Via Adland TV

The answer from @hjonesy (that’s our Helen) was as profound as it was immediate: it’s a social experiment; something to try to see if it works. And I think she’s hit the nail on the head.  This isn’t about music. This isn’t about the X-Factor, Simon Cowell, wee Joe, or some funny fellas in hoods. It’s about the most seismic shift in consumer behaviour that has happened for a generation, that has started in earnest in 2009.

If there is one thing that we are to remember 2009 for it must be the rise of social media and its ability to empower people, en mass and as individuals, as never before. For providing the opportunity for a single voice to express an opinion and for that opinion to join with others that are similar; growing, developing and coagulating as more and more join in, until their presence can no longer be ignored.  Until their presence is so great that it becomes more significant than the subject that inspired the first voice to be raised. Until the desired and necessary change occurs.

Think Jan Moir. Think Trafigura. Even watch Gordon Brown on TED (no, do). In 2009 we have passed the tipping point at which the balance of power shifts from corporations and institutions (the brands) to the people. It marks the point at which brands have to start to think and operate differently. The point from which no organisation can ever be forgiven for putting itself first and for not taking its responsibilities to its audience, or the wider world, seriously.

Now, the RATM movement isn’t quite the real thing just yet. As Helen says, it’s an experiment rather than a genuine desire for a Christmas No.1 of one type versus another. It’s wrapped up with the irony that the real winner is Sony BMG who have both artists on their label – some will argue that the ‘enemy’ ends up winning after all. But that’s to miss the point. The enemy here isn’t Sony, or Cowell. It’s the old way of doing things. The past. And, in 2009, it’s been defeated.

I’m looking forward to 2010.

Welcome to Manchester

When considering my journey, I flirted with the possibility of traveling first class in order to be able to get some work done. I’ll admit, I was seduced by the idea of a quiet haven where you could focus on your work, undisturbed other than to be offered coffee at your seat, and would generally be made to feel as though you could just get on with being ‘terribly important and busy’.

So, 2 weeks before I was due to travel I popped on to thetrainline.com and looked up times and fares for the date I needed. £66 for an off-peak standard day return. Lovely. Seems reasonable.

My eyes scanned down the page to where the first class fares were listed…

What was that?

Sorry, what was THAT?

£355 for a day return?

Wrestling my eyeballs back into their sockets I began to contemplate what one would get for their £355 ticket. Seeing as I could fly BA (return) to Milan and have a night in a 4-star hotel for the same price, I imagined that a train company commanding the same money must do something pretty special. Do we travel via Capri with a night in a luxury villa, where I’m massaged to within an inch of my life and fed fine cheeses and cured meats until I burst? Do I get to dress in black tie, be drowned in expensive champagne and flirted with by top supermodels for the entire journey whilst, in the background, the London Symphony Orchestra play a collection of my personal favourites? Nope? What do I get then?

A coffee and a newspaper. Fantastic. For the bargain price of £289 I can get some coffee and a newspaper.

I’d be intrigued to have a chat with the head of the particular train company in question and ask him “So, Richard, how do you develop your pricing structure exactly?”

I wonder what the answer would be…

But there is another category of films – films that are so bad, they’re good. To celebrate these ‘car crashes’ of celluloid, we stupidly decided to set up a club – a bad film club – an opportunity to have a drink, a laugh and revel in the acting horror.

Each month we will be showing a ‘special’ screening. Our opening film was no exception having become an internet and cult legend. Here is our resident film boffin, Robert Ball‘s assessment of what has been described as ‘the ‘Citizen Kane’ of bad films‘: The Room…

You are tearing me apart Lisa!

The Room (2003)
There are films during which you can feel the obsessive precision of a master craftsman at work. The films of Kubrick, David Lynch or Hitchcock. The Room is their terrible dark twin. Whereas truly great films are perfect in every detail; framing, pacing, screenplay, visual and sound design, The Room is monotonously, heroically unperfect. In every last detail. All of the time.

