Catching up with London

It was great being again in London, we got lots of work done for our current freelance project but now I'm now back in Hamburg, while my creative partner Robbin is back in Sweden. We're finishing up this said project and planning our next move. Between post-its and markers we've met old and new friends, including my former partner Jai, senior creative and jedi-mentor Anuj and Alfred from Anomaly. The dog in the last picture was hanging around in the cafe where we met the Tesch brothers Johan and Mans.

Jai / Wal

We've been holding that down for a bit but we'll share it now. We're not a creative team anymore as we've split up. The main reason is that we have different ambitions in advertising and they don't seem to go along. We still have a couple of projects we're working on together and it would be awesome if they work out. Jai' accepted another three months at the Bank which he's following up at the moment. I'm making a new plan. I applied for a postgraduate course outside of London and I'm waiting for a reply. In the meantime I'll be looking around and speaking to agencies on my own. See what happens.

Quick one

Quick update, we'll post more when deadlines allow. Busy at the Bank. Got tickets for the NABS talk next week, it's a great lineup. Also thinking about going to Portfolio Night 7 in Amsterdam, why not? And it looks like some agencies are looking for talent, which is good news. Maybe intersting stuff happening. No swine flu between us yet.

Back to business

After the the cold winter hibernation we warmed up and put together our plan of action for the next weeks. We're excited. The first part is to bring the ideas we gathered over the holiday season to life and on paper. We can't wait to share them with people.

End of Movember

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.

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.

Jai & Wal

Happy New Year! С новым годом! Sal Mubharak!

The latter two are in Russian and Gujarati, spoken by the two of us. Oh and by the way the two of us are Jai and Wal. Here’s a really quick intro (a more in depth version of our saga will soon follow) we met back in college, had a ton of fun and did some pretty good work together. However life after Bucks led to a fork in the road, and we went in different directions.

Late last year our paths once again crossed and with a bit of luck we got selected for Cream 07. It kind of made us realise how much we missed ‘us’. So we made up our minds and promised that in the new year we would team up and make 2008 our year.

We’re now rested, armed and poised for what London has to throw at us, with our sleeves bursting with adventures, ideas, hunger and ambition. We hope you’ll join us for the ride. So stay tuned and get ready, Creative in London has now entered the year of the pig!

Cream '07 retrospect

It is over. It was stressful. But very much worth it. The evening started early with a briefing with the Talent Business at 5 o'clock. The exhibition was formed of over twenty young creative teams or individuals, most of them from the UK but with special appearances from international teams as far away as North America, New Zealand and Australia. After setting up our stand we took some time to go around and gaze at some work. I was very much impressed with the standard of most of it, great stuff.

The exhibition was open to the creative 'public' from six o'clock on, it was amusing – the clock turned six and all the creative teams were watching the doors, tension in the air. The poor guy who comes in first will be attacked from all sides. Surprisingly, it was fine. Many people turned up, lots of creative directors, senior creatives, talent spotters and other important people in suits.

I exhibited with Jai, a copywriter I worked with the last couple of months, as well as doing some campaigns back in university. There were two rooms full of work, we were lucky enough to be in the one with the bar, so lots of people hanging around and looking at the work. Awkward to lurk around your book and wait for someone to talk to. They should have had pictures of the creatives next to the work like last year. We could grab some contacts, so it was very much worth it. Since I was in the cream exhibition last year, I was very happy about the clean stands – good exposure for the work. Last year was crammed, everyone customized their stands and it looked more like a circus. Personally speaking, it felt like there were more people attending last year, maybe that's because of the location being in east London, rather than central. They should have advertised with being close to the shoreditch house :)

This morning we had a first email from a creative director asking me and Jai to come for a placement starting on the 1st of October. Sadly, Jai will not be able to take it up since he's going to take a marketing job on the dark side, the client side. Please, please, let a good copywriter fall from the sky for me, I will do everything for it, I promise…

Anyway, thanks a lot to the great Talent Business crowd including Rory, Davina, Andrea, Anna and co. You gave all the attending teams the opportunity of a great exposure in this industry! Oh, by the way, I've got my powerbook back today – happy again.

(copy) Jai & Wal (art)

Our (almost completely) handmade business cards, people seemed to like them, but were reserved to rip the seal apart since it looked precious, damn.

Our stand + book, I loved the black.