Cannes Lions 2011 Recap

The Cannes Lions Festival, a legendary week for advertising creatives and alike. This summer we were lucky enough to experience it for ourselves and to see what the fuzz is all about.

First of all we had to plan ahead and put on the back-burner on some freelance projects in order to get a Young Lions pass to the event – and it was very much worth it.

The festival of creativity as it's now called was an overdose of inspiration. Of course it was accompanied by more parties than we could handle and a lot of meeting people but our main focus were the seminars and workshops. And they did not disappoint. Sure, some of the lectures were not as interesting as we hoped but the majority was well interesting. The highlights included Coca&Cola on liquid mystery, John Hegarty on being different, Sir Ken Robinson on Inspiration, Google on our future, Malcolm Gladwell on the importance of being third, John Boiler on agency culture, Rob Reilly on great pitching, Danny Choo on Anime, Johan Lehrer on the science of creativity, Mark Holden on future technology and many many more. Luckily all of these talks are now available online to watch the ones we missed and take in the very good ones once again. We had a great time, it was inspiring, enlightening and very motivating. Next year we'd like to be on stage to pick up a Lion ourselves.

Dover Street Market London

Part two of my DERZEIT flying Paperboy assignment led me to London where I visited the Dover Street Market store. It's one my favourite clothing stores partly due to a great selection of Japanese brands headlined by Comme de Garçons. After I inspected all five floors of this style temple I met my former partner Jai for lunch and strolled through Brick Lane to enjoy the sunny weather. Somehow the whole day I kept bumping into old friends, even on the plane back to Berlin – it's a nice feeling in such a big city. London, you are missed.

DERZEIT in Paris

This week I'm a rather lucky Paperboy, I'm delivering the daily newspaper DERZEIT which is all about the Berlin Fashion week to two european cities. My first trip started as early as it gets, 7 o'clock and I was on my way to get the magazine fresh off the printers. Being a true fashion week victim I was also carrying a massive hangover with me from last nights Broken Hearts Club party. And it did exceed hand luggage. The first time I realized I was in Paris is when I saw the Eiffel tower but it just didn't feel like I was there. It called for drastic measures: Cafe au Lait, a Croissant and the Amelie Soundtrack blasting from my headphones – finally my head seemed to have landed in Paris as well.

The two places to visit: LazyDog, a cozy little book store in the Bastille area and Colette, hands down one of the coolest shops I've set my foot in. Next to some great clothes they have a fabulous selection of toys, gadgets and other things people don't really need but have a strong itch to buy. After I completed my task I took a stroll through Paris and visited Ladurée to satisfy my sugar addiction. A day well spent. London's next.

Derzeit on tour

Berlin is invaded by fashionistas, it's the Mercedes Benz Fashion week. DERZEIT is a free daily paper written, designed and printed in the heart of Berlin – and delivered fresh off the press to several cities in Europe. I'm on board helping them out to deliver awesomeness and visited Paris yesterday and writing this from London right now. Watch out for the travel diary and lots of photos next.

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.

Back from Tokyo

I'm in Hamburg to spend the holidays together with my family and friends. Our contract at Wieden+Kennedy Tokyo for now is finished, we had a great time and it was an amazing adventure. We might return for a project or two but for now we're taking a break in order to figure out our next challenge. And yes, it's christmas time, so Ho Ho Ho and merry christmas to everyone!

Kyoto

After some extreme busy times at work we managed to take a week off in order to travel around. We spent most of the time exploring Kyoto and the surrounding areas. The season presented the leaves in perfect colors, a great occasion to get familiar with my new camera, a Canon EOS 500D.

Japan – a strange country

An info-graphic motion peace I stumbled upon. I have yet to see how much of it applies.

First saturday in Tokyo

I am now in Tokyo. The first week was full of things to take care of, practical stuff mainly and the first few days at the agency were all about getting settled. The first saturday Robbin and I spend walking around Shibuya, Harajuku and Yoyogi park. Here are some great shots that Robbin took.

Of course we visited a typical arcade and I tried my luck getting a sexy manga figurine. Better luck next time.

Bye bye Sweden

After leaving Stockholm today at 08.00 in the morning, I just arrived in Hamburg, Germany and it's almost midnight. It was a long but brilliant road trip with more sun and less snow as I drove further south. The adventure part was taken care of by my bank who blocked my debit card half way to 'prevent fraud' – which resulted in me being a stowaway on the second ferry without a ticket. Above is the last glance of Sweden as seen from the first ferry from Helsingborg – Hej då.

