Before they were famous
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Have you ever wondered what today’s creative big shots (and me) were like as students?
What work did Trevor Beattie, Mark Denton, Noel Fielding produce when they were students, trying to convince their own heroes that they were worth taking a chance on?
beforetheywerefamous.org is an online gallery of the student scamps of some of today’s top creatives (I’m going to stop adding ‘and me’ to sentences like that).
Check it out and enjoy the hell out of it.
Famous you say… hmmmm
This is such a great site. Nice one Nat & Lol!
I actually think your book had some of the better work in it.
Not sure Lol and Nat are two of the ‘worlds most succussful creatives’ to warrant their work on it, if that is the aim of the site (famous people before they were famous) – why not just change the title to ‘creatives books before they got a jobs’ and make it more general? I’ve seen way better student books straight out of places like Watford then some of those on the site (and its only Beattie, Denton and Fielding that are particulalry famous). Posting good portfolios in general would help stdent teams on what a good book is. But still, good site.
Hey, thanks. Much of it was my then art director’s skillz (cheers, Paul!).
Interesting to see that Mark Denton turned his last scamp into an award winning ad.
Very nice, thanks for sharing.
There’s no one on there as famous me!
Except Mark, Noel & Trev, I’ve never really heard of any of them.
And this ‘famous’ thing attached to advertising creatives is so lame.
Except Noel, no one really has any fame, just a high degree of self importance.
Pretty sad really.
Hello Anonymous,
Thanks for your comment. Actually, if you click on our mugs you’ll see that the only reason we’re on there is to try and even out the imbalance between men and women on the site, and we do in fact state quite clearly that we do not see ourselves as famous.
It was more important to us that people didn’t come away from the site thinking is that advertising is a male-only industry. Don’t worry – as soon as we get more female books on there, we’ll take it down so as not to continue to dilute the calibre.
As for those three people being the only famous ones, I guess that depends how much you love great work. Many of the people on there are the brains behind some of the best ads in the last decade. They might not be ‘household names’, but sadly, we found a lot of those people (Hegarty, Trott, et.al, I imagine you’re thinking of?) don’t have their books anymore. That said, we’re still very keen to add new ‘famous’ work as and when we get it. Perhaps you could submit your own work too, depending how successful you are?
One other thing – you highlight that you’ve seen much better student books straight out of watford. That’s kind of the point of it all. To show that everyone started somewhere, good, bad or weird…. Certainly that’s the feedback about the site we’ve been getting from this year’s graduates, that they’re finding it useful for that reason. Which makes it all worth it.
Thanks for the new name suggestion. It’s catchy – we’ll give it some thought.
Cheers
L & N
I’ll just add that John Gorse and Nick Worthington passed on our book to Peter Souter with a note saying ‘this is a thing of beauty’.
Still probably the highlight of my career.
Hang on, none of you know who those people are.
Never mind…
I know who they are. Because I am old. Most of the work in these early scamps is far better than the work in Justin and my book when we were going around. We couldn’t find our original one but it was pretty crap.
I reckon John & Chris have re-edited theirs…
‘Famous’ is a relative concept. I would like to think that this site gives people hope and entertainment in equal measure. Noel Fielding is ‘famous’, but I am much more interested in Mark Denton etc. He is ‘famous’ in these circles because of the fact that he has been a really fucking good creative for a long time.
This is a good site. A bit like watching famous actors’ first auditions.
I *heart* your Black & Decker ad.
@8
1 sugar, easy on the milk please love.
I’ve seen enough of them to surmise that about half of those books are, in fact, straight out of watford.
and unless I’m missing the point, it’s not meant to be an educational tool; more the equivalent of the bit in a best man’s speech where he shows a photo of the groom with his bum out in ayia napa.
Exactly.
Good to see the old book again!
high five from the paperclip escape goat.
That was my mums feet covered in talcum powder, to make her look dead. The things we did to get into advertising..
And sneakily photographing tampon boxes in the Boots on Regents Street.
No Google images and Photoshop in those days… was there? Was there even Internet?
Not really. The kids these days don’t know how lucky they are. I bet NONE of them have gone sneaky-tampon-snapping in Boots.
Years ago, Steve Henry published the spec book that got him a job at GGT in ‘Campaign’. I may still have the edition somewhere. Or Lol and Nat should approach him themselves.
Depressing then. Depressing now. Piles of irrelevant, occasionally nasty, narrow, un-runable crap.
Or at least what I saw. There may be a few gems in their somewhere.
The curse of Watford. Is it still like that over there?
^^^^
Somewhat missing the point of spec books.
And there/their is a tough one to master, innit?
well we weren’t about to spend 15 quid on tampons – had to save up for the photocopying machine.
Yep, the curse of Watford.
I went, and everyone who wanted a job in advertising, got one.
You could say they got what they deserve.