Da Fresh post-it fruits from our desk

Any similarities with actual persons are not intended, maybe.

'Does he look like a bitch?'

I love this part - I love this film, and many will agree. If you're a Pulp Fiction fan or interested in moving typography you should it check out! It's a typographic interpretation of the famous monologue 'What does Marcellus Wallace look like?' done by Jarratt Moody, great stuff.

Found on aurgasm

The enchanting inspiration of the web

A lot of advertising briefs are currently on our table at JWT. Some of them are tough ones which have been in the agency around for some time now - and no one has cracked them so far - that's an ad-world-word by the way, you crack briefs, you crack a poster, everything can be cracked - well lets crack on.

We've been trying to do our best on them but got stuck with one of the products and Kristin was looking for a solution, a new approach. Eager to go beyond reality and searching for the magical idea we approached an oracle, a digital crystal ball, more known as a sloganizer.

It was fun for a couple of clicks but our definitive result: The magic ball seems not like the solution we sought for - that is unless you can sell the headline 'leaves your cornflakes minty not mediciny' to your creative director.

There are more helpful things in the world wide web. Everyone looking for inspiration, take a look at this flickr pool, it feels like a short trip away from the office to some great places. Or read Mario Pricken's interviews with creative minds around the world (some are in German though). If you prefer audio pleasure tune in to your favourite music you've never heard before or browse through a directory of wonderful things.

The web is such a great thing, it won't solve (most of) your problems but if you use it right, it's the best creative tool you can imagine, there is so much more to it than myspace and youtube. For more website check our del.icio.us links. If all this doesn't help, maybe try tarot cards?!

Val's old old homepage

Just been googling my name (I wouldn't believe anyone saying he or she never done that!) and found some old stuff on the internet, like my very first homepage. The website is still online mostly for sentimental reasons and as a reminder for me to make a new one. Well, I wanted to make a new one for about 3 years now, dozens of layouts later still nothing happened - it's so much easier having a blog isn't it?

Anyway magicstyle.net is now over 6 years old, Kristin says it looks like I was a geek before, maybe she's right? (ok I was into fantasy back in high school when I did this website).

Sorry for those who can't read german, but you won't miss much. Also found that I still have an account on deviantArt. I am really motivated to do more design again, all this black marker white layout pad thing is pretty good for ad ideas, but where is the beauty in that? Yes I'm a design addict and I'm thinking about getting hooked again...

I feel like posting one of these 'five things you don't know about me' entries - probably feeling the urge since we never got tagged.

Creative Linkage

In the last couple of weeks, we discovered a lot of blogs from creatives. Before we mainly were reading planning blogs. It's like buying a red hat, suddenly you see so many people wearing one, and it's not like they weren't people with red hats before - now you just pay more attention to it. We like most of these blogs and read them on a daily base so we would like to share with our readers (who probably know most of these blogs).

We want to make sure that our blog is not a dead end which leads only to agency website - most of them are way less interesting than blogs anyway. Enjoy the new links on the right side and also underneath:

Ads are boring
Alice in adland
David & Pheobe
Gwen Yip
Fake it until you make it
Freddie & Hollie
Niazipan
Scamp
WHATamIdoing?
wowee, wow.

D&AD says NO!

Well, that pretty much sucks, we liked the work we've submitted for their brief a lot, looks like Ogilvy & Mather didn't. Can't please everyone. Time to push the button on our wall.

First produced poster

On Thursday we had our first photography shooting for JWT. The whole thing went quite smooth since the setting was relatively simple. So we got to spent the whole day in Graeme's studio doing the shots, learning about photography and enjoying a nice lunch. On friday we worked on the layout and the retouching and this thing should run soon as a six-sheet poster - we're excited.

After being a month on placement at JWT, we got told to stay for another couple of weeks which is good since we have a lot of briefs on our table.

Setting up the products
Our subtle attempt to sneak into the picture's background

Sweet briefs

Since we started our placement at JWT, we almost only had briefs for chocolate and sweets. So we worked, and snacked, Nestle After Eight, Aero Bubbles, Aero Mint, Quality Street, Munchies and Heaven...

Now we are totaly below regular sugar level because we also worked on Kellogg's - way too healthy! I guess me and Val put on 12o kilos weight together.
We start eating sweets in the morning, in between, before and after lunch, we have it for dinner and as dessert. From all the chocolate vitamins and working long hours without seeing the sun, our skin became pale and wizenly - ihhh.