The star, producer, director and probably caterer of this meandering debacle (Tommy Wiseau) gives himself the plum role of Johnny – a benevolent, teetotal philosopher and adopter of street kids. He is misunderstood, betrayed, and cuckolded in turn by those around him. He cuts a tragic figure. In fact it’s possibly the most tragic screen performance ever committed to celluloid. Imagine Christopher Walken wandering lost after near fatal electro-shock therapy in one of Cher’s old wigs reading a pile of Clinton Cards through a mouthful of cold porridge.

The rest of a central love triangle is, quite literally, rounded out by a femme fatale (shot from such consistently harsh camera angles and in such cheap dresses that she looks like a pound of pork sausages spilling out of a Christmas cracker) and the handsome best friend (A walking piece of MDF with a beard). And talking of cheap furniture, The Room looks like it was filmed in an MFI showroom. During business hours. Which perhaps explains the characters that randomly appear out of nowhere only to look confused and and wander off again without serving dramatic or expositional function.

So, take some terrible acting, a screenplay written by a horny teenager (two stomach churning sex scenes occur in the first ten minutes that feel about as erotic as watching a giant snail trying to fondle his sister), cheap sets, a handful of stock footage, production values that would shame a school nativity and this is the result.

And I’m just scraping the surface. A thin veneer of mere awfulness covering depths of ineptitude studded with pearls of unrewarding crap just waiting to be discovered. The worst film ever made? Perhaps. I’d give it six out of ten.

Social Media's capital

I was intrigued to read last week on The Telegraph website how London has been confirmed as being the ‘top city’ when it comes to social media. Twitter, Facebook and Digg have all confirmed that London has the highest level of social media contributors of any worldwide city (in relation to population size).

Digg announces that “Nearly 10% of traffic to Digg is from London and the UK is our second largest country next to the US.”

As a Londoner as well as a keen Tweeter, Facebooker, blogger and general ‘social media meddler’ I was impressed. I felt a warm glow of pride swell inside as I considered myself to be part of the most progressive, digital nation.

In. The. World.

I finally felt like the hours I spend poring over what to blog, or how to condense my puerile ramblings into a mere 140 characters, was worth something. No-one knows my name, or gives a damn for that matter, but I don’t care, I’m an inhabitant of the ‘Social Media Capital’. Hear me roar.

As I pondered on this for a while longer I began to wonder what has been the reason for London, in particular, to rise to this remarkable level of social media usage. Is it because, as a population, we are just inherently more digitally advanced than our erstwhile neighbouring nations? Are we so super-tecchie with our fingers firmly pressed on the pulse that we are close to uncovering the secrets to The Matrix?

Just then my phone rang. The caller display informed me it was a good friend of mine calling. I stared at my phone as it called out to me like an needy infant “Answer me, answer me, answeeeerrrrr meeeeeee”, and I just let it ring through to voicemail as I thought to myself “I don’t have time to speak with her right now, I’ll just drop her an email in a few moments and deal with it that way”.

Then it hit me.

Londoners may not be any more digitally innovative and progressive than any other ‘hooked up’ nation. We’re not necessarily leading the charge towards the purely digital age. The reason social media is so successful in this City could well be because we are just generally quite anti-social. We may well be a melting pot of diversity, but we are surely also one of the world’s most anonymous cities. There’s not a person I know who hasn’t admitted, at some time, to actively dodging a colleague/friend they’ve seen on their morning commute just to avoid a polite conversation because they ‘don’t feel like it’ that early in the morning. Equally there’s the people who like to pretend they’re asleep in an aisle seat on the train/bus just so someone won’t ask them if they can occupy the vacant seat beside them thereby forcing them to interact with another human being. Or there’s my personal observation that a vast majority of Londoners moving around the city are permanently plugged into varying music/media players, or engrossed in tapping away on some PDA/mobile device, as a means of isolating themselves from all that’s occuring around them.

Does this sound to you like the behaviour of ‘social’ people.

I believe that Londoners, and Britons in general, could well be embracing social media simply as a means of avoiding direct contact with others. Why ‘speak’ to someone when you can email them? Then you don’t have to suffer the agony of small-talk or, heaven forbid, listening to the woes of others. You can just fire off a quick message via the varying digital channels available and the job is done.

