If This Is A Blog Then What's Christmas?

Ever since I’ve worked in advertising I’ve thought that art directors have one massive advantage over copywriters: they can make their job seem to be a series of arcane, impenetrable mysteries in a way that copywriters cannot.

‘I think the greens look a little cold over there.’

‘The balance of the composition just isn’t strong enough.’

‘I think we need to revisit the contrast on that shot.’

Of course, those are entirely reasonable things for an AD to say, and they might well need the suggested attention, but whether they are right or wrong, they will undoubtedly make all the non-ADs in the room shut the fuck up for fear of seeming stupid or tasteless.

Whereas the poor copywriters have to contend with every man and his dog mentally waving that GCSE English Grade B in the face of any line that vaguely troubles them. It’s far easier for them to say, ‘Does that have to be a semi colon?’ than ‘Shouldn’t we up the cyan on that image?’. Unless they’re a professional AD they’re going to be pretty concerned about hearing the response, ‘The cyan? There is no cyan. That’s entirely magenta. Did you mean magenta?’ But place some English in front of anyone and they’ll be able to reach back to those ten great emails they wrote, their teenage diary or a tasty keynote presentation from 2008, and offer a verbal adjustment.

That doesn’t necessarily mean they’re wrong (or right); English often comes down to taste and opinion (particularly advertising English, which regularly sacrifices correctness for accessibility) and that vagueness can lead to a wider range of arguments. Many’s the time I’ve had a chat about whether or not we should end a sentence with a full stop, trade a highfalutin’ colon for a run-of-the-mill comma, or use bullet points instead of proper sentences. There is a correct answer, but it can make people uncomfortable enough to change it. They have enough confidence to say what is right or wrong but not enough to believe in the answer which is not their own.

If this sounds copywriter-whingey, it’s not intended to be. I’m just trying to point out that whatever you arm someone with, they will be inclined to use. In art direction most people couldn’t punch their way out of a wet paper bag, but in writing many people at least have a baseball bat.

Coincidentally, it often feels as if that is the very tool they are using.

Google ‘zerg rush’.

Beautiful abandoned places.

Changing the pitch on Daft Punk makes them sound like Michael Jackson (thanks, G):

Beautiful record stores.

The 50 best author-to-author disses.

How far are you from a rat? 10 urban myths debunked (thanks, T).

The remarkable Brushy One String (thanks, G):

The secret lives of inanimate objects (thanks, W).

The evolution of music (thanks, L):

Films about LA.

Have fun with the Tokyo City Symphony (thanks, L).

Brilliant historical photos (thanks, G).

And the obligatory Louis CK link: Louis on Howard Stern. Seriously, if you want to learn about life, career progression, happiness, satisfaction and how to be a brilliant human being, watch this from beginning to end. It’s a great pleasure just listening to these guys chat, but there is so much to inspire (thanks, J):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=F493-IjBr58

I’d love to post the images but as regular readers know, I can’t.

Have a look here instead.

Putting a strong twist into a print ad is really difficult, but this one does it brilliantly.

It just won a D&AD Silver.

And, as the cliché goes, I wish I’d come up with it.

You might have noticed that Dame Margaret Thatcher died a couple of weeks ago.

Since then those of us who swim in the waters of social media, read newspapers or converse with human beings might well have been subjected to a variety of opinions about the old girl and whether or not she was a ‘saint’ or a ‘cunt’. Well, dear reader of ITIABTWC, I don’t want you to feel left out.

Let’s talk Maggie.

For me, her legacy (by the way, I loathe people discussing how something might affect their legacy. YOU’LL BE DEAD, YOU DAFT TWAT! ‘Oooooh! How will people think about me after I’m gone? I’d better alter what I was going to do for that reason alone. Never mind being kind to people or making the world a friendlier place, I want people to remember me as a strong and decisive leader WHEN I’M BEING EATEN BY FUCKING WORMS.’) was shaped by a single fact: she did barely anything at all that appeared to be driven by love or compassion. That’s not to say she was good or bad, right or wrong (regular readers of this blog might recall that I don’t believe in such things); it just means that people tend not to think that she was motivated by kindness.

But that fact has set off many opinions that then masquerade as fact: She smashed the unions out of some iron-booted need to show them who was boss, or some desire to drag the economy out of the doldrums, or she wanted to establish her authority as a female PM. She closed the mines because she prized economic viability over the lives of the people who lived in the mining communities, or she believed in a small government that should not prop up failing businesses for the sake of it, or she was an evil bitch. She invaded the Falklands to win the 1983 general election, or she was a massive patriot who would not stand by and see part of the British Isles invaded, or she was a barmy, war-mongering psycho who needed to fire missiles on retreating ships.

