Art Car Boot Fair

I enjoyed a whole lot of Brick Lane on Sunday. My quest – to gather inspiration. After checking out Nike's brilliant exhibition / brand experience Made for Skate and a graduate show about Transportation design I visited the Art Car Boot Fair – 'a day of art and frivolity'. It was east London at its best. Besides having lots of cars (seriously retro-pimped) on the Truman brewery backyard there were dozens of small art projects going on everywhere.


Vauxhall did a great job sponsoring this event and appeared as a rather brave car brand turning some cars into great art pieces.


Most of the stuff selling at from car trunks was crap. In a good way. If you visit Brick Lane often you might got the idea that Crap is Cool. It's the new Black. (for more advertising cliches join here).


The whole crap thing shows a great deal about the current materialized lifestyle of people. We want more things, just to have things, we're even ready to buy crap. The only thing missing on these Pooh Cakes is a flashy Brand mark!


After they sold London to you last year, an art group were selling the world. For just three pounds per country. Sadly, I was too late to buy Kazakhstan, my home country and free it from Nazarbayev. Still, I've get my hands on Ukraine. Odessa could be a nice retreat during summer time. I will give this country as a present to my girl. Muah!


Carbon Footprint anyone? An indication that people finally start taking the whole green issue seriously.


For the loners, you missed the chance too buy real love. In bottles. I wonder how 'love potion no.9' is different from no.2. Platonic love?


Action Figures for adults, GI Joe taking care of Guantanamo bay – Great stuff.


There was a huge amount of stands selling drinks (the fun ones). Personally I thought 'The End of the World is nigh' is quite a reason to have one at 2.00 pm on a Sunday – Cheers.

Continue, don't stop

This is for a good friend of mine. He chased his dream, but he failed to grasp it at the last second. I hope he gets his thoughts together and won't give up. Learn from failure. I do. I had a bookcrit at W+K on Thursday, it went okay. Okay in a bad way. If you're there you don't want it to be OK, you want it to be fucking great. No one can help you with that, it's up to you, and you have to sweat for it.

Hey, Life's too good to be sad about. There are always opportunities. Everywhere. Whatever you do, it's a step forward. Only when you stop doing, that's when you move backward.

Street Creative

This topic has been covered by Scamp very good. I'd like to share my thoughts on it anyway since I'm in this situation right now.

It's tough. Choosing a new creative partner is difficult. You kind of know what you want, and what you don't. You meet a lot of diverse people, you do some trial working. Some stuff is good, some isn't. There are so many elements to it. First, it seems easy to find someone you get along with. It's much harder to find someone who you great work with. I think a good partner should be able to teach you a thing or two, and the other way round as well.

On one hand you want someone different than you, but then you need to be on the same level when it comes to liking certain ideas. Discussing and arguing is cool, when there is an agreement at some point. How different can you be? How similar should you be? It seems to be a rather difficult balance act. But to get that sweet spot right is crucial.

Having a partner who shares the same view on great advertising, is that good? Do you go with someone you do smart work with, or work that is more creative and 'different'. It all depends on where you want to end up agency wise.

Taking enough time for that process is important. Don't get me wrong, you shouldn't be sitting around for months and waiting for the perfect match to come along – always keep working. Work with as many people as possible, get the big picture. Be proactive.

Another point currently discussed with many of my friends, does the old formula or art director + copywriter still work? What about two art directors? Isn't that very helpful if you're going above the line where execution has to stand out and not much writing is necessary? Can art directors write headlines? Yes they can. Can they do it as good as a writer? It depends. I'm very curious about opinions on that.

Frankly, once you've been working with someone for a certain time and then you're on your own, it's kind of fun. But it gets boring after a while and you see the point in having someone on your creative side again.

In the end, it's all down to your gut feeling. A person who listens to you, and you like to listen to, is very valuable. Someone who is able to inspire you, is as well. It's and endless topic. Share your thoughts if you like.

Let's see where the creative partner search takes me in the end. I'm curious. It's exciting. Change is good.

103

This is my 103rd blog post. StatCounter says 13.000 people visited the site so far. I very much enjoy writing and will do more of it once some stress cools off. Stress? I'm having a bookcrit at a great creative agency on Thursday, didn't have a crit for some time now so I have the jimjams – but in a good way! Still, there are things to prepare and that's very enjoyable. I'll write about it, once it happens. Also the next AHA! is coming up soon. Good things to happen.

Bogusky, creativity and a haircut

Alex Bogusky, now and before

Cannes 2007 went by. Amazing stuff. Great advertising. Loved the work. Some good blog posts on that topic around.

