made from
newspapers. Here you can see a photo (posted by Anna on the origami mailing list
http://img100.imageshack.us/img100/5356/p2050002yk4.jpg
The AT&T monthly telephone bill for February 2008 included an insert > for "Hot Stuff" - AT&T services. The origami heart pictured on the insert looks a little larger than life sized, folded from $5 USD, and includes an 8-petalled flower in the middle.
February 2008 - spotted on YouTube, an Origami Butterfly can be seen in this commercial for Darbo (a producer of fruit products): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12gauBUW_ng
February 2008 - Öko Box is an Austrian company that organizes the collection and recycling of Tetra Pak cartons. The commercial features cartons folding into different configurations. http://www.myvideo.de/watch/2506634
The award-winning digital agency Studiocom launched a new logo, which
features a light green origami crane soaring above the Studiocom name. The
agency chose the color green for its representation of harmony and prosperity,
while the symbol of the crane taking flight was chosen as it parallels the
agency's values. The rebranding effort centers on the ancient Japanese origami
concept. The agency chose the origami concept as the basis of its story as it is
a sculptural representation of transformation, and the associated legend that if
you create and share 1,000 origami cranes, your greatest wish will come true --
a legend which captures the essence of community and social networking and
represents the spirit and founding capabilities of the agency. http://www.studiocom.com
February 2008 -A banner ad for the CEFCU Credit Union, featuring a tree model
design by Florence Temko. http://www.cefcu.com/html/member/m_cdsale_mar08_gen.shtml?utm_source=On-Site&utm_medium=side&utm_content=On-Site_cdsale_side&utm_campaign=CDSale_0308
March 2008 - Money folded elephants with animation for Clydesdale Bank.
Dennis Walker was the origami artist. http://www.cbonline.com/
To launch the Virgin Climate Change Fund, ad agency Glue London helped create a campaign that shows you can make money and be green. The solution was to create origami animals out of money. Rick Beech was the origami artist that worked with director Marky and stop motion animator Angela Palethoree to develop the ads, which ran in rich media placements online, using Flash Talking technology. See the link for videos showing the making of the ads. http://www.youtube.com/virginorigami and http://www.flickr.com:80/photos/virginmoney
5000 origami pigeons were placed in Leicester Square in London as a advert
for the "China Design Now" exhibit at the Victoria and Albert museum.
The ads were folded on paper with designs by 4 different artists, and included a
coupon for 3pounds off the admission price to the exhibit. The exhibit is
sponsored by HSBC and the pigeon campaign by RMG Connect.
The flash animation on the landing page for Shangri-La resorts features blue
water framed by palm trees. In the pool floats a small fleet of origami
sailboats. Sitting by the pool is a man holding some paper. He is about to
launch another origami boat into the pool. http://www.shangri-la.com/beginthejourney/index.html
An ad featured on Yahoo! for the Saturn Aura Sport Sedan shows newspaper headlines that state "Nation is Feeling Pain at the Pump" folding into origami moneyfolds that fly over to the car. The last newspaper reads "Road Trips Now More Likely".
June 2008 - Robert Lang worked on a series of ads for iPath Exchange Traded
Notes. The slogan is "Don't let a good idea get away". The three
different ads use stop motion photography to show a rhino, eagle, and giraffe
being folded, then the animal breaks out of the scene and "gets away".
The ad campaign states, "The ordinary person sees a sheet of paper. The
innovator sees infinite possibilities. iPath Exchange Traded Notes allow the
sophisticated investment professional to realize a portfolio's full potential,
enabling access to difficult-to-reach asset classes." See the ads and a
video of how they were made here: http://www.ipathetn.com/lp/origami.jsp?c=M8301