Don’t get me wrong, I am probably one of the UK’s biggest advocates of social media and the opportunities it opens up. But then, I am also one of those people who’ll dodge to the other side of the street if I see you approaching and I haven’t had my morning coffee as yet. As proud as I am of London embracing the digital age, I’m also slightly embarrassed that it may just be because we’re so anti-social as a population.

On that note, I’m going to pick up the phone, call my friend and see how she’s doing….Ah, voicemail…..never mind.

After the success of our make-it-yourself catalogue for last year’s Jerwood show ‘an experiment in collaboration’ (featured in the Creative Review annual, Design Week Awards runner up and winner of a Platinum award at Graphis) we were asked to make a catalogue for Jerwood’s latest show: Laboratory.

The Laboratory is an experiment: three artists take over the gallery and, starting from nothing, build a show as they go – a totally unpredictable process, with no way of knowing what the work will be like from one day to the next. Everything they do exposed to scrutiny and comment, from the resident writer and photographer to the public and press.

With an experimental show that is one big work in progress we set out to make a catalogue in the true spirit of the show: unpredictable, exposed and experimental. We decided not to design a catalogue. Instead we designed a process,  a way of creating a catalogue that we couldn’t predict and couldn’t control, a way of gathering and documenting everything that happens in the show in real time, built, like the show, in the gallery itself, and only finished as the show closes. We’ve just let it unfold…

Blog
The process started with the Laboratory blog. The artists, curator, writer, resident photographer and designers posted real-time updates on the show to the blog which also automatically draws in related content from external sites like twitter and flickr. Each post has a print option which we use to output content in real time for the printed catalogue. Every post prints the size it appears in the blog, so no two pages are alike.

Catalogue
Each day’s posts are added to the catalogues which are on display in the gallery so you can see the them growing as the  show grows. Posts are joined vertically to make one continuous chronological document. The catalogue kept growing right up until the moment the laboratory closed its doors.

So it wasn’t a surprise to us, that the day that we planned to hold our annual summer party, the weather would play it’s part and decide that we would have ‘torrential rain’ and be five degrees lower than the rest of the week, then clearing up for Saturday and Sunday.

We would not be beaten! Come rain or shine, we had worked long and hard (booked caterers, ordered the beer and had invited too many people) to cancel, so we pushed on regardless.

Luckly for us the rain went quickly and the sun rose in the sky – okay, it might have been made from foam board but it all gave us hope!

You can view some of the pictures from the night on our Facebook page.

And here is the ever-so-frighteningly accurate invite that we sent out back in spring:

• What’s the best way for me to get in touch regarding a placement?
  Contact a studio, ideally with a name of someone specific and provide three to four examples of your best work with a CV.
• How many placements do you give per year?
  We have 24 slots throughout the year, lasting four weeks but we can occasionally allocate for longer or shorter periods.
• What’s involved in doing a placement?
  We treat you like one of the team, not a visitor. We throw you in at the deep end with lots of different tasks and try to get you involved in many different projects. Scanning can’t be avoided and we have high expectations for tea-making but in general we get you designing, but more importantly we get you thinking – it’s why we got you in in the first place! A placement is your chance to shine, so don’t be shy. Ultimately, we want to miss you when you’re gone!
• How much does it pay?
  Although we expect you to do it for love, we pay £200.00 per week.
• Do placements turn into jobs?
  Rarely, unless we’re really really busy and you’ve been doing such a great job that we couldn’t bear to let you go.  But, in general they provide us with a chance to consider you as a potential future member of The Partners once you’re finished. (We like to think of it as road testing).
• How long do your projects take to finish?
  It varies, speedboats and cruise liners…
• How many people work at the Partners?
  In our London office we have around 40 people – designers, project managers, creative directors, strategic consultants, partners, some freelancers, oh and a dog.
• Is it all work and no play?
  Definitely not. We have a summer barbecue, a Lock In, a Christmas party and pub quiz every year, not to mention the reception turning into a pub every Friday evening…
• What’s your favourite typeface?
  Don’t be so geeky.
• Any general don’ts?
  Lie (it’s a really small world)
  Point out weaknesses
  Moan or badmouth anyone
  Pester or be pushy
  Seem desperate or over explain your work
• Anything else?
  Make sure that you check that the designer that you are contacting still works there and you spell their name correctly!
  Spell check any letter that you send!
• Do you have any interview advice?
  Arrive a bit early so you’re not in a flap. Pack your stuff well so it’s easy to reveal. Be enthusiastic and look interested. Don’t be surprised if you don’t see the person you expected. You may also have to go back over your work with some else who’s been called in. Don’t expect an on-the-spot offer (although it can happen). But most importantly, be yourself.
• Are there any books that you would recommend?
  Plenty but some of the oldies are still the best. Here are three:

