If This Is A Blog Then What's Christmas?

D&AD have kindly compiled a list for us.

And here are the art directors.

Interesting lists, in that they feature quite a few retired people, and that’s despite the fact that with the recent proliferation of categories it is now much easier to win more pencils.

Oddly enough, the Craig Allen/Eric Kallman inclusion is the only evidence of this.

It seems that these days it’s either harder to put a run of many excellent years together, or people are leaving the industry sooner. I understand that John Webster (on both lists, the bastard) had a longer time to put a run in, but I don’t think he featured in an annual in the last ten years.

Another interesting trend would be the bias towards TV. TV ads entered in D&AD have always had the chance to win more pencils because their craft categories number far more than those for printed work (the Art Direction category only began in 1996).

I’d like to see another list separated into print and motion picture. I’m not suggested Craig Allen is any less of a print AD than, say, Dave Dye or Paul Belford, or that Tom Carty is any better or worse at writing than, say, Nigel Roberts or Indra Sinha, but I’d be interested to know who won the most awards for writing and art direction, not just who created one TV ad whose Pencils came partly via the skills of others.

Of course, the job of Art Director encompasses all these aspects, so this list is no more or less valid than what I’m suggesting, but there’s more than one way to skin a cat, and lists are there to be argued over.

Another list: 7/20 of those in the above lists worked at AMV, 6/20 worked at BBH, 5/20 worked at CDP, 3/20 worked at BMP/DDB (I’m counting Webster twice), 2/20 worked at Saatchis, 2/20 worked at HHCL, 2/20 worked at W&K.

Update: more D&AD all-time lists here.

Beck is releasing his new album.

As sheet music.

How brilliant is that?

This brilliant.

(Thanks, V.)

Try this simple test: watch the YouTube clip below but try to forget it’s for Audi and that it has a big Audi logo on it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zD6yU8P-4i0&feature=player_embedded

Now try to remember who it’s for.

Impossible, isn’t it?

It took me four goes to notice who was behind it, and that was in a cinema, where there is nothing else to do.

It could be for a million things. When it starts I always think it’s another boring manifesto ad for a mobile phone company, or internet service provider, or bank.

Then it turns out to be a boring manifesto ad for something else.

But I can’t remember what.

Thanks to everyone who organised that amazing Olympics.

When you go to an event it really boggles the mind how anyone could possibly have put together anything as massive, sprawling and incredible as London 2012.

If you weren’t in the city you might not have got the full-on vibe, but I can tell you it made London a fantastic place to be for a couple of weeks.

Hats off.

All the golds.

And this ought to be awful, but isn’t (thanks, D):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYtpL5YhWOQ&feature=youtu.be

If you are a member of a film crew you can work for different rates. Overall, pop promos pay least, then movies, then ads pay the most (of course, there is a lot of grey area here, with people happy to drop their prices for projects they like).

I’ve known that for many years but it wasn’t until yesterday that I wondered why.

We all seem to accept that advertising ought to pay the most because a) There’s supposedly loads of money sloshing around, and b) you have to compensate people for lowering themselves to do it. Even amongst the people in advertising, the people who have chosen and accepted this career to one extent or another, it makes perfect sense that paying someone to help someone else sell something should be compensated more substantially.

Of course, this doesn’t just apply to film crews. The rest of us are (theoretically) paid more than our counterparts in other jobs. For example, an advertising art director is paid better than one of a similar standard who works in magazines, but why is that?

Ultimately, salaries are determined by free market forces. If you want someone to do a job then you have to pay them what they wish to earn to do it. There are a lot of non-advertising jobs out there that people in advertising could do, but one of the reasons they don’t do those other jobs is because advertising pays better. Why does advertising pay better? Because an element of the perception of the job is that it is in some way unattractive.

Let’s be honest here: most of us who work in advertising are aware that is is thought of at the upper end of the shame scale. For whatever reason, hawking stuff for other companies is considered by most of the population to be a somewhat tawdry and shallow use of one’s time. Whereas making a pop promo, creating a magazine and lighting a movie are considered to be much closer to ‘art’, and therefore more of a privilege to do, and so less worthy of shame and financial compensation for that shame.

So it seems that there is an unspoken scale of distaste that we are all complicit in. We all accept things as they are, but rarely consciously recognise what it says about us.

There is no real better or worse, or right or wrong about any of this, but the fact that society (including us) has made the decision it has made means we now operate under a yoke of negativity that permeates the whole industry. I’ll bet that many of you consider many parts of your job fun, particularly when compared with working in a call centre, but there’s a cloud hanging over it all that says it’s somehow making up for the fact that you work in an industry that is generally disrespected and disliked.

You might be one of the people who has absolutely no problem with working in advertising, and are in fact very proud of what you do, but you’d still have to be aware of where the job sits in society and what it means.

Having worked in advertising for 16 years I’ve gone through all sorts of different feelings about it, from chest-thumping pride and blinding love to soul-crushing shame and excrement-scented distaste. I’m now very happy with what I do for a living, partly because of the client I work for, partly because of the fantastic people I work with, partly because of the wonderful advertising people I have met, but there’s still that lingering odour that I just can’t quite seem to escape…

And I bet you can smell it too.

