50 Today

Let's forget the controversy for a day and remember the genius. 

The Workshops Begin…

Last night we had our first D&AD workshop at Feel. It wasn’t an agency many of us had heard of but after a bit of research we soon realized they’ve done some pretty cool work. Chris Arnold, the CD and Partner ran a great first workshop. We didn’t touch on much advertising really, the session was more focused on creativity and communication in general. Chris also dabbled with some psychology and NLP, which was a bit of an eye opener.

For last nights brief, Chris asked us to put together a reaction diary for the week. And last night he explained why it was so important to be able to read reactions, as only then can be really evoke them. Chris talked about many things last night but I think the one point he wanted us to go away with was everything we do should get a reaction.

Here’s the template + instructions we were given, so if you want you can try it yourself.

BFI's Comic Book Season

I've been a huge fan of Superman since I could walk. Read all the comics, used all the stationary, wore all the t-shirts and might have even named a girl I fancied at school Lois. Since those days my obsession had somewhat calmed, but last night it all came rushing back. As part of the BFI's Comic Book season this August they had a one night only showing of Superman II. Oh my goodness, was it good. Overly camp acting, terrible effects, corny dialogue and more Amerciana than at a Bush rally in Ohio. I loved every minute of it. The best part was the fact they didn't use the remastered version. We were shown the original print, so it was grainy, the colour was faded and the sound was only a little better than what we'd expect from a Grundig cassette player from Argos. It felt the way it should have done, it was watched the way I have always wanted to see it; like it was 1980, for two hours I had gone back in time (well kind off).

For those into your comics, there's lots going on for the remainder of the month so if you get a chance I'd give the Southbank a visit. They are showing Persopolis from the 18th-20th Aug, never seen it before but it looks good. I was lucky enough to be given the tickets as a gift but I think they're about seven quid, totally worth it. Right, off to do some more people watching for our Feel brief.

Jai Time!

Yay, I'm off. Flying to Kiev and Yalta for two weeks.
Jai is going to do his magic here so long – enjoy.

D&AD Workshop – Introduction

17 young creatives and 6 agencies hosting sessions – sounds like it's going to be great fun! The introduction sessions for this years autumn D&AD advertising workshop was this Wednesday, at their office in Vauxhall. It started at 6 but of course we arrived late, blimey!

It was pretty easy going, after all the essential information we started with a simple creative exercise. We mixed into pairs of two and spent some time talking to each other before drawing a poster about the other person so we'll get to know everyone. After that we received some D&AD student briefs (random, the TfL brief was one of them) and worked on them for 15 minutes in the same pairs and presented to each other. Just a bit of fun, getting to know the group and getting comfortable presenting work in front of each other.

The first 'real' sessions will take place next week on Tuesday and will be hosted by the agency Feel. They already sent us a pdf called 'the Reaction Diary' which is quite interesting and promising. We're happy to be participating, we've already met some pretty cool people and of course it all ended in the pub – but enough talk, here are some pictures:

D&AD Workshop – WHSmith

Ok, we didn't make any copies of the campaign we submitted to qualify for the D&AD advertising workshop, as we've been pretty busy with Nike stuff at that time. But as we went to the introduction session on Wednesday we received our work back and we thought we'll share.

The brief was: Create a campaign to encourage parents to spend more quality time with their children, by showing the range of products that WHSmith has to keep all ages entertained.

Here are the two campaigns we sent in.


Jai prefers the first one but I like this one more. We don't know yet which agency did set the brief. Maybe we'll find out and ask what they preferred.



We had a couple more starting points we've submitted as lines:

• Adult Play Time
• Invest in your assets
• You'll need them once you're old
• Playing makes you younger
• Be a TV family
• Make time before they make you to
• Keep them younger longer

Nothing new

Last couple of days were a nice break from the blog, just a bit lazy really. Enjoying the non existent summer, writing stories (about a cactus), reading books (advertising), working on our portfolio (a hairstyling brand) some design stuff (branding for a food franchise), calling agencies (new London office of the Brooklyn Brothers) and more stuff. In a bit we're off to the D&AD Workshop introduction session which takes place tonight. Hope to take some pictures there.

Happy Birthday!

Tam dam! Yesterday was Jai's birthday, he reached the 24th year on this planet. The Blog says Happy (belated) Birthday! Hope the Hangover disappears smoothly :) I also have to recover from a super rainy and muddy Field Day.

Kristin at the Club

An obviously cool place to hang for London creatives in between placements and freelance is Soho's Breakfast club (also a famous Planner hideaway). That's where we bumped into Kristin today, Wal's former creative partner. She's doing some cool things at the moment with her partner Graham – watch out for them! On the piece of paper she gives a shout out to her single favorite blog reader.

Rum Alchemy II

It's this time of the year again. The weekend before last I made my way to Borough Market afresh to obtain selected ingredients for another round of flavor Infused Rum. I bottled and mixed the dried fruits and spices on the day. Now it's going to take the three bottles at least a couple of weeks – ideally around three months – to unfold their flavors and sync together perfectly. The most important thing is patience and a weekly shake. I'm also rather curious how they will turn out compared to the ones from last year. It's less sugar and a bit more fruits this time. Maybe for these three I will get around to do what I wanted last time and design some labels for the infused rum. Let me introduce the cast:

Say hello to good

In spite the summer's not really jazzing, everything's good. Things are sinking in and we are having a couple of days off. Jai is working part time at the airport and I'm doing some freelance packaging design, great fun.

Today made us especially happy. First we discovered a post on the W+K London blog about us. The Welcome to Optimism blog was the first one I started reading regularly, it introduced me to blogging and was one of the reasons I started a blog myself – so we're pretty chuffed to appear on there – a small dream comes true.

And if that's not enough to sweeten up the day, there's another one of our goals reached. We received an email from D&AD, we've made it onto the Advertising Workshop which will kick off next week. It's gonna be good. Every Wednesday, new creative people, drinks and food for our portfolio. Yummy! We might have even been smart enough to make copies of the work we've sent in. So if I'll find them I'll post the campaigns, the brief was WHSmith.

We hope your day was as good as ours, we all need some goodness nowadays to go with that boring weather – let's all say hello to good and it'll keep coming back.

Arrr!

Shiver me timbers – our friend Pirate at W+K gave us 'tis gold for our further journeys. Cheers!