If you wanna help us, donate, so we can afford the gym. Or get send us some briefs NOT related to food, Weight Watchers maybe? Nah...

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.

What a day

Puh, finally it's coming to an end. We had two presentations at JWT today. We were preparing the stuff the last two days and had to do a night shift to get everything. The outcome: We're very tired, but we learned a lot from the meetings we had today. And we feel happy, It's not that kind of happy reward feeling of 'having a brilliant idea and getting it through to the client', but more of a 'we've learnt something' happy. Maybe that's even better?

We need to get our next placement and need to improve our book for that, there is one problem: One thing always happens to us, at every placement we've been. We hardly get time to do our spec work for our book while on placement. It's always stuff for the agency which comes first, but this flow of new briefs never ends, once we get one thing done, we get another brief - a vicious circle. The only solution we found so far: 'Forget sleep, forget social life outside of work and bye bye weekend'. Can any junior team reconstruct this situation? How do you handle this? Any tips? We want to live outside of advertising! At least for a couple of hours a day.

Drowning

Before Christmas we sent out a .pdf with the strategies we worked on for our spec book. We sent them to creative teams we enjoyed meeting. Nobody got back to us though.

Maybe it was the wrong time to catch people's attention attention, seems like everybody was already on holiday or trying to get everything done. Now we sent out another email, asking for help and now - look look - we got replies! Actually no thoughts on our ideas but chances to come in and see people, worth much more in our eyes. We have to do some nightshifts to get agency work done and refine these ideas in the next couple of days.

Last but not least some updates: We saw James Woods of Grand Union two weeks ago, right after coming back from holidays, it's a pretty good digital agency a field we didn't get any experience in yet. Last Tuesday we met Phill Clark from TheLawFirm, nice guy, interesting company. As you might know Nick Bell the Executive Creative Director just left JWT London and it's a bit strange here, without him. We are doing our best to get the work done but it's a shame that we didn't have more time to work with him. We miss you Nick!

Clayness

Doh! Brainstorming about ideas is done best when playing with something at the same time. Use your hands for random things and it stimulates your brain. I tried this yesterday using white clay. The outcome - I call him Monsieur Craquè. Any good ideas? Not really. Do I care? No, claying was a lot of fun. Let's see, Monsieur Craquè seems lonely on my desk...

The russians are coming

And they are already here. I was delighted to see a huge audience this Saturday on Trafalgar Square at London's Russian Winter Festival 2007. It was the first time I attended this event even it is running for the third year now. As a russian born I was very excited about the 'authentic russian food' advertised on the poster (see how I am seduced by advertising?!).

After arriving there in the late afternoon, skipping the traditional folk dances I had to outlive durng my childhood, I was disappointed with the food stands. Yes there was a hint of russian dishes hidden in between 'traditional food' like hot dogs, hamburgers and kebab - never mind, I wasn't there for the food anyway, but to see two of my favorite russian bands playing: Nogu Svelo & Garik Sukachev. The square was crowded of russians & the performance was brilliant even Garik S. was forced to end earlier since there was an argument with the organization who tried to keep the volume as low as possible, a deadly thing us russian were revolting about - we love to do that.

Just a glimpse of the atmosphere on the Red Square, ehm I mean Trafalgar Square

Yes I did gained some weight over christmas

Nogu Svelo's lead singer in action

I wish Garik Sukachev could have played to the end...

Hoover the tree

This is a post for everyone who is still suffering from overdue christmas trees (by the way guys, it's really time to get rid of any christmas décor. It is january the 15th!) My tip: hoover the tree. An easy and simple way to avoid annoying needles on the floor while eight men are trying to restrain the monster and put it in a rubbish bag.
If you never ever had a christmas tree, well than you may consider to get one this year just to get a taste of the pleasure how it feels to hoover a tree.

First day at JWT...

...has been quite so far, we are waiting to get briefed. We are very excited about being in such a big known agency. Major backlash: all blogspot websites don't work here, it seems like they are blocked. Why? Are the people reading too much blogs? Typepad works though. Well maybe it's only for the placement IP's? I should ask IT sometime. At lunch we met Jamie & Chris who are on a creative placement with RMG connect, the integrated part of JWT. They graduated together with me from the ad course at Bucks university in 2006. Everyone is very nice so far and the atmosphere is relaxed. We cannot wait to get our hands on the four briefs we were promised today, after the long holiday break we're full of energy and don't understand the term 'January Blues'.

