Concrete Jungle, Summer Issue

Adidas dropped the second issue of their Originals Series magazine, this time put together with the Berlin publication eVe without Adam. The previous issue came from ArtSchoolVets; this one’s called "The Concrete Jungle Issue," and it leans into urban summer—the kind that happens on rooftops and in parking lots rather than on beaches.

The World Cup hangs over the whole thing. A feature called "Wildlife Metropolis" ties the All Over Animal Print collection to the tournament—Berlin artist Conny Maier used the prints as a jumping-off point for illustrations mapping them to different competing nations. It’s the kind of lateral thinking that makes branded content occasionally worth a look: the brief was probably "make something about football," and what came back was a set of drawings where a jaguar print stands in for an entire country’s ambitions in Brazil.

Adidas has always been better at this than most—better at finding actual creative people and giving them actual latitude, rather than just slapping three stripes on an existing mood board and calling it a collaboration. Whether that survives contact with a full campaign budget is a different question. But at least somebody’s trying.