Now, there's only one more week left to take care of thousands of things before leaving for my internship.

Hyper Island on tour

Facilitators and students will be traveling around in the next few months to represent the school in 8 major cities around the globe: Amsterdam, Barcelona, Berlin, London, New York, Oslo, Stockholm & Sao Paolo. It's a chance for interested people to learn more about Hyper Island and to apply for a course here at the same time. It's Hyper Island choosing students, and students choosing Hyper Island.

There will be 100 seats for international students between the five programs for next year. If you want the chance for one of them, check out the recruitment website. If you have any questions regarding the dates in November & January for London, send me an email to waldemar.wegelin (at) hyperisland.se or leave a comment here.

Birthday present - Paris

It was a good day. Today I turned 27 and right in the morning we received an email that our team (Nathan, Robbin & me) won the Creative Contest set by Tribal DDB Paris for the DDB Digital Days. Not only did three other teams from Hyper Island made the shortlist (making HI the most shortlisted school, thus winning an additional school price) but our concept seemed the juries favourite that got us to the next step: client presentation. They've booked us on a plane (leaving in 7 hours) to Paris so we can present our concept in front of the Tribal DDB team and the global brand manager of Lipton Ice Tea. Bags are packed and fingers are crossed.

Teambuilding

The final bit of preparation for the Hyper Island course was a trip to Barnens Ö to unite the team and make an efficient group out of us. After a long bus journey we arrived and mixed into rooms before the first exercise which we called Desert Storm. Everyone was blindfolded and dispersed on a large meadow. The first goal was to search the field for a rope and get everyone to hold it. Without speaking to each other, and obviously without seeing anything at all. The next step, after everyone was holding onto the rope, was to form a square with the rope on the floor. A great experience it was, we made it and learned a lot in the process. The rest of the day was about the course and expectations. The expectations our co-workers have, our expectations of each other, the course, the Hyper Island brand and the expectations on ourselves. By the time we were done with half of this it was rather late and everyones brain seemed to sharing one thought: we need dinner! But nothing's easy with Hyper. Dinner was turned into a task, 55 people need food, we have a kitchen, and products. Mission: Feed everyone, and consider special requirements like vegetarians, people who can't eat eggs, fructose and a dislike of red meat & pork.

Driven by primal instinct and immense hunger leadership was taken and stuff was decided on. I took the role of one of six kitchen chefs. Cooking for 55 people sounded like a fun challenge. With the contents of the kitchen we created a menu for 'Chez Hyper': Thyme marinated Pork fillet, with a peppery onion gravy, together with salty oven baked potatoes and a zingy Ratatouille variation. The vegetarian counterpart was all about Catalan Tortillas de Patatas. All was rounded with olives, cheese and fresh bread and followed by fresh fruits baked with white chocolate and topped with vanilla ice cream for desert. The teamwork was amazing and everyone seemed very happy about the food. For me it was one of the best tasks at Hyper Island so far.

Reflections and more defined expectations filled the second day. It felt overwhelming to gasp everyones expectations and it was rewarding to find and define common goals for the work ahead. Every single Hyper student is now itching, not because of mosquito bites that go hand in hand with outdoor trips but rather because of the great anticipation that we built up. We want to start the next module and gets hand on within interactive media. We are greatly prepared and we won't have to wait long to start. Maybe 9 more hours.

Wal in Kazakhstan

As I have some time off I've taken a flight and arrive in Almaty, Kazakhstan last Friday. I haven't been here for over three years now so I'll have two weeks to visit my grand parents, explore the city and do some packaging design and print advertising for my Dad's company.

The weather is great, it's super hot, around 30 degrees and it's a complete different world. It looks like my camera charger died on me so I'm taking blurry pictures on my iPhone which I'll share below. If all works out I should be back in London on the 15th of June.

And no, it's not like in Borat's movie.

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.

Hey there

Just arrived from Gatwick airport. Had a great flight from Hamburg to London, got to write stuff, to read stuff and had the chance to nap a lil' bit. It was great to see family & friends, and have time off, but it feels like I've been away for too long – can't wait to get going again. Now excuse me, there are lots of things to do. Have a fantastic Monday everyone, it's good to be back. Quality.