Personally I was amazed (in a bad way) by Alex Bogusky's (Crispin Porter + Bogusky) new haircut. He looks somewhat like after a rehab. But that's fine. He's a great person, a great creative. I admire his view and opinion on ideas and advertising, and. Don't miss out on this audio interview with him.

Alex Bogusky on creativity

AHA!?

Above, random notes from yesterday's AHA! – a meeting, full of Eurekas.

A whole lot of interesting people, mostly young London creatives, attended without knowing what it will be like. Neither did we. Frankly, not that many big ideas were born. Friendships were. Thanks everyone for coming. Hope to see everyone in July at the next AHA! Anyone has suggestions to improve this thing?

from left: Reinhard, Wal, Renee, James, James, Katya, Gareth

from left: Josh, Nick, Kyle, Oksana

Designer like boring pictures

Ray competing with the decor

from left: Christos, Oksana, Marco

from left: Constantin, Gareth, Stavvy, Nick, Julien

Commercial Tavern is one of the nicest pubs in London

interesting2007

It took my Saturday. And I was very much willing to sacrifice this day! What a great conference it was! interesting2007 initiated by Russell Davies. I learned about the right way to split a log, why tubes are actually cool, nine ways to improve erotic movies, why swimming might be a good sport for me, about awesome things happening in comics, why Oprah is evil, meditating and the chemical process to make a modern version of egg bacon chips and beans.

It's almost impossible to summarize all the randomness going on that day. Even Sacrum came around to say hello. Thanks a lot to everyone speaking, check out my pictures on flickr.

AHA! June 2007

AHA! is a creative gathering in London. We'd like to invite everyone along, young creatives, senior creatives, planners – everyone who likes ideas. Come along, have a drink, have a chat. And if you like, send on the invitation.

Advertising Plannng School of the Week

My friend Jai & I participated in the new Advertising Planning School of the Week. It used to be led by Russell Davies but now Rob Campbell has taken over. His brief was delightful and made us participate for the first time in a planning exercise as creatives. We very much enjoyed it. The brief was:

HOW CAN YOU ENCOURAGE MEN TO BUY A HUMMER OVER OTHER 4×4 VEHICLES - DESPITE BEING BIGGER, MORE COSTLY AND MORE EXPENSIVE TO RUN THAN THE COMPETITIVE SET.

[The Brand Essence of Hummer [for this exercise] is TOUGHER THAN TOUGH

Thank you very much for the challenge – we are curious about the results. Here is our answer.

Zoom Festival & Billy

While chillin' in Hamburg I was lucky to enjoy the Zoom St. Petersburg Festival. The finest contemporary music from Russia. My favourite concert was the one from Billy's Band. Three intelligent underdogs from St.Petersburg able to excite with the finest Ghettojazz, the most drunk street chanson and the most danceable Accordion solo's of all times. Comparable to the Tiger Lillies and sometimes a Russian version of Tom Waits. They call their music 'Funeral Dixiland With Endless Happyend'. Worth tuning into their myspace page on www.myspace.com/billysbigband

My favourite song is Оторвемся по-питерски.



The festival was accompanied with film showings of the new Russian cinema. Unlike every Hollywood film, Russian movies have almost always have a UN–happy end. Inspiring. Some impressions from the concert. The band was followed by an Art Trio from Petersburg, cunning!

Creativistan

Finally my home country released their website.

www.creativistan.com & creativistan.blogspot.com

And all the waiting only for some lime with a paperhat? Why the flowers? Crazy creatishs. Hoping that they'll share all the beautiful things from our country soon on their web presence. AHA!

Lonely Hearts Book Club

Since being a single creative I attended yesterday's Lonely Hearts Book Club, organized by NABS and The Talent Business (formerly known as Kendall Tarrant).

It was a very joyful thing to do. Speed dating for creative partners. Brilliant. Obviously, I tried to apply the tips given by Scamp. For me, finding a partner has been somehow odd so far, but very pleasurable. I've met many people, all very different, all have absolutely different work. Meeting people is probably the greatest thing about searching for a creative partner. You have a ton of topics to talk about and you get to know the person relatively quickly.

Now it's about to narrow the search down to the ones I like and do some trial working. Currently, I think it's gonna be a tough call, and an important one – looking forward to it. After that, I need to keep my fingers crossed that the other half agrees as well.

Thanks to everyone who's presence I could enjoy. I had a good laugh meeting these guys. Reminded me why I like this industry so much – the people, then the work.

Half of the cast from left: Rein, Giles, the strange guy, Shweta, Priyanka and Renee – great company

Most creative meetings end up like this

KCAB

Let's start again. From scratch.

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 :(