2007 update

Hello & happy new year to everyone!
Just a short notice what we're up to. Kristin is in Paris and probably relaxing after a french new years eve party. I'm currently in Hamburg. We'll be both back and reunited in the next couple of days to start this great year of exciting ideas in London. Await news & more next week.

Last second xmas present

Just celebrating the last day before holidays, worrying about our flights (we're flying tonight but there is evil fog everywhere in London), we received a phone call from Nick Bell, JTW London. They want us in from January 10th for a month long placement, which is brilliant. We were worried a lot since we didn't have anything lined up, but now we can start the xmas vacation very relaxed knowing that we'll have a place to work and be creative at in the new year. It takes a load off our mind!

A few ideas

We've been working a lot on our book lately, so far the outcome is strategies and some execution ideas. Here they are. Comments are very much welcome!

Sri Lanka?!

After uploading some of our work on the D&AD talentpool website we got an email the next day from an ad agency from Sri Lanka. We met up with them three weeks ago when they visited London to hire people. Now we have a job offer from them. They want us to come to Colombo, Sri Lanka and work in their creative department for six months. We cannot decide. It sounds tempting, it sounds very much like an adventure, go to a country you never thought of and explore. But is this worth enough to leave London? We are afraid of missing out here, and we aren't sure of the creative standard there. Any thoughts or advice?

Lick it good!

We had a tought brief today, the strategy was 'making it sticky'. Both of us gave our best in order to envelope all the christmas cards, Kristin's tongue got dry after the first 200 so she had to water it from time to time. We succeeded in the end! Everything's sealed.

Beer evening

Thanks for coming around yesterday to everyone! Didn't capture everyone on camera, will do so next time. It was good to see everyone, we expected more people to come, but it's christmas party time. Good luck to all with their placements and the job-hunt! Congratulation to Nishma & Anna who got their first job at Chemistry, well done! Also to Chris & Bill who got their first TV ad + poster produced and running!

from left: James, Rick, Gary, Hannah, Yasin, Kristin
also there: Nishma, Anna, Val, Goran

A present for Xmas?

Christmas is coming up, time is running away – we still have loads of work to do. We promised ourselves to have a few new spec campaigns ready for January, so far we've got some strategies we like and we are about to run them by our favorite creatives. Our placement at pd3 seems coming to an end after Christmas, so long we're still enjoying to work on ambient ideas here!

But just when we were starting seriously worrying about having a placement for January people started to call us with possible offers. We're looking forward to hear more from DraftFCB, the Law Firm, Grand Union and JWT. Could Santa please bring us news about a placement for the new year?

Meet for drinks

Tomorrow night we are going for drinks + talks to meet up with former Bucks advertising students and friends. If anyone wants to join in, you're welcome to pop around. Thursday starting 7ish at 'The Blue Post', 81 Newman Street, W1T 3ET London, nearest tube Tottenham Court Road. Sounds like a younger version of coffee mornings, doesn't it?

Live in concert

Looking through Springwise I found tourfilter, a neat tool to keep you up to date with the tour date of your favourite artists. I was missing such a site without knowing it.

'The concept is simple: a user sets up a (free) account, picks his/her own city, and then enters all of the bands he or she would like to see in concert. Twice a day, Tourfilter's software crawls through live music venue listings for each city it covers. If it comes across a band people are tracking, it sends them an email, and lets them receive show updates via RSS or iCal.'

One thing that was slightly annoying though is to actually enter the band names. A logic next step would be a tourfilter build into iTunes, so I could set up a 'Live Column' next to genre and see the next concert date – maybe buy tickets via MusicStore?

See my band list here.

Rabbit

Woooooh, an amazing video, interesting but slightly disturbing.

'Rabbit, an animation by Sclah Film could well be the weirdest animation you have ever seen. It won the Best Film At The Cutting Edge Award at the British Animation Awards 2006. Bizarre and original, it delivers a strong message at the end of the animation.'



Do you like it? I certainly do.

Found on PSFK

What we're up to now

Our placement at pd3 is going very well, we feel really good here and it's quite busy. Our briefs include the guardian, o2, a museum and several novel launches. The best thing? All of the work is ambient or stunt, so we get well practiced in creating brand experiences and interacting with our surrounding – urban communication.

We got asked to stay here for the next weeks, so that's brilliant. At the same time we try to spend as much of our free time as possible to get a new book together, you can expect some stuff on this topic very soon.