Blogging pause

Welcome, to the intermission. It's august and I'm away from London in Hamburg, doing random stuff, meeting friends, playing games and working on my portfolio. Will be back in London soon - I am preparing some posts in the meantime, about music, rum, and advertising. Won't be blogging regularly in august though. Enjoy the quirky summer.

Off to see the simpson movie now. Check here for advertising world news so long.

Timeout

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

My Trip to Japan

It has been already a while since I have been traveling to Japan but I still wanna show you some pictures of my journey. In march, my boyfriend Rick and me flew to Tokyo. We traveled 9536 miles from London Heathrow to Narita Airport and flew for 12 hours. For those who haven't been to Japan yet there is just a little thing you need to know: Everything is different.

We fell in love immediately with Tokyo and have been really impressed how clean an under control everything there seems to be. The food was amazing even though I had a hard time in the beginning as a vegetarian. The people are so nice and friendly and they where giggling all the time when they saw us. Even if it sounds strange but in Japan are only Japanese looking people living. In two weeks we saw probably around ten "western European" looking people. So you can imagine that a blond girl with blue eyes and a Yorkshire ginger bread man did stand out quiet a bit.

After spending a few days in Tokyo we traveled to Kyoto, than to Osaka, Kobe, Hiroshima, Oji, Nara and back to Tokyo. We checked in and out in hotels for six times, traveled 894,2km with the Shinkansen train of Japan Railways and walked probably the same amount of kilometers around the country. And now i gonna take you on our journey...

This is the Metro in Tokyo. The seats are heated and they are playing weired music to calm you down.

Japanese people are allowed to smoke everywhere. So that's what they do.

Reading the Metro map was a problem we had to deal with everyday. Sometimes it got really frustrating. This is the map of Osaka.

In 2005 Osaka was the second most expensive city in the world, Tokyo is in first place.

This is MushiMushi. Rick did win him for me in one of these crazy game halls.

Vending machines in Japan are holy and you can find them at each corner. You gonna be surprised because they are always working and they are clean. Unfortunately we couldn't find one with used knickers.

To see the world from Japans view is something I found very interesting.

A graveyard in the mountains of Kyoto.

This is part of the Fushimi Shrine. It's the largest and most impressive shrine in Japan. It's 4km long and you walk through red gates. The little shrines are there to pray.

Kyoto is surrounded by bamboo woods and hidden shrines everywhere.

This is a sculpture of a couple I guess. I found it in the mountains of Kyoto in front of a house. I was so fascinated by the sight that I sneaked in the garden to take the picture.

We even met Geisha in Kyoto. I saw them on pictures before many times but seeing them real was overwhelming.

The highlight was sleeping in a Japanese house with paper walls and grass mats on the floor. We found this little place in Oji and it is owned by a guy from Leeds who settled over nine years ago together with his Japanese girl. It was fucking great, an unbelievable inspiring place. We're gonna go back there once.

Guys, I could load up pictures endless because there are so many beautiful things I would like to show you. All in all I only can say that Japan is an extraordinary, bizarre place worth going any time. Kyoto with all it's shrines was something which really touched me and I found a quote which is spot on saying "Who doesn't love Kyoto doesn't love life". Sayonara

My special place

Just before our current placement I spend a week with my girlfriend in this very very calm place. We went to Sylt, an island in northern Germany. It used to be part of the main land but is shrinking due to erosion by the Northern Sea.

It was such a refreshing time without the hectic stress and all the people. Only this very small island – surrounded by the northern sea. Ah, that truly was a good place to get ideas, I close my eyes and try to go back there now as the briefs keep coming in and ask us for creative solutions... it's a retreat in my mind, to go back to, and be inspired, by the emptiness and calmness.

Crossing over with our car on a train towards the sun

The nature there is quite unique, very much untouched

Most of the houses on Sylt have 'Friesen' style roofs, they look lovely. © Túrelio (via Wikimedia-Commons CC-BY-SA) 

The whole east coast of the island consist of wadden sea, as the tide goes back you can walk it

We were lucky to catch some sunny days – kisses to you Zhanna!

Sand impressions

The west coast is covered with one of the most beautiful beaches in Germany – we shall go back during summer

We surely couldn't miss out on preparing some delicious 'Spinte mit Kräuterbutter'