Ad Caulk

People in ad schools, more often than not, don't understand the difference between being a designer and art director. It is huge, and this is a pretty good problem. There are even some people working who aren't quite sure what the difference is. George Lois sheds some light on this at his offset talk. Hegarty talked about it a bit in his book.

But if you're still confused I came across an illuminating piece the other day. Not all you picture folks are big readers but you should try to choke this down. It'll help you realize if you are (or want to be) an art director. (and if you aren't already reading Ad Teachings you should add it to your blogroll)

Ad Teachings - Can, or should, a graphic designer become an advertising art director?

I've been working on various projects with a few friends and a phrase keeps popping up: "I can't get any good ideas." This, of course, is nonsense. The people I'm working with have great ideas on a daily basis, it's nailing down the one at hand that's difficult.

What makes it so difficult is the Idea Inferiority Complex. Believing that an idea is bad at first glance and tossing it aside. This is why so many people recommend dumping your brain out THEN deciding which ideas are worth a second look.

Even then it's possible that an great idea might not strike you as being all that good. Remember, JUST DO IT started out as a disposable tag line. It was only later that the brilliance of that idea was recognized and embraced. It takes a lot of training to spot an idea like that and champion it.

This is why juniors are not Creative Directors. Juniors are meant to sit there and work all day on developing new ideas. Your best idea might be buried down the page. If you work for a CD worth his salt he'll be able to pick this out. Slowly you learn what good ideas look like. You get more confident and stop doubting your ideas so much.

It takes time (often what feels like an eternity) but the easiest way is to stop thinking your ideas are terrible. Many are, no doubt. But focusing on the good ones instead of focusing on the bad is a good place to start.

A few years back I met with a senior ad-person in Minneapolis. He asked me what kind of work I wanted to make.

I told him (and this is still my driving motivation) that there was this ad for MINI, the MINI driver's contract, that I had torn out of a magazine and put in on my wall. It was cool. Mostly because I was 14 and these were some tips on driving not like my parents. I still take a piece of advice from it:

"When you reach the apex of a curve: accelerate."

That kind of work, the work that people put on their walls (or share, or talk about), is what I want to make. He told me that's all fine and good, but not every brand or category we work on is going to be as cool as MINI.

I argued back that Old Spice wasn't really cool until W+K made it cool. That I thought every brand, every brief provided the opportunity to change the way people think about a product. And we, as creative people, should be grateful for that.

He still disagreed with me. Thus I left his agency, which I really liked, feeling dejected and confused. In retrospect it is just two different ways to look at the industry, then it was soul shattering.

As I said above, I still believe that it just takes a little more caring and divergent thinking to make a huge impact. What reminded me of this is the Dollar Shave Club video that has been making rounds. If budget razors can be cool then anything can be cool.

Even if no one cared about budget razors a week ago, they do now.

There is something strange happening at Apple. It has taken a few months but now the cracks are showing. Today, to go along with the iPad3 announcement, they updated their homepage to this. A pun. Not even a good pun.

Apple doesn't do puns. They don't need to do puns. The Brand Jobs Built simply does not resort to these lexicographical tricks. That is for lesser brands. Apple is about telling you that they've changed the way things are, in very simple terms. That's their thing.

It is good that they are still bucking trends in terms of hardware. No styluses and no smaller form factor says, "Screw you. We are apple and we dictate the market." I just hope TBWA and Apple get their advertising back under control.

This could be the canary in the coal mine.

Sell! Sell! posted this ages ago on their blog. It's sat on my desktop for a great deal of time because I couldn't think of anything to add to it. I still don't have anything to add to it, but that's the point.

I like using this space to write. Not post things without comment. Not post short little quips. But there is a time, and now, a place to do that. Over the weekend I'll be working on a tumblr so that I can post all the coolness I find on a daily basis. This means videos, pictures, gifs, quotes, ect. It will be a relativly filterless view of the things I dig on a daily basis. I haven't gotten enough done yet to release it but the name is "Miscellany or, perhaps, something else entierly."

So what about this place? It'll still be here. Still devoted to wonderful, wonderful words. I love what Ad Caulk has done for my writing and growth. There will just be one more place to follow and interact with me on the 'net.

Who knows. This Tumblr thing could end horribly. But I do have a fairly excellent header for the page, and a sufficient amount of things to share.

Would you look at that? I finally found words to go with this picture. Progress!

And it has quite a few things going for it.

1. It's George Lois. That means it will be full of great advice, acerbic wit, confidence.

2. It's published by Phaidon. They simply do not make bad books. Their books are always well art directed. Always well written. Always a good length. They also print on a thicker stock. If you know Paul Arden's books, you know Phaidon.

3. It's $9.95. Other, older, Lois books go for well over $100. They are fantastic books, I was lucky enough to work with people who owned "Lois on Advertising," but most people don't have that kind of money lying around. Affordable George Lois is a very good thing indeed.

