rock your body

The little one can hear as of this week, so I've constructed a tummyspeaker on an elasticised belt, with headphone splitters, so that we can listen to the same tracks whilst I have my iPod on on the tube.
Unfortunately silver was the only colour I could find a stretchy belt in, big enough to accommodate the bump, but I'll just have to go beyond fashion... :-)
If anyone out there wants to buy a "Baby Boomer", orders taken here, so mail me and I'll make one for you!

there was movement at the station...

As of 9:30am this morning, I've officially got some kind of creature moving around inside me! I've been feeling a kind of weird movement - a fluttery feeling - for about a week (especially when I sit down to eat!) but this morning in the bath I felt a real knock! I've been feeling more knocks all day, especially when I'm lying down on the couch on my side. It's not strong enough for Dan to feel yet, or to make ripples in the bath, but its certainly a more powerful sensation than usual!

I've changed my morning vitamins to include lots more fish oil (though I've been taking fish oil every day) - I wonder if it really makes any difference? It certainly makes morning burping an experience...

i am the walrus

Here are the next lot of great baby things I've bought - a friendly walrus, and a great selection of hand-knitted animal puppets from Spitalfields Market...

rampant optimism...

is displayed in this huge street mural outside the Wieden and Kennedy offices in London... makes you feel great just to stroll past it...

a piece of tat

Favourites and obsessions can be a great thing, and can spread meme-fire... this necklace is my ABSOLUTE favourite piece of jewellery at the moment. I saw one originally on a friend's young niece at a wedding; and went out and ordered one the following week. since then I've had so many people ask me where its from... so, here you go, its from a great little Shoreditch studio called Tatty Devine. They deliver too. You've been informed...

Kingdom of Fools

I've been hitting the speakers trail this week:
Firstly, attending the lasy day of the Wildfire - Flammable thinking event in Brick Lane...
secondly seeing Crab speak at an NMK event on the future of digital design...
and thirdly, Ale and I ran our 2nd She Says night this week.

A week of really interesting (and not so) thinking, and a real energiser for me in the development of She Says as something that will really help to change the industry.

So, to Wildfire, and Tom Savigar from The Future Laboratory.
He spoke about the "yoof" generation... pulsing through some really interesting insights coming from his recent research...
I won't recap everything in full here, just publish some of the cooler, more interesting and quirkier finds:

THE FUTURE IS NO CERTAIN PLACE - fear, uncertainty and doubt is normal and they live in a benchmarked culture where they are constantly measured. In fact, ranking can be seen in stores such as Tokyo's Ranking Ranqueen, which sells only the top-ranked products in a vast array of catagories... and in sites such as ethiscore.com where consumables are ranked according to their green creds.

They all equate creativity with real financial worth, and are hungry for creative careers... and they WILL TRY ANYTHING ONCE.

The coolest teen trend is a growing movement of teenagers dubbed the "Mad Hatters" with over 9000 members worldwide. Inspired by romantic stories of siting in cafés having real conversation and debate (think the original Avant Garde.) They collect through social networking sites to drink English Breakfast in bone china and chat over tea - in the real world. I tried to find them online, but I'm obviously just not under 20 anymore - I couldn't find a thing. The idea was so appealing though - completely what I would have been into at the (this) time! I found myself longing for floppy hair, art school and Artaud again...

The other comment that really hit me is something that I have often felt (and still feel myself) is the idea that people constantly re-invent/rework/resample themselves these days - tha change and mutation is the norm - the feeling he captured from the 20somethings he spoke to: "Can I just have some time off before I re-invent myself again?" Its something I feel myself periodically...

Finally, a great quote from someone's 5 year old daughter at a live football match, when she had to get up to go to the bathroom - "I need to go to the loo, can I pause it?"

It reminded me that there is a book about teenagers coming out in July by a girl called Jelly Ellie (often pulled out at the token teen by the BBC since about 2004) - "How Teenagers Think" . I hope this will prove just as insightful as today's research - and hopefully a good read too.

He wrapped up the final discussion with the comment that we are living in a right-brain world: a feminine world full of empathy, joy and fun, but I have a real issue with the event organisers on this point: if its SUCH a feminine-thinking world, WHERE ARE THE WOMEN ON STAGE? Man after man strutted their stuff, but as usual, there was hardly any female representation... one woman on the first day only. Surely, not all the industry's best brains have rampant nasal hair? OFFF festival last year was just the same, as was the NMK talk and most others I attend.

