Warning: You may think I've been drinking Koolaid.

Target has just released a series of advertisements celebrating the city of New York through the works of over twenty talented artists. This is not unusual for a company that wrote the book on bringing design to the masses... and receiving major awards for their promotional work.

What is unusual is that Target worked for several months to monopolize the advertising space in this week's New Yorker magazine. Every ad holds fast to the zippy black-white-and-red Target color scheme and cleverly scatters their iconic bull’s-eye logo into each illustration. From the classic (construction worker having coffee in a cafe) to the urban (basketball players flying through the skyline) to the inventive (the Brooklyn Bridge replaced with a red high heel shoe), Target has added a new layer of creativity to their campaign that mirrors the complex citizenry of NYC.

And these efforts haven't gone unnoticed.

Stuart Elliott broke the story in the New York Times, bringing up the obvious question: where's the Target store in Manhattan if you're going to run ads in the New Yorker? Minda Gralnek, Target's creative director, was the first to point out this concern, as well as a solution (there are five Targets in the outer boroughs and over fifty stores in the metropolitan area); to which Elliott quipped: "True, but is there a magazine called The Long Islander, or The New Jerseyan?"

Gothamist queried their readers to get their reactions, which were mixed at best - from love to hate. Pentagram designer Michael Bierut decried the ad series as "unnerving" and "the product of a more nakedly mercenary world."

Liberal Serving hints that a Manhattan store could be on the horizon (especially with folks like Jeff Lang and yours truly already "smitten with Target's classier, more hipster-friendly vibe"). And what's not to love about good design? It's cool to be warm.

Update: Here's a Flickr photoset with all the ads.