D&AD at M&C

Last week we made our way to M&C Saatchi, where we had Tom and his partner Uche reviewing all of our D&AD advertising workshop work. We had five campaigns in ours but the guys didn't really dig most of them. Blimey.

The stuff they did like though we're accord with as well. So we're currently working with these strategies, to turn them into great campaigns for more suitable brands. And yes, we're quite excited with the outcome we have on our hands so far.

Overall we liked the advertising workshops, the briefs were not very ideal for a portfolio, as they are either charity brands (NSPCC) or very niche products (Rexel eco stationary, D&AD workshops). Nether less it was good practice. And we've met lots of nice people on the way. Thanks D&AD.

D&AD workshop portfolio

We are just collating all campaigns, and revising a few of them for a final D&AD advertising workshop book which we'll have to enter later today. It will then be sent to M&C Saatchi. They will look through them and give us feedback on all our work next week – should be quite interesting. We're pretty happy with most of the stuff in there. After that's done there's gonna be even more time to rock our own briefs.

Workshop Mania

This workshop at WDMP has been like two weeks ago but the pictures were lost in limbo – that's me not finding my camera cable. There's also a video clip of a creative team singing their idea on this workshop, but they didn't seem completely happy about it popping up online without their approvement. That should teach us a lesson about asking permission.

Anyway, the workshop last week was canceled, it'll happen this week instead. We'll be at WWAV & Leo Burnett, the briefs are to make a digital campaign for NSPCC for the former and a campaign against Drink Driving for Leo's. Charity all the way. All of this comes as a side dish with our placement at Adam&Eve that starts tomorrow. But Wait. That's not all. If works piles up, it does so in a serious way. There's something else coming up in two weeks time which is already stealing our sleep. It should be good and and it should fun. We're excited.

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.

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

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.

20 Slides - 20 Seconds

After a quick beer with the agency lads, we jumped on the tube towards Russell Square. We were really excited about it, not Russell Square but Pecha Kucha Night. A format of presentation that was hosted by the D&AD last night. And it was quite brilliant.

Unlike most lecturey lectures, there were no long winded speeches that bored you half to death and half asleep. Instead, 13 speakers were invited on stage and were given 20 slides that lasted for 20 seconds each to tell us what they thought about stuff, all kinds of stuff. It was similar to Interesting 2007 last year, just a lot quicker.

There was one who stood out from the rest, perhaps because of his name (Sanky), perhaps because of his hair (big) or perhaps because he engaged the hell out of his audience for 6 minutes and 40 seconds. Whatever it was, I doubt anyone will forget the only slide of the evening that silenced the entire hall. He presented about 15 slides of stuff he loves, mostly funny and good ideas. Then he hit us with a picture of the falling man (9/11). 20 seconds of pindrop silence in the audience and nothing but applause thereafter.

A great evening full of AHA's, our favourite D&AD lecture so far.

D&AD judging week

This week D&AD is judging all the work for the 2008 competition. As our friend Ray is covering the event I ended up at the judge party last night, which was filled with creatives from all around the world. Everyone seemed tired but I guess that's pretty understandable after a day full of reviewing work.

There I met Brett McKenzie, chief writer for ihaveanidea.org. He's one of the guys responsible for Portfolio Night, which is happening for the second time in London this May. The last tickets were sold yesterday and the list of creative directors is still growing.

Brett and Ray are blogging about the D&AD judging week at ihaveanidea.org/live, check it out for the latest stuff.

Festive Delay

Looks like D&AD is taking it's time so it will not be until after Christmas/NYE until everyone will get the results about the Advertising Workshop. We are cool with that, let's enter festive mode and stop thinking about that stuff for a couple of weeks. Ho Ho Ho!

D&AD workshop work

The deadline for the workshop brief was an hour ago and the work arrived with them fine, so it means waiting for a response. I don't have a clue if they (whoever the judges are) will like the stuff, but I'll share it here. The first one contains the proposition, Organic Food made easy to Organic goes mainstream.

The second campaign submitted is a rather fun one, it's targeted more narrow, towards mothers. I'm curious about this one :)

We got a pencil!

Hello world! Yesterday was the deadline for entries for the D&AD advertising winter workshop. Even though we were mega busy with JWT stuff, we managed to finish our entries right on time. The official deadline for the work to get there was 5:oo pm - so at 4:30 pm we tried to order a courier. They told us that they are not gonna make it in time anymore. 'AAAAHHH' Panic, stress, sweating. If the works doesn't get there in time they not gonna accept our entries and everything was for nothing. So what to do? We jumped in a cab rushing through the crowded streets of London and handed the work over to the man with the grey hair at the D&AD office. It was quiet an unspectacular ending after all this excitement. But look, we received pencils already in advance.

D&AD President's Lecture: James Jarvis

Last week we went to listen to James Jarvis in the Peacock theatre. Thanks to Gemma from Kendall Tarrant who had two spare tickets and we were just at the right place at the right time to get them, cheers!
Jarvis is the creator of the potato heads and his name should be familiar to anyone who is into designer toys. One of his very first toys is Martin. I really liked listen to James telling about how he struggled to decide on what helmets the policemen in his potato head world should look like.

Creating characters, the worlds they live in and toys people like to have in their homes – that's how advertising should be! We need to aspire stuff that we are proud of and that people actually enjoy. Did you ever felt like ripping your student bookapartt and starting from scratch on? Mmmmhhh... *rip*

James loves the process of drawing and heshowss us


Whole worlds created for the potato heads