If This Is A Blog Then What's Christmas?

Reader Paul S. of Charlotte Street, London writes:

Saw your blog about the Dublin Castle

Slightly off topic but ever since we were in Minneapolis I’ve wondered why gig posters here are so shit when in the USA they are amazing works of art. We discovered these guys two blocks from Fallon’s office and used them for some projects.

They design gig posters for most of the venues in MInneapolis and then get paid by selling the posters at the gig and online. A similar thing happens in just about every city in the US where local designers make great posters.

Thanks for that. Good point, well made. I might go and ask the Dublin Castle why their posters are so shit whilst waving some Aesthetic Apparatus artwork in their faces.

On another point, the deceased dinner party guests poll was won by Jesus. Good for him. But did he really exist? I thought he was like the Easter Bunny or the Tooth Fairy or something. Anyway, he’ll be the life and soul by turning everyone’s water into wine (here’s hoping it’s ’61 Petrus rather than the more appropriate Blue Nun).

I voted for Mo Mowlam. Fantastic lady.

New poll today.

I took this picture outside The Dublin Castle, a venue for up-and-coming bands in Camden.

On the face of it this just looks like a programme of the venue’s bands. They print it and replace it every couple of weeks, and every couple of weeks it draws my eye. Not because I’m interested in attending any of the gigs, but because it’s actually a bare representation of thousands of hopes and dreams.

Who will be chosen for the big time? The Guns of Pig Alley? I Thee Lothario? Danny Conners and the Ladders?

(Perhaps none of these, for their names are immensely shite.)

Bound up in each of those names is a network of band members, managers, friends, families, groupies, hangers on etc. who are all crossing various parts of their bodies, hoping from the depths of their aortae for further success.

And yet, most will fail.

And all those big, fat, squashy dreams will deflate to nowt.

But.

But.

But.

One might survive, sending all the dreams to explode in a fireworky crescendo across the night sky.

And it’s all there in that humble, black-and-white, replaced-every-couple-of-weeks, messy old gig poster.

(By the way, I’m going to stick my neck out and tip Shot Dead for the hit parade. I like their name. It has attitude.)

I was watching an excellent lecture on TED a couple of days ago.

Al Gore’s old speechwriter, Dan Pink, talked about the science of motivation.

He started by saying, “I graduated in the part of my law school class that made the top 90% possible.”

Very good.

Anyway, he went on to say that extra money does not motivate creative people. It motivates people who do not need to be creative in their tasks, but with creative people it simply provides a paralysing distraction that narrows focus and concentrates the mind. It means that you don’t allow your thoughts to be lateral.

So if financial incentives don’t work, what does?

Three things:

Autonomy. Being able to do your own thing. Being in charge of your own shit. Freedom of will. Google allows its employees to spend 20% of the week working on whatever they want. This produces many great benefits for Google.

Mastery. Can you improve at what you do?

Purpose. Does what you are doing have meaning beyond the task itself?

All intrinsic motivators, unlike the extrinsic motivation of money.

Occasionally, people ask why I bother to write this blog. Up until I saw this lecture I didn’t really know. Even though I happily do it every day, there has been little or no concrete or financial benefit.

Well, it provides me with all three of those things in spades.

I can write pretty much whatever I want, I can get better at it and I can believe, however misguidedly, that it makes a miniscule positive difference to some people’s days.

I also write fiction, which provides the same three things (the third is somewhat theoretical until I get published).

I’m only pointing this out because many people who work in creative departments have told me they are lacking at least one of the three, and they are not happy about it. They are not given the chance to impose their abilities on their work, they don’t make enough ads to improve at the skill and without making anything they think is decent, their work has no purpose.

So this is just a suggestion: if you don’t have these three things in your life, find something that provides them and do it as much as you can.

As Dan says, ‘the science confirms what we know in our hearts’.

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But here’s one:

Lovely art direction: simple, clean, classic. Clever nod to Dad’s Army.

Nice concept (it took me a few seconds to notice the swastika).

And no mention of the word ‘joy’.

Here’s the print to go with the TV from yesterday.

It claims that ‘on the back of this three letter word (joy) we built a company’. Did they? Really? Interesting, because their website tells us that in 1928 ‘BMW buys the Eisenach automobile plant, where the Austin Seven was successfully produced under the name “Dixi 3/15 PS”. This vehicle is developed further, going on sale in 1929 as the BMW 3/15 PS DA 2 with a range of different bodyshells. A small car with a lot of appeal, its popularity helps the company to survive the lean years of the Depression.’ Well, I guess they were just trying to cheer people up. It was a depression after all.

It goes on to say that ‘we are the creators of emotion’. Wankers.

‘We are the guardians of ecstasy, the thrills and chills, the laughs and smiles’. Ditto.

‘No car company can rival our history, replicate our passion, our vision.’ Does this remind anyone else of the work of Arthur Kade?

‘We will make Joy smarter. We will push it, beat it break it.’ That sounds rather joyless to me, and it appears to have been written by an American, unless they really want to improve the formal appearance of ‘Joy’.

‘We will promise one thing: the most personal, cherished and human of all emotions.’ Look, you fucking idiots, that’s love, not joy.

Please, just to make my weekend a little more joyful, could the writer please stick his/her fingers into a waste disposal unit so they can’t type out any more of this ridiculous drivel.

This looks good. Book for next summer. Nolan is the British Fincher.

I’ve had the wonderful privilege of going to the movies a few times over the last few weeks.

Alas, the pleasure of these experiences has been marred somewhat by having to sit through this dreadful ad:

Why have BMW decided to put out an ad that feels 100% Mazda?

Why is the music so generically pappy?

Why is the VO simultaneously vomiticiously chuffed with itself AND deserving of no such chuffedness?

Why is it full of BMW logos, yet zero BMW-ness?

Why does it look like a corporate video for educationally subnormal children?

How can so many people have briefed, created, approved, made and run something so plainly, blatantly, stare-you-in-the-face-till-your-eyes-weep-diarrhoea obviously wrong?

I love creatives/clients/agencies that are so sure and confident of their target market that they make ads that will be incomprehensible to anyone outside that group.

Here’s an ad that perfectly illustrates this M.O.:

Of course, all right thinking people are huge Jay-Z fans and understand exactly what is going on and are flattered to be included in this communication.

For everyone else: meaningless.

(By the way, Blueprint 3 is excellent.)

Here’s some good shit to compensate.

If you click through to YouTube there are loads more. Check out the story about Scorsese getting drunk with a loaded gun when he’s told to cut Taxi Driver to an ‘R’.