4. It tells you whether or not you're in the target market. Right in the title. "Damn Good Advice (for people with talent!)." Even if you think you don't have any talent(!), you might want to check this out. A professor of mine once kicked everyone out of class who hadn't read the material for the day. At the end of class he said, "If any of you still here didn't do the reading, but had the intelligence to stay anyway, that's good. You stole the lesson. I would have done the same." Steal the lessons in this book.

5. It comes out March 26th. If you don't have $10 to spend on it now, save $2 a week and buy it then.

Now, after all that convincing, here's the link. Go buy it now.

(Hat tip to Dave Trott for tweeting about this earlier)

Weekly Linkly is back after a far too long hiatus. We've got links, we've got videos, we've got a little bit of everything for anyone. All for the shockingly low price of $0.00. It's been bugging me that I let this go so it's back in full force. Enjoy!

• Arcades are dying across the nation but some still thrive in basements and back alleys.

A quick glimpse into the food of Vietnam (which I happen to be a big fan of).

• Crabs. This is how you prepare them. This is how you eat them. This is how you write about them. (It reminds me of the long copy I'm so fond of in The Copy Book)

This documentary is going to dabble in a lot of interesting things. Very excited to see it/fund it.

• A love story.

The Van Halen Brown M&M's story. This is the stuff of lore. (via)

• One of the creators of Makin Ads set up a new site. You can get ideas for stuff to put into your book, or get your book reviewed by a senior creative. Check it out.

Werner Herzog is just the right kind of crazy/brilliant. I'll never be able to look at chickens the same way.

It seems like this video gets passed around in waves. This is a testament to how much Ira Glass' words resonate with people. I first caught it over on Makin Ads back in 2010 and it hasn't really left my mind since.

And I have watched A LOT of videos since then.

Most recently people have been passing around this kinetic typography version. It's good, but lacks some of the lo-fi charm of the original. What's really good is that people keep getting introduced to his words. This is an example of goodness rising to the top.

That's a reassuring message about humanity. Sure, Glass has celebrity that helps people find and latch onto his message. But it's still excellent advice from someone who's made it. That's all that really matters.

(I'm mostly posting this to make sure I have it for myself. It's a pretty great source of inspiration.)

I hate what reading Academic writing does to my own writing.
It's overly loquacious and often up its own ass.
And some of that seems to seep over here.
Again, I hate that.
Language should be deliberate.
You shouldn't have to deconstruct a message.
If you do, I haven't done my job correctly.
That's a problem because I love my job.
I love calling a spade a spade.
Or calling crap...well, crap.
This is in the attempt to be stupidly clear.
Without clarity these are just the ramblings of a raving lunatic.
I also think this academic viewpoint leads to a lot of problems we have in the industry today.
Everybody is talking with words that don't really mean anything.
Buzzwords, jargon, general shite.
This kind of speech doesn't make goals clear.
It doesn't help with communication.
It helps build up a barrier between us (gods of advertising) and them (plebeian consumers).
It's a barrier that doesn't really need to exist, but it makes us feel better.
My opinion (however humble that may be) is that this stuff doesn't need to be that difficult.
We are making it hard on ourselves.
The creep of academia is certainly not something advertising needs.
It needs inquisitive people.
It needs agile people.
It needs people who love simplicity*.

What it doesn't need is more formality and more scholars.
Leave that to the academic journals (which I hopefully won't be reading for a very long while).

*Not just in the helvetica/clean design sense.
(With apologies to Dave Trott for using his writing style. It's loads better than most others, IMHO.)

I've been listening to a lot of podcasts lately. One of my favorites (and I know how late I am to this) is WTF with Marc Maron. Maron is a comic's comic and has some of the greatest interviews I've ever heard. Every interview is chock-full of quotes about advice, inspiration, and perseverance.

He talks to some of the best people in any field and gets the story of their lives. You also get a little bit more of Marc's story with every episode.

The episode I'm listening to now has Chris Rock as the guest. I didn't know what to expect from this interview but loved these quotes in the first 5 minutes of the recording:

It's weird, because I know the young comics listen to this, I always tell comics—they always ask me, you know, guys ask me questions—and I'm like, 'dude you hang with too many people. You have to be alone. you have to live in your head.'

You know I just see comics go into clubs like girls going to a fucking club. It's like, "We're all going to the club!" Shut the, what the fuck are you doin? You gotta go by yourself. You gotta fucking take a drive. You gotta listen to music. You gotta get in that zone. You gotta live in ya head, man....I still live in my head.

I love to see other industries aren't that much different from advertising. Often the best advice for creating good advertising work doesn't come from advertising books or blogs. Listening to stuff like WTF helps me think differently. Makes me think about how things work in other industries and how I can apply that to my work.

WTF isn't always so inspirational. It's not always pretty. But it helps keep my head out of the advertising minutiae.