Thursday 26 February 2009

Japan Holiday Photo Film

A bloke went to Japan to see his girlfriend on holiday and took load of photos. Then he put all the photos together to make a film, with an LCD Soundsystem track over the top. Makes me want to go to Japan even more than I did...they've got weird jellyfish and all sorts there.



(Courtesy of Damiano at RSA films).

Tuesday 17 February 2009

Friday 13 February 2009

Monday 9 February 2009

The Relentless will be Rewarded

One post a week is what you get at the moment. Is that acceptable? Is this even classified as blog? Oh well, here's a little something...

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? 'Smiled' is quite funny or 'Scary doll' about our Ben Sherman campaign. The line was 'It's still great to go out with Ben Sherman', in a 'Weekend at Bernies cart the dead bloke around 'style. We actually had a lifesize Ben Sherman doll/mannequin made up that we used to put in creative director's offices now and again. Dead Ben. Relentless.)

Monday 2 February 2009

Snow day













This morning I braved the freezing wastes of West London, dressed myself up in my snowboarding wear and trudged into work through the snow. Of course, no-one else has come in. What a waste of my time. I could be at home killing foreign monsters on Playstation 3 online...or building a snowman. But I'm here now, so I might as-well crack on. There is literally no-one in the department. Not a soul. I could be naked and nobody would know.