Any or all of the above might or might not be true, but all have been presented as the truth in the last week. I wouldn’t pretend to know what was going on in her head, but I do know why she divided the country, and that was because of the lack of compassion suggested by her actions. On Thursday I was sent an infographic that showed how Atlee brought in many pieces of legislation that improved the health and education of British people. It then compared that to Thatcher whose only original piece of legislation was the right to buy your council house (but good luck paying your mortgage when you do it). So if we’re going to talk legacy, Thatcher’s is that of someone who seemed unfeeling, uncaring and inclined to prize money and efficiency above the happiness and wellbeing of people. That pisses off people who think they care about people, but it impresses those who see that a degree of pain is/was necessary for the country to function and compete.

As I said, there’s no right or wrong to either side, just what you think is better or worse. But Maggie appeared to many people to be mean and uncaring and that is why she was hated by millions.

My friend and fellow creative person, Dan Hubert, has created an app for your parking pleasure.

As someone who has conceived and created an app, I can say that doing so is a bit of an arse to say the least.

So hats off to Dan for making parking your car a hell of a lot easier.

You can thank him by downloading his little bundle of joy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCGfgnU18yk

(Thanks, D.)

Boring brief made memorable and hilarious.

Hats off.

Louis CK insults his fans (thanks, J).

And while we’re here, the best routine from his recent tour:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkjmzEEQUlE&feature=player_embedded

Distance to Mars.

Patton Oswalt’s Star Wars filibuster:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lE7MqKuYkXE

Captain Kirk’s guide to fighting (thanks, G).

Epic porn acting (funny, but NSFW):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrekqhVNghY&feature=player_embedded

Logo fails (thanks, J).

Soho then and now (thanks, J).

Louis CK (again. Sorry) chats to Donald Rumsfeld and asks him if he’s a lizard lots of times (thanks, G):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dK8Y2nO_8TM

Documentary on the history of film credits (thanks, G):

Has Photoshop gone too far? (Thanks, J.)

It’s simple, clever and makes a good point very well.

Alas, I just can’t imagine any pro-gun people giving the first shit about it.

They’re more likely to suggest arming the fuck out of everyone in the office so they can all have a nice big massacre.

Twats.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ArFy91n1FR0

I think it’s the sense of irreverence.

There was none in the plane ad, but this one shows Facebook laughing at itself, and that’s never a bad thing.

It also shows a truth (we flick through our phones when our bosses are telling us something boring) that’s been realistically expressed.

Nice (r).

Two things happened to me recently. I am now going to attempt to combine them in a single post. Brace yourselves…

A couple of weeks ago I was watching Se7en. I love that film and have probably seen it 20-30 times. It’s such a brilliant reworking of crime thriller clichés that you almost forget the context of its appearance in 1995 (yes – it’s nearly 20 years old). The mid-nineties was jam-packed with fucking awful films (probably more so than now, and that’s saying something), so I just thought I’d check if Se7en was nominated for any Oscars, and if not,  what was voted in ahead of it.

Even if we consider that Best Picture might have been a stretch given the subject matter, I think it’s fair to say that the photography, screenplay, art direction and direction were all faultless. So let’s just see what won:

Best Picture was Braveheart, the kind of film (ageing actor directing an epic – see Dances with Wolves, Unforgiven etc.) the Academy loved back then. But Se7en wasn’t even among the nominees, one of which was Babe – yes, the film about the talking pig.

A similar list for Best Director: no nomination for Se7en‘s David Fincher, but good old racist Mel Gibson won and the Babe director was nominated.

Screenplay was actually quite a good category that year. The Usual Suspects won, but other nominees included Toy Story, Nixon and Mighty Aphrodite. No Se7en.

Art Direction: again nothing for Se7en, but another nod for Babe and one for a film called A Little Princess.

Cinematography? Surely, surely this would break Se7en‘s duck. Nope, and one of the nominees was Batman Forever – yes, the really shit one with Jim Carrey as The Riddler.

Se7en did manage an editing nomination but lost out to Apollo 13.

So what I’m trying to say is that certain brilliant things may not be appreciated as such when people first experience them. The context might be wrong, the shock of the new might be too great or it might have needed time to marinade, revealing its depths and secrets with each passing view. Babe might as well be a pork pie for all the resonance it achieved, whereas Se7en lives on, making Gluttony eat several of the Babe pies over a protracted period of insane torture.

Which brings me to the second thing.

After last week’s post about Surfer vs NoitulovE I thought about the other Guinness ads that were mentioned in the comments. Then I thought about them some more. But it wasn’t till a few days later that I remembered one that was never even mentioned, and it’s a belter:

So why did no one mentioned the much-lauded Snails? It’s really good, everyone loved it at the time and it won a load of awards. I can only think that there must be a flipside to the Se7en phenomenon of appreciation after the fact, and that is the complete disappearance of something of real quality. For me this can take many forms: Radiohead’s Hail To The Thief album fell off my radar for several years;  The Lives Of Others is a masterpiece that floated away like smoke, and I sometimes forget all about liquorice catherine wheels for months.

The memory’s a funny old thing, but if it could be a bit more reliable I’d feel less like shoving a screwdriver into my ear.