I'm decorating the flat at the moment and had the boring task of clearing out our spare room on Saturday so we could paint it. It's a strange moment when you realise you're a hoarder, which I've accepted I really am. I blame my grandparents - at their house it's bloody choker with the most incredible amount of crap...tins full of rubber bands, ring pulls and copper coins, drawers full of watches, cupboards full of kettles (no shit)...but at least they have the war as an excuse for their hoardy ways, a time where everyone was taught to be thrifty. I have no excuses, I just like to keep stuff.
Anyway, before I could smash up my awful Argos chipboard desk, I had to empty the drawers which were full of old advertising bits and bobs...mainly from when my old partner and I were trying to get a job. There must have been about three or four old portfolios, from the times we were told to 'start again', which was always a pleasure. There were also pads full of crit notes, diaries full of people we used to see....relentless times they were. Looking back it makes me realise just how tough it was getting a job - so I'm interested in seeing how the likes of Jai and Wal are faring (these boys have 'relentricity'), although to be fair with the current climate (economy not snow) it's doubly hard at the moment for them. I guess that's kind of why, four years on from getting hired, I still like to get in at 8.15 etc. I never want to take this job for granted. So, anyway, this was one of the things I found:
It's a chart of crit notes - different creative teams we used to get advise from, laid out so that we could easily see who was saying what about each campaign in our book, then we could reach a general consensus about what was worth keeping in etc. The chart probably would have been from 1 week's worth of crits...it took us 2 and 1/2 years to get hired (we didn't do a course) so we had a lot of crits and did a lot of books. Just looking through this chart for this particular week, I see we saw the brilliant Ben Mooge at Mother, Dave & Ed at Fallon, Brian Connolly at Ogilvy, Bonnie & Charlotte at AMV, Jon & Rik at BBH, the amazing and almighty Richard Russell at W+K and Adrian Lim at Lowe. So, if any of them are reading this (not likely!) I'd like to say a big thank you. And I guess if there is anything to take out from this post, it's this: the relentless will be rewarded...cheesily translated as: if you want it hard enough you'll get it. I read an interview with Dave Droga the other day, and he said that you probably won't be the best creative out there, but you can make sure you work harder than everyone else. Apparently he used to divide an A3 layout page into 100 boxes and then wouldn't allow himself to go home until he had an idea in each box. Amazing/psycho/relentless.
(just realised that if you click on the photo, it becomes a lot bigger and readable. My favourite note on there?
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