I’m sure many of you have seen the UK Whiskas cat food advertising campaign last year, which featured some elegant origami made from Whiskas wrappers. Sadly, I’ve not been able to indentify the origami artist.

I had a call from an agency wanting 50 cows for an event, citing the crittur below right as what they wanted. When I explained that it was probably made from 3 or 4 separate pieces, they were very surprised and asked “can you make it from a single sheet?” I said that it wouldn’t look nearly as clean or elegant, or be as cheap!

This set me thinking (gasp); how many times do we see genuine origami used in adverts (answer : rarely) and why should this be? It seems that what the agencies, and therefore the public, look for in origami is an elegant, simplified form, but one that closely resembles the real life original. It’s ironic that the public have no interest in notions of single-square purity or original techniques yet those are the very things most creators strive for!