Sometimes our jobs can be exhausting.
We don’t sleep enough and when we do, our dreams are haunted by unsolved projects. My personal favorite is going to sleep with a fresh little marketing conundrum and waking up around three in the morning CONVINCED I have just figured it out.
Pure genius.
Done.
Nailed it.
I make a few scribbles in my bedside notebook, mentally congratulate myself for being a ninja, and sleep soundly for the remaining hours. I greet the morning like a bluebird and stare blankly into my open Moleskin.
What do I find?
The absolute …

It can be hard not to get sucked into the grind of the business like George Jetson in the treadmill. And for Type-A personalities like myself, that can really effect creativity.
I’ve heard people say, “We’re doing Advertising, not brain surgery.” When it comes to client dollars, layered deadlines and long hours, that can be a hard thing to remember.
But it’s important to step aside from solving the problem of the brief and make some silly leaps. Take some chances. Go way out there. How would a break dancing Praying Mantis …

I’ve been to Austin plenty of times but never been to SXSW before. Crazy, I know. And after all the “You shoulda been there!” and the “I learned so much” and the “I’m smarter and cooler than you ‘cus I went to SXSW” comments, I’ve decided to make the trek. You may ask, “Why the hell are you writing a guide to SXSW if you’ve never been before???” Well, I have one thing going for me here – curiosity. I want to see and do everything possible in the next …

It’s surprising how quickly you can go from being a respectable citizen of the creative community to finding yourself out on the street, showing some thigh flesh to passers-by. Next thing you know, you’re a strung out, one-legged hooker trying to hop your way back to civilized life. Ugh. What’s with all this whore talk, you ask?
Even while I was still in portfolio school, I had people asking me to write them some crap for free. Whether it was a last-minute request for thirty pages of content for their network …

Filmmaker Aaron Trinder and Director Mark Gardner talk with various creatives to see how their desks influence their work and how they relate to their space. Great little 6-minute video.
Desk – Music and Sound Design from Aaron Trinder Film:Motion:Music on Vimeo.
- Sean Leonard

The Art Directors Club has created with help from  The Barbarian Group a page in Youtube called “Show & Tell”  They talk all about creativity and showcase great interactive work. This week I found a series of short interviews  to famous creatives about their creative process. It’s interesting to see the different points of view showcased.
Click Here
- Pablo Jimenez

One of the wonderful things about advertising is that each creative has his/her own process for coming up with ideas.
Mine is very unpopular.
In fact, most people I’ve worked with hate it. But, it’s how my mind works and it works fine for me.
Specifically, here’s the part they hate:
When I get or hear an idea, my mind instantly tries to find as many flaws with it as possible. I think of an idea as a ship. My goal is to poke as many holes in the ship as possible to see …

This week’s post is a ‘Re-Tweet’ of sorts… I read this article written by Lance Freeman yesterday, and it’s powerful stuff. Although I haven’t been to Australia or New Zealand, I have lived, worked, and traveled all over Europe, Canada & Asia, and he’s got it pretty much right on….

Americans, I have some bad news for you:
You have the worst quality of life in the developed world – by a wide margin.
If you had any idea of how people really lived in Western Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Canada …

On the flight back from Miami I sat next to this guy who looked like a nerd-hippie hybrid camp counselor / Patagonia cashier. Earth toned clothing from head to toe (sensibly comfortable, of course), pants with a zillion pockets on them, glasses, 3-day stubble, and all weather socks visible under hiking sandals. I just remember looking at his feet and saying to myself “Socks with sandals. Dammmm.”
I was wearing my lightweight blue Triumph racing jacket. This guy leans over to me and asks “So do you like Triumph bikes, or …

This post will be a little shorter than usual this week because I’m doing a last-minute “Industry Hero” speaking / teaching gig in Miami. One of my old friends from the Miami Ad School (who books the guest ‘heroes’ here) asked me last Thursday if I could do it, and I was on the plane Saturday. I didn’t really need a reason to take a week long trip to Miami.
One of the requirements of accepting the gig is giving the students a brief to work on, then critiquing their work …