Amazing behind-the-scenes photos of Kill Bill (thanks, P).

Crazy Russian ravers are always good for a laugh (thanks, B):

A very interesting new way to fund award entries (thanks, B).

It’s beautifully shot men throwing rocks with their other hand (thanks, B):

Very addictive waste of time (thanks, C):

El Hadji Diouf’s Day Off (thanks, W):

Check out Mars (thanks, P).

Olympics or gay porn? (Thanks, T).

21 interesting Google searches (thanks, J).

Museum of endangered sounds (thanks, L).

Stats using the Olympic logo (Please don’t sue me, LOCOG. Thanks, P):

The Actors’ Studio mashup (thanks, J):

I forgot how jaw-droppingly funny this Family Guy song is (thanks, T).

Famous people you might not have known were on Seinfeld (thanks, C).

The most amazing commute of all time (thanks, S):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yH6381QdwvY

I’ve just come back from a holiday where I drove my family through France, took a train to Barcelona, drove to Algeciras in Spain, took the ferry to Tangiers, took the overnight train to Marrakech, drove to Essaouira, returned to Marrakech, flew to Paris and took the train home.

So of course much of my time was spent thinking about the greatest band in the history of the world: Led Zeppelin.

I love Led Zeppelin.

From about fourteen I listened to them every day for at least ten years (gone), I have a picture of Page and Plant in their pomp on my living room wall and Achilles Last Stand is my ringtone. They wrote the best songs but they also had complete creative control over everything they did, which meant that they could do strange things like release an album with no title, disappoint many of their fans by following up a massive rock album with an acoustic one, and pretty much never release any singles.

They also had a producer who was a minutely detailed sound freak who obsessed over the placement of microphones in unusual spaces, pioneering the use of non-musical sounds and creative overdubbing. He was also their guitarist, Jimmy Page.

Who was also a reputed occultist whose groupie girlfriend was fourteen years old.

Very rock and roll…

As were many of their legendary antics on the road, one of which involved fishing for a shark out of their hotel window, then making use of said shark with a groupie.

Anyway, here are my ten favourite Led Zeppelin tracks in order, because lists that aren’t in some kind of order are boring:

1. Tea For One. This is a rather overlooked track from the end of side two of Presence, but I love it. It has this oddly irrelevant opening that soon moves aside for a bluesy journey into Robert Plant’s sadness at being away from his wife and kids after they’d all nearly died in a car crash. Happily, I’ve never taken heroin, but I imagine it feels a little like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWvsdhuWVBU&feature=related

2. Achilles Last Stand. Epic, over the top madness. Zeppelin at their best with Page and Bonham trading ridiculously bombastic thunderbolts of drum and guitar:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20XfsejPQXE

3. Ten Years Gone. Another woozy, trippy one, this time from Physical Graffiti. A slow builder that heads off in all sorts of different directions, all of which feel just right:

4. Heartbreaker. This one saw me though ages 14-18. The best riff in rock, with an insane guitar solo to follow. ‘Hey, fellas have you heard the news, you know that Annie’s back in town…’

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

5. For Your Life. Another under-appreciated monster, funkily examining the downside of drug addiction, “With the fine lines of the crystal payin’ through your nose”. This version is the one they played at the O2 in 2007:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sa_pGC80PCc

6. Dazed And Confused. This often took half an hour to play live, mainly because Page was having fun playing his guitar with a violin bow. In the middle section it’s quite easy to forget where you are, but then that riff comes back in:

7. Kashmir. The favourite of most Zep Fans. Page and Bonham are playing in quadruple meter, while Plant and Paul Jones are playing in triple meter, and it all meshes perfectly, like an army on the march, but an army you’d quite like to go for a drink with:

8. When The Levee Breaks. The best drum beat in rock, followed by screaming harmonica, slide guitar and crazy overdubs. It sounds like a brontosaurus on its way to its first shag in a decade, hence the lyrics:  ‘Crying won’t help you, praying won’t do you no good…’:

9. The Ocean. It’s the live version on How The West Was Won that does this for me. The ‘La la la-la-la-la’ bit is quite a chance to take, but is the cherry on a great big cake made out rusty girders:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2QX7GZJRpE

10. Bring it on Home. Also check out the HTWWW version. It’s that point where the slow beginning gives way to the riff that’s amazing, but also the cracking double drum beat that Bonham puts in straight afterwards that grabs you by the guts and turns you into a yo-yo:

So the fun of having this blog is being able to put this out there and see what comes back.

Whether you love them, hate them, copped off to Tangerine or were beaten up to Immigrant Song, let me know your Zep thoughts in the comments section.

The only ad I can remember from the time I was on holiday is this one:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ffHLIZh0PHg&feature=youtu.be

I would imagine a five-year-old could think of cars as an analogy for internet speeds, but it’s so lovingly crafted with such charming touches that it gets away with it.

Most of us have forgotten about the bad old days of dial-up connections and the like, so this gentle reminder of how far the internet has come is a pleasant way to make the present/future seem even better.