The other notable talk was by a Creative Social mate of mine from Anomaly in NYC, Johnny Vulkan (who agreed with me on the above point btw...)
One of his first points is that we haven't managed the debate around our own industry - we're seen as the bad guys.
Again, too much info to go into detail about here, save to say that apart from getting in a reference to GOLGAFRINCHAM his talk can be wrapped up in his final tips:
Make it easier for people to be good
Ask more questions
Expand your thinking/role/business
Help good companies grow, help bad ones change
Accept contradictions, learn, move on
Be good to your mother

Here are some interesting links from his talk:
www.janchipchase.com
www.core77.com
www.designcanchange.org



Unfortunately, the NMK discussion left me a little disappointed, though I must remember to use the quote "design has never been a profession where you have to wait for permission"... Crab had an interesting point about what happens to digital designers in a world where non-design or utalitarian design (eg. MySpace) is the norm... do we become the designers of the systems to allow people to publish rather than the publishers ourselves?
Unfortunately it relly wasn't the environment for a real debate or discussion about this (I see Crab's point but have a lot that I wanted to add in favour of doing both) as the audience consisted mainly of traditional designers who were struggling to get digital in the first place - and I had to agree with Crab here that they just need to get on with it or miss the boat - you don't solve anything with inertia...

She Says Mark 2 was a great success... you can read more about it on our MySpace page, but we had about 35 women there for almost 3 hours of informative discussion and informal chat...
We called the meeting 'BECAUSE YOU'RE WORTH IT' as it was about how to take your career further and get what you want in terms of professional development.

The speakers were:
» Laura Ormerod - Creative Services Consultant - at Propel
» Tina Brazil - People Director at Profero
» Emma Witkowski from AKQA
» Rhiannon James - Graduating Creatives Manager at D&AD

Tina and Laura spoke about: 'How to choose an agency that is going to help with your professional development' and 'how to handle work reviews and get the most of out them'.

Rhiannon spoke about women in the industry and how find the right agency for you and engage with them - as well as a little about D&AD itself.

Finally, Emma covered 'Switching between disciplines inside an agency'

Tina's talk in aprticular garnered a lot of interest! Our next event will be (hopefullly) at glue, on the 30st or 31st May.

3 cheers for mum and dad! And Kip and Doug!

I don't know if I congratulated my family back home enough for taking part in this momentus event! I was at a conference today listening to a talk by the ad team that worked on this and it really brought a tear of pride to my eye!
WELL DONE THE JORDANS!!!

want some tuna?

These are 2 adverts for a tuna brand from Thai TV... kinda creepy but appealed to me somehow... their surreal nature reminds me of the WCRS 3 tv ads. I'm really unconvinced that it would make me want to go out and buy a can of tuna, more like go and rent a David Lynch film.

state of the art

Found this gem in Private Eye last week. One of the sharpest art-world giggles I've had in a while...

my bump at almost 19 weeks

Well, still 11 days until the big scan! But my bump really is growing at a rate of knots, and I'm looking properly pregnant now... Its been kicking (mostly at dinner times) for about the last 4 days too - real little fluttery kicks! It all seems so alien, and I can't imagine what it's going to be like once it really gets going! It doesn't look an awful lot bigger in the photos, but the change has been really noticeable in the flesh!

Eulogies...

Thought I'd spare a few lines for two of my favourite old men, who have both died recently...
KURT VONNEGUT - died at 84 this week

Master of the time-travelling, fantasy, Sci-Fi universe (and the salacious Sci-Fi paperback under his pseudonym of Kilgore Trout), and author of the most compelling book about the bombing of Dresden - Slaughterhouse 5.

He was prolific, filthy, and a true post-linear thinker...

(Here he is, talking about when he tells his wife he's going out to buy an envelope - thanks to Melody for the quote)

"Oh, she says well, you're not a poor man. You know, why don't you go online and buy a hundred envelopes and put them in the closet? And so I pretend not to hear her. And go out to get an envelope because I'm going to have a hell of a good time in the process of buying one envelope. I meet a lot of people. And, see some great looking babes. And a fire engine goes by. And I give them the thumbs up. And, I ask a woman what kind of dog that is.
And, and I don't know. The moral of the story is, is we're here on Earth to fart around. And, of course, the computers will do us out of that. And, what the computer people don't realize, or they don't care, is we're dancing animals. You know, we love to move around. And, we're not supposed to dance at all anymore."

