Timeout

Taking a break. Letting the mind flow. Gathering mental energy. Thinking. The calm before the 'doing' storm. Back soon.

Creative divorce

Yepp, sad but true. Kristin & Waldemar are going separate ways. It took us a while but we decided that we aren't better together as a creative team. We think a team should be stronger than the sum of its members. We gave it a couple of tries but finally decided today. In the beginning it's going to be hard – in the long run though it should pay off. Kristin will continue doing great work at the BMB placement. Waldemar will continue writing this blog, starting next week.

Don't worry, we still are friends. Enjoy your weekend.

Turntable Soul Music

I went for the Bonobo concert at the Cargo on saturday. He was the main act. He was great, no question. There was another band supporting him, my french friend knew them already. Belleruche. After hearing them, I was amazed, fresh! They describe their style as 'Turntable Soul Music', that's also gonna be the title of their first album, releasing on the 16th of July. Can't wait! Keep your eyes open, they're having some more gigs in London. Check out their homepage, listen to some music on their myspace and enjoy m favorite piece:

Belleruche – Minor Swings (Four songs .ep)

The day after

Ok, London's first Portfolio night is over. It was good. It was strange. It was amazing. The pizza was tasty and the beer was cold. We've met a bunch of very nice people. Hello & thanks to everyone! We had the chance to glance at some books but missed others.

We arrived at the venue in Covent Garden at 7pm and signed in. Upstairs was already filled up by a group of young creatives – waiting for the event to begin, every minute more and more kept arriving. The review were handled in three groups which were announced upfront, we belonged to the first group, scheduled to begin at eight. It started a little bit late, which was expected. Not all of the announced creative directors attended the event, but there were more than plenty really excellent and experienced creative directors there – only two or three were missing (although replaced by other people from the same agencies).

Every participant were to see three creatives. Since we brought a second copy of our book we seized the chance to split up and see three each. It went by way to fast. But it was well worth it. It went like speed dating and after 15 minutes you had to change the table to the next creative director – but time was stretched here and there. 15 minutes. That's way to short, but possible. We got really good opinions on our stuff. Like most of young creatives know who have book crits a lot, opinions vary a lot. This was even more obvious in such a short time between the opinions. 45 minutes, three creative directors, six for both of us. The outcome for us: four options/offers for a creative placement.

Afterwards we stayed on to meet more young creatives and left only at the very end, maybe to late – the bad things came afterwards: Both of us were having nightmares this night about posters chasing after us and creative directors bombarding us with opinions – it was a proper portfolio review overdose. Thanks a lot ihaveanidea.org, we'll come again next year.

Young creatives from all over London

Snacks, cold beer and a very relaxed atmosphere were all present

Introduction & some rules before the start

David & Phoebe from What if... didn't want their faces to appear on the internet,
we found a compromise

Anna & Iain, our friends, the little team from the guardian

The third group is lining up for their turn

The creative directors move in

The young Gladiators are entering the review arena

The venue was stylish – very noisy at times though

The Tigers
Others call them Creative Directors

Andy Sandoz, former Creative Director at Agency Republic and man behind sandoz.co.uk

Richard Hale, Creative Director at Agency Republic

Graham Fink, Creative Director at M&C Saatchi

Dave Bedwood, Creative Director at Lean Mean Fighting Machine

Russell Ramsay, Chief Creative Director at BBH

Just before the event we placed beer-mats on every review table, if you would turn them around you could see us. Not many people did, but the ones who did, liked it. Fun.

One bad thing about the portfolio night: a lot of people who stayed till the end didn't get the promised goody bags, so no portfolio night t-shirts for us :(

The Big Bucks Bash

Last Thursday we visited the 'Bucks Advertising Party'. We've met so many nice people there – hello to everyone! Events like this aren't bad at all, they are great. To be honest though, we spent more time talkin' to people we already knew than getting to know new ones. After all it was full of Bucks people and that's the university where I'm from. Great thing, thanks a lot to Julie Wright & Daniel Morris for organizing this – we're looking forward to next year!

Very gorgeous venue in Soho, the Rex Club

The Kris

A very good bunch of people, creatives on placement, from the industry, some old top dogs, and a lot of students

Simply enjoyment

Ding Ding

Last friday should have been our last day at Beattie McGuinness Bungay but we got to stay on. That's cool. We didn't get anything produced yet so we'll have to work harder I reckon. We like it, and we'll get to work on the big IKEA pitch – aaand enjoy the sun in Covent Garden during lunch time.

Exciting? You bet! Tonight we'll clean up our book a little bit so it's ready for tomorrow's portfolio night. Apparently all tickets are sold out. We hope to get some good shots from all the young teams we'll see there.