  A Smile in the Mind – written by the much-loved founding Partner David Stuart, A Smile in the Mind is an classic example of getting ideas rather than just style into any design project, while still having some fun – (we called this book the ‘designers bible’ at uni – Kev)
  
  Problem Solved: A Primer in Design and Communication – by Michael Johnson – Problem: you can’t buy a book about problem-solving? Solved: you can now.
  
  The Art of Looking Sideways – By the late Alan Fletcher, it is a testament to visual awareness which Alan himself describes ‘a journey without a destination’.

To encourage young designers from schools and colleges, our Creative Partner Greg Quinton was recently asked by D&AD to provide some pearls of wisdom in a personal take on having a career in design:

You may have seen all the fuss about “The best job in the World”. Caretaking a tropical Island? Wonderful. Everyone thought so, but I beg to differ. Nice for a long holiday from a British Winter, but long term? I believe the best jobs mean loving what you do and I love the creative industry.

Rewind twenty years or so ago to when I graduated, Macs were grey plastic bricks called Mackintosh. Phones were mobile (if you were strong enough) but everything in the shops had a prefix of ’designer’. It was a boom time for jobs and the coolest job around was in Graphic Design. I knew I was lucky with my timing even then.

At school I kind of knew what I wanted to do: design record covers, store bags, vans – you know – cool commercial things. I knew I wasn’t an artist. The problem was that nobody knew if it was an occupation. My careers advice lady stroked her beardy chin (yep nasty) and announced “You can be: an Archeologist, a librarian or – if you can pass maths – an architect” I was not best pleased, but design simply hadn’t made it onto the list of ‘real jobs’ yet.

So, searching, I blagged a place onto our local foundation course, worked bloody hard for a year and got shouted at every day for not drawing well enough. Finally the course leader said, “I’m sorry Greg, but you still can’t draw well enough to be an illustrator (long pause) I’m afraid the only option left for you… is graphic design.” She considered this a failure. I was in seventh heaven.

College was a joy. I loved every second of it. I knew this is what I wanted to do. From being bored and pretty average at school I was finally in my element. I wanted to do this forever, but knew had to find the right place. I drew up a short list without thinking I was good enough to work at any of them. Passion forces luck (and I was very passionate) and I got out there and did a D&AD workshop, interviews by the dozen, work experiences, made tea and did whatever I could to be noticed and get recommendations. Finally I landed an interview with Nick Wurr at The Partners who were at the top of my list. He (got sick of the pleading) and gave me a job.

Fast-forward twenty years and two recessions. I’ve forgotten many things but I’ve also learnt:

Creativity can solve so many issues. By using communication and design we can change perceptions, improve our environment and add real value to businesses.

We should always remember that clients don’t owe us anything. They take risks when they buy creativity. They could always play safe. Therefore, you should always avoid arrogance and work hard to create the best possible solution for every single project, whatever the client or their situation.

Most creative people (as a breed) are ‘givers’ and are generous with their personal commitment, skill, energy and passion. For many it is a vocation. This is a strength and should never be taken for granted or abused.

In these tough times it’s important to remember that the creative industry always needs new talent. This current ‘crappiness’ will come to an end at some point. We know that clients who invest in creativity during these low points will come through stronger than those who don’t. It is the same with agencies.

Try and have the long-term view. Agencies might not be able to give you a position in the short term, but please don’t give up, If you are truly passionate about your potential please keep going. Do placements, freelance, talk to everyone, do workshops, win competitions, set up your own thing, keep your chin up and do anything to avoid compromise for as long as you can. If you are good, there is a place waiting for you.

It might just be the best job in the World.

Greg Quinton
2009