She Says - The latest viral

James Cooper from Dare gets all dolled up at Marketing Week for our fourth viral film.

the monsters are upon us...

Scenes from the first round of nursery decoration...
Help sticking the vinyl up courtesy of Crina.
Artwork courtesy of Tado, Geneviève Gauckler and Rolito, by Domestic.

She Says viral films #2 and #3

Starring Nicke Bergstrom from FarFar and Flo Heiss from Dare...

Our first She Says viral goes live!

Entitled Cannes Party - Check out Sebs crazy dancefloor moves ;-)

Strolling in style

This is the genesis of a great idea - done by the company that build my stroller (thanks mum!). If only they'd expand it so that other people could add their own trips and there was more of a community built around it.
Its always a little disappointing when an idea isn't "completed", but left like this - functional but without the killer "app" that would transform it into something really special.
Web 2.0 anyone?

My interview on FWA

This took me so long to write and rewrite - It's just never good/funny/relaxed enough when you're writing about yourself - Every time I rescan this I feel like a knob...

The debacle that was the Online Marketing Show

I spoke at the Online Marketing Show at the Design Centre in Islington last week - and it was perhaps the most shambolic presentation I've ever did.

• Firstly, though I arrived with an 1/2 hr to spare as requested for technical run-through, the session before me was running late. This meant that the speakers entered the room at the same time as the audience, and with no checks.
  
• Secondly, two out of the four speakers were a no-show (Chris was getting married so thats a pretty good excuse but still...)
  
• Thirdly, Flo (Heiss, from Dare) and I were met with a technician who's exact words were "No one told ME that anyone needed a computer". This for a talk about Best in Show - cutting edge online marketing. I wonder what he thought we were going to be up to? I had already been told there was no internet access (at an Online Marketing Show?!) and had spent hours compiling a presentation that would have taken 10 mins to put together if it could have run live.
• Next, the machine he dredged up from under the stage didn't read my memory stick, so I had to copy it to an audience-member's machine and then to the said laptop.
• Finally thinking that I could start unhindered, I clicked on my first link, to find that Windows Media Player had never been installed, and the PC was to old to play .movs, so I had to jump out of my presentation, install the software and play the MPG1 format vids I had brought as a backup.
• So, there I was playing the videos, and then I came to the 2nd part of the presentation - only to find NO Flash Player installed, and no internet connection to get me some.

I ended up describing the pieces of work through the power of animated hand gestures and verbal diarrhoea...

Lucky Flo just had JPGs.

Happily for me, Flo found a review of the talk online which cheered me up a lot...

The Bumblebeez Dr Love

A wonderful video for the Aussie band The Bumblebeez. Just shows what you can do with a little bit of imagination, and without the usual 5-figure music video budget...

She Says event #3 going off Grey style!

Brilliant night! The third meeting was held at Grey, at their new offices in Hatton Garden.
We had about 35 women to the event, which was called 'Mini-Battles' as we put together a few topics suggested by SheSays members and invited women in digital to debate them.

• BATTLE 1 – The best creatives are budget aware and have a good understanding of commercial strategy .
Speakers: Deborah Keay – MD at Candi/Lbi vs Liz Sivel – Associate Creative Director at Profero

• BATTLE 2 – Outsourcing production is the way forward in digital.
  
Speakers: Angie Cameron – Senior Consultant at Six and Co vs Rachel Bishop – Producer at glue London

• BATTLE 3 – Media buying constrains creativity.
  
Speakers: Jaime Mclennan – Senior Creative at Profero vs Fiona McKinnon – Group Account Director at Agency Republic

SHITDISCO pop-up book music video...

WHat can I say? This video rocks bigtime...

3D Super-Vision Extravaganza

This is a beautiful piece of work, designed and directed by Federico Reano and Tomás Peña for the opening of the OFFF Festival in Barcelona.
Put those red/cyan 3D glasses on and be amazed!

The Wonderful World of Nagi Noda

The portfolio site from one of the kookiest, and most intriguing Directors/Art Directors around - Nagi Noda - fresh from Japan.
http://www.uchu-country.com/

glue Private View makes it into Computer Arts

Pity about the poor photograph! Where did my lips go? Thanks to Sam Gilbey for the opportunity to contribute to the article.

She Says May edition...

Absolutely incredible!
What a hit this month's She Says was... with around 65 women in attendence, to listen to 4 of the big guns of digital (and offline in the case of Rhona) agencies speak about their tips for success, as well as their biggest mistakes...

Firstly Jane (Recollective/Framfab) spoke very openly and frankly about everything from her active attitude to being a mum... a really funny and inspirational talk... and she had a great tale from our deepend days about the perils of not checking your presentation for mistakes before you go to the client (Thomas Cock anyone?)

Tamara (fronm SPF15) warned of the problems that the instant delivery of technology can get you in - watch who you send those emails and text messages to! She took us through the thinking behind her work for Superdrug - and what results!

Lee (Dare) was an absolute craik - even though she admitted that she'd written her talk last night whilst watching Big Brother it was captivating, and a great insight into a highly energetic and passionate individual... as all the women said - ENERGY ENERGY ENERGY! Her "greatest mistake" came from not knowing her material well enough when presenting to a client, thinking that other members of her team would be talking through it... and realising that she had to do it all on her own!

Finally (after racing straight from a late-landing Squeesyjet plane from Gatwick to our door) Rhona gave a really revealing talk describing some of her biggest blunders, and the importance of being incredibly honest and owning up to your mistakes. what a lady!

Afterwards there were questions galore, and a chance to network over drinks and food provided kindly (with the venue) by Propel, Thanks Emma, Mel and the rest of the girls!

the next event will be at the end of June, where we will also hopefully launch our site and viral campaign!

Whos a pretty boy, then?

A pic of Nitin and I, taken in his local bar, on the waterfront in Manly...

A great idea for teaching design from the heads of the JBs

Chatting with Brad and Dan at the flat tonight, and the issue of teaching design came up.
Dan had a wonderful point - that more and more the designers role is to help identify and navigate different types and themes of information. Although this has always been true to some extent, digital media has made it much more so.
So rather than concentrate purely on the visual/layout (often not really even reading what youre designing), more attention needs to be paid to really understanding the content of ones work.

Dan and I developed a great little teaching excersise for this whilst we were walking around Chinatown later in the evening.

To gain a better understanding of designing with content top-of-mind, divide the class into groups of 3.
Each of them must write a piece of unformatted content (or you could use pieces of random content).
NEXT: They pass their content on to the next designer, who works at defining content types/possible linkages and grouping content according to meaning. They then write a design brief - not with directions such as placement but purely with the cues they have gathered on this content/meaning. This will help the designer articulate their thoughts, and understand what another designer might need to work from.
FINALLY: The 3rd designer actually lays out the piece (be it digital or otherwise) using the content brief.

They would be allowed to ask questions of the students further up the chain, but it would hopefully mean that during this excersise they would start thinking in a more intellegent way about the way they work.

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.

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.

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.