JEAN BAUDRILLARD - died at 77 a few weeks ago

I remember going to see him speak many years ago at Sydney University, with all the excitement of a long-awaited performance by a rockstar... Tickets were like golddust... I'm sure the irony wouldn't have been lost on him... I remember Pierre Stokx asking him a very provocative question about whether he really was a visionary, or just full of shit... He was more offended that I'd expected and I was vaguely disappointed that he hadn't come back with a poignant remark.

Here is a cutting from the obituary section in the local morning paper...

"Jean Baudrillard, who died in Paris aged 77 this week, was a marvellously batty theorist of the kind the French do well. His big idea, argued in a book called Simulacra and Simulation, was that what is real doesn't exist, compared with the "hyperreality" offered by the media, particularly TV.
To express that belief, he adorned his flat with 50 sets.
In 1991, he claimed "the Gulf War did not take place" and had merely been symbolic. Nevertheless Baudrillard's verbose perversity is sometimes very funny, like a latter-day Oscar Wilde. In 1998, he published a book about America which is a classic of culture clash. He was fascinated not only by such sights as joggers and people eating alone, but the "orgasmic elasticity" of American carpets. How sad that he has - really - died."

See you later Monsieur B xx

Reichstag...

Parliament's collection in the Reichstag is absolutely mindblowing... Jenny Holzer, Anselm Keifer and more... Here are some examples of the work - the greatest of which is the building itself, as transformed by Norman Foster for the opening in the late 90s.

Standing solitary, this is an original piece of the old tunnel connecting the Reichstag with the buildings next door - there is a conspiracy theory (with quite a lot of weight) that Göring went through the tunnel to set fire to the building in 1933, blaming the Communists and leaving the way open for a Nazi political victory a couple of days later.

hello to sean and claire!!

Berlinertastic!!! Met up with Sean and Claire in Berlin, where they took me to a huge dancehall come pizza parlour/bar... It was swing night and we were surrounded by about 60 people in a sweaty dancing frenzy: from 18 to 80 everyone was cutting their moves on the dancefloor... They sold an artwork of there's a few days later and took me out for brunch at Gorki Park - an amazing Russian Cafe... read all about it here and here.

everything's gone all rabbits

A fantastic collection of rabbits... a great painting done by an American artist (details forthcoming) and a pair of stuffed rabbit toys from the Melbourne artist Beck Wheeler, who I already own a painting by... check out the work and toys for sale through her site!

absolutely wicked design/typography blog...

I'm going to be following this blog - absolutely brilliant, and check out his "Uncommon Knowledge" design tips. Every one a gem.♥
Here's an example:

some beautiful work by Wieden & Kennedy...

for the Guardian newspaper.
Simple. Beautiful.
Just lovely pieces of design.

losing laura jordan - my exhibition piece

Here are some images of the work I put in the show.
The brief was to produce a piece of work that described your journey to London - be it your bus ride into work, or your emotional/physical/metaphysical journey up to this point, where you find yourself in London. Mum - I'll send you the brief later because I know you'll want to read it! I set the brief for the agency without thinking about what I was going to cover first, and I had a thousand different ideas... but pretty soon formulated that:

1. I wanted to document the possessions of mine that had made it with me on my travels so far (esp. as I'm such a hoarder)
2. I wanted to do something using the book "Laura Jordan" that I've had in my possession for about the last 12 years - its a really bad 80's soft porn... so bad in fact that its been discontinued!

My initial idea was that I could create a new persona for myself by juxtaposing the objects (a lot of which are things like my vast collection of dog collars...) with pieces of text from the novel.

In fact, it ended up (as the title suggests) by being more of an ode to the things in my life that i've left behind, or have transmuted into something else (such as my maiden name) - and to essential parts of myself that I will always hold close to my heart though they don't remain part of my everyday existence anymore.

It actually became quite personal, and I was sad in a way to give a voice to the feeling of leaving my trail behind me, which was gradually becoming longer and quieter through time as I move ahead.

The texts that were highlighted on the wall behind were the most (BADLY WRITTEN!!!) pornographic bits I could find in the novel - a juxtaposition of the nostalgia, preciousness and personal sadness the objects bring... They sat on a background of nasty wallpaper - the kind you might find in a rented apartment - to bring everything back into the realm of the personal and historical again.