Kristin is feeling half-dead today, since we worked on some strategies for airlines yesterday (in the pub) and it turned into a discussion about fear of flying she could only stand with some drinks, maybe too many? I hope she'll be fine since we have a bookcrit scheduled at TBWA later on. Maybe she will even be able to do the D&AD president's lecture tonight?

Desk at work


View from the back of the pd3 office

Last friday @ Studio52

Yes, it was a glorious partay. I enjoyed it a lot and hopefully everyone who attended. The good news: this weekend we've got two more houseparties scheduled, one on our floor, the other on the first floor, Wool House is goin' crazay!

Quick impressions from last friday

Sex sells!

Last week I brought a jacket to the cleaner when I saw this poster. Can you belive it? It's standing there in the shop so lonely and it looks all yellowish – funny. Pay attention to the art direction...
After seeing this ad, I really want to buy the Escort Carpet Care now. Sweet haircut, cute girl. Give me an email if you want her number.

Roof Sex

Seen yesterday at Short & Sweet it might be perfect to start a tuesday in a good mood – enjoy! It's done by a young director who calls himself PES, check out his website for more sweetness. By the way: This video is definitely safe to watch at work, but please make sure to wear headphones.

PD3

Right after the Drugstore we started yesterday at pd3, an agency near Old Street. A little part from their website says

"Authentically creative people do not (even under torture) want a job. They will work with you, but not for you. We let our teams create ideas in a free-range manner and the end result is not that of a typical ad-land battery hack. We work with people who think without fear...of a boss...or a retainer...of an atom bomb...or even what their peers might say about them. They write books, launch mags, play in bands and do stand-up comedy. They are forging culture, not leeching from it. pd3 is a co-operative for these creative misfits. (Or, as our landlord calls us, a talent brothel)"

Sounds great, and it is. The first briefs we're working on are open for everything, it's big fun so far. Unfortunately Kristin is not here today but she'll be back on monday.

Drugstore Adieu

After two and a half weeks we left the Drugstore on Shoreditch High Street. It was a brilliant time, we really enjoyed the challange of some hard briefs but were glad to do some good work! Thanks to Russ, Ben & Marc for letting us stay – We learned a lot from them. Check out one of their really fun projects right here.

Studio52 *unfurnished*

I spent some time today to design a flyer for our party. Since I finally found a home in London in a brand new flatshare, we will be celebrating this friday at our place. If you would like to join in drop me a line to mail@waldemar-wegelin.com

Gamble on your commute

We've been quite busy sorting things out, doing work for our placement and our book, Kris is doing some freelance work on the side (nighttime) and I'm taking care of my new flat. So in order to make up our absence we present you this concept. Found as a film on Short & Sweet on monday, tubepoker is well worth to take a look at.

'This is Poker with a difference - cards are replaced by people. Whether male or female, young or old, everyone is worth a certain value. The game can be played by two opposing players on any train with five seats in a row.'

If it's a real thing or something Simon Levene made up for his brilliant short film, find out for yourself and check out www.tubepoker.com
My friends and I played two games last night on the way home. Even if I couldn't stand a chance against Marco's royal flash and lost my change, it was big fun. Try yourselves and pass it on.

Week's over

This week has gone by quite fast. We went to a couple of agencies, including Ogilvy & Mather, BBH and WCRS. We worked on a great brief here at Drugstore and we'll start to work on a pitch next week. Unbelievably I finally got the keys to my place. Yes! I am finally a proper London tenant – I'll move in tomorrow to a stunning apartment near Aldgate East. It took me and my friend Daniel a lot of time to find two other people for a flatshare, but now it's all taken care of, we signed the contract today, and I can relieve my friends Ian, Hannah, Jordan & Bill who were so kind to let me stay at there place for the last couple of weeks – thanks a lot guys!

So before everyone takes off into the weekend relax your brains and laugh about our business with a short but amusing animation of flags of different countries – and the comments a client would make on them. Check it out here.

Monday at Short & Sweet

We enjoyed an exquisite fresh line-up of short films last night at Short & Sweet. If someone would like to join in and have a drink with us afterwards – we're there every Monday from 19.30 o'clock on. Location is the Cafe 1001, 91 Brick Lane, E1 6QL.

In order to stay interested we love watching and attending new things, we usually would not look at – or would not know about it. We think: Staying curious – that's one of the key skills in being a creative person.

A cozy place to enjoy some eye candy


Daniel, was curious enough to join in for last nights S&S

Hmmm...

Kris: Val, do you know what time it is?
Val: No!
Kris: Beer O' clock!

W+K

Last monday we saw a creative team at Wieden +Kennedy, they gave insightful feedback on our work – we learnt a lot from their opinions. They were the first agency who took a little bit of extra time for us. To demonstrate their point on brand strategies they showed us how they work on them. Usually, we come in to show work, we show it, talk about it, and we leave. Thanks to Sam & Frank for the good time. Afterwards, over a drink, we finally figured out the hidden secret of our initials – it was in front of our eyes all the time! Waldemar + Kristin. Spooky, huh?

A snapshot while waiting at the W+K reception

Inspired...

Hello world!
Yesterday we have been at CHI and met two creatives. I just wanna give you the two most important lines they gave us to think about:
1. Your ads are like advertising, not more, but you have to go through this in order to make something more unique, there is no shortcut.
2. You can do everything! Your book is magicland.
Sounds nice but this means for us to f**king work our ass off!

We are still at Drugstore enjoying our placement. It's getting colder in London everyday now and we are both looking up flights to come home for christmas. Actually we should get presents twice this year because we are half Londonesier now and they celebrate christmas the 25th of december. Fancy that Santa! Don't you think?

Promax Charity Challange

On saturday we were invited to present our 30" tv idea for crisiscampaigns we did with iris. Our presentation went good, still another agency won the opportunity to shoot the spot. The best bit was the direct feedback from the jury after every idea. It was a good lesson for us, and I do love failure, as long as we can draw something from it!

Thanks to Russel for illustrating the storyboard so amazingly well! We really do like this TV idea and will work a campaign out of it for our book, if you would like to see the script, invite us over.

We need to improve on our presentation skills

The iris-crisis crew discussing the challange with a beer


Storyboard in the making

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

First day at Drugstore

Today we had a book review at Drugstore in the tea building. And surprisingly they kept us here straight afterwards. So 30 minutes later we sat at our new desks starting to work on the first brief. Coool!

Starbucks office adieu, see you again but hopefully not that soon.

Last week...

...was a tough one! We went to see Saatchi & Saatchi, NABS, Fallon & Kendall Tarrant. We called many many people, and it seems that this week is going to be even more exciting. We're seeing St Luke's, WCRS, Drugstore, CHI and Wieden + Kennedy. We're trying really hard to get a placement and we started improving (?) our book after some eye-opening feedback from Micah, one of Fallon's creative directors – thanks a lot for this!

We had a pitch presentation for iris this saturday, but I need to find my camera cable first to show you some visuals before writing about it.

Our new office this week

Not being on placement means not having a proper place to work. This sucks. So does living at Starbucks, I am hooked on Caramel Macchiato and Kris is shaking after her sixt Latte ;)

Can anyone give us some good tipps for places for creative work in London? Starbucks on Oxford Street (the one in Borders) seems like a good meeting place for junior creatives, we always see teams of two sitting and working on their books. Why? Do they put something in that coffee or is it just the cozy atmosphere? Well, it's not THAT cozy, since it's always darn crowded and too loud to make phonecalls to agencies.

Working at home sucks just as much, since you get distracted more easily. Mhhh, I'd better get myself another macchiato...

ADC - Wooohooo

Good morning! Kristin won an award at the ADC (the D&AD in germany) for her BMW poster work. Thats good stuff! Check the whole results here.

The line reads: Natural Enemy

Lamp / Lamp

Ahh, just returned from a sweet long weekend from Hamburg, Germany – I went there to visit my family & my lady. Feel very destressed and relaxed even I had to go through London Victoria at 8.30 this morning to get home.

Since I used to do a lot of packaging design I get quite excited about good product design, so when I saw this brilliant lamp the other day I wanted to share it with you.

Designed by 100%, a japanese design company, Lamp Lamp is wonderful a clever & simple product I'd love to have in my home. 100% 'aims for a design that gives you goosebumps' – so check out their website to see more great stuff.

Aurevoir iris

After four weeks on a creative work placement we had our last day on friday at iris London. We both agree that it was an amazing time, work & social wise. They do great work, they have great people and they have great fun! Thanks a lot to everyone there!

This week is all about improving the book, showing it to more people and getting the next placement, quit tough in London but we should do it somehow ;)

Julie

Thursday evening we went to for a few drinks with Julie Wright, my former tutor at Bucks university. She was the one who teamed us up, but that's another story (where Rick is also involved in). She is a lovely person, no wonder she knows every important creative person in town. Thank you Julie!

From left to right: Val, Rick, Julie & Kris

Who is who? We should call ourselves hairycreatives