All in all, kinda successful I thought, for something that was put together through the pressure of work/morning sickness/baby thoughts and exhaustion!

Here is a picture of the installation itself:

Close-up of the objects (and Bish, one of the glue Producers):

glue private view - photos from the show...

Here are some photos from the glue Private View, the exhibition of artworks by staff that Emma and I organise at work every year. This year we had over 300 people at the event: staff, clients, family and friends. Even though I couldn't drink my way through the cocktail list like usual, I had a brilliant time... Big thanks go to Lina from Lime Events for helping us with the event co-ordination... and canapes!!!
We've not only been at different times clients for one another (I designed a site and print work for her about 3 or 4 years ago) but have also become great friends... Check out her company website - and book her for your next London event!!!
Big thanks also to our glue Designer Leal Bao, who took the great photos below. Check out his site at: http://luvpixel.net/.

my bump at 4 months

Pardon the ever-stretching tattoos!! And being in my knickers! (None of my trousers are comfortable anymore... elastic sides coming up!)
It seems hard to believe that there's only 5 and a bit months to go... It should already be hearing through vibrations...

another landmark: the first purchase!

Here's a picture of my first to splurges for the little one... I was actually quite nervous about buying something for someone that isn't even here yet, but I couldn't resist just doing SOMETHING to make it all seem more real somehow...

The toy on the left is handmade and 100% lambswool - and before you say anything let me say one word... DIVERSITY... I want to surround it with as many different kinds of beings as possible, not just your standard blonde, baby-shaped ones... Anyway, I think its really cute, and kinda friendly... The one on your right was the first buy - it rattles when you shake it and I thought its belly button was ace...

I also have a really great set of hand-knitted animal finger puppets to tell stories with - courtesy of Spitalfields Market for a quid each... I've had them in a paper bag for ages in a drawer and now I've found a use for them! METAL!

My favourite online shop of the moment is one full of vinyl transfers for the walls - Dan and I have some in our toilet already - and they have a brilliant selection for little monsters' rooms - and I'm looking forward to doing up the spare room with these when we get back from Oz!

the little jordan bambach - week 12

Here's a great shot of the sprog sucking thumbs... taken at 12 weeks and a day... i'm 16 weeks today so its about double the size now!!! Mum Jordan reckons it must be a girl because looks like me, but i'm not so sure, it seems to be pulling a gesture more remeniscent of Dan :-)

big guns go digital

I've just picked up on this from the Creative Social blog:
Following BBH’s win on Axe, John O’Keefe said ‘“A couple of years ago, we might have been at a disadvantage in a pitch like this, simply for lack of having the digital craft skills in-house. We now have that capability, whereupon this, and any other digital pitch for that matter, comes down to the same question that decides any such process:’who has the best idea’. Well BBH have now delivered their first standalone project for Audi - www.ttremastered.com. I have already garnered some opinion and general consensus is that it is dated (looks like it was built in Flash 5), ponderous, aneamic and hinders your ability to get to the heart of the TT’s motoring experience. The Audi TT is a beautifully crafted car and the website should reflect this.

WOW! This is one of those projects that makes you wish you'd been able to get your hands dirty and go in there and sort it out! (Or had the opportunity to give it a go yourself ;-) )
You can see the kind of effect (not great, but better) they were going for here:
http://microsites.audi.com/audir8/html/index.php

Frustrating to use and ultimately unrewarding... the TT site looks like its come straight from the 1998 Web Designers' Annual... Or a current poor graduate portfolio.
I'm really shocked that BBH could get it so wrong in terms of simple digital design... the font and the text treatment/animations/preloader scream of something produced by someone just getting to know their way around a timeline... and that's just the start of it...(file size anyone?)

Although you can never beat a fantastic idea, truly great digital work comes from the marrying of brilliant ideas and quality of execution/understanding of the technology - a collaborative and open process that is in many ways the antithesis of how more traditional agencies work... and its a dynamic that I'm sure we're all struggling to perfect and refine too. As far as I'm concerned this process is the Holy Grail of brilliant digital advertising.

I'm sure the big guns will cotton on swiftly and we'll not see another site like this from BBH, but it just goes to show that not only is it true that "you can't polish a turd" but the reverse is true also. You can't leave your ideas to meander aimlessly after conception and hope that they make themselves somehow...