I aspire to be an organised creative; this has proved difficult though. Walking and talking simultaneously is often tricky, so remembering deadlines, tasks, meetings, quotes and other vital daily pieces of information is almost impossible. Thankfully I now employ a variety of applications which effectively are my electronic managers. They tell me where to be, who to invoice, who I have to speak to and about what. It’s a system that works most of the time, so I have decided to list the software I use, mention some apps that I’ve heard are useful, and make an appeal to programmers for an application which I think is missing…
November 16, 2009 – 7:12 pm
Smithandjenningscaterers.com is a little site I have just finished. It’s for some caterers called Smith and Jennings. Hence the title. And the pictures of food. And frequent mention of the names Smith, Jennings and the word ‘caterers’. I designed the site, and took the photographs, and built the site. Spending an afternoon photographing food is [...]
September 28, 2009 – 9:12 pm
Yes, yes, I have been going on about this. But what the hell, it was fun. Last Monday Mi shot a music video starring Richard E Grant, and I was Creative Director. There is more of a story about it all here. My last two posts were my attempt to blog from my phone on [...]
September 21, 2009 – 1:22 pm
So, not halfway through yet. And behind schedule. On the plus side the catering was really good, and our Hollywood star is being brilliant. Especially considering he spent all morning getting slapped……
September 21, 2009 – 10:45 am
So you spend months planning, re-writing treatments, getting crew together, juggling budgets, hunting locations, and all other manner of stuff, and then eventually the shoot day arrives. Then, really, you are at the mercy of time, and Lady Luck. Today is that day and so far things are good. I’ll post again in a bit…….and [...]
September 10, 2009 – 10:18 am
If you have read this article, or maybe this one, or even this one, you’ll know that I have been lucky enough to become Creative Director at Mi. I have a degree in animation tucked away somewhere, so after 10 years in advertising, design and digital agencies, this is me going back to my roots. [...]
August 10, 2009 – 10:06 am
Selling. It is sometimes easy for creatives to ‘uncouple’ sales from what we do. Preferring instead to discuss craft, user experience, or brand awareness. But ultimately, everything we do comes down to sales of one sort or another. It is also easy to fall into the usual agency rhetoric: “Of course our campaign will sell your product, trust us”. However, if asked, would most creatives put the selling power of their design to the test?
Bill Bailey is a nice chap. Here he is playing the point at the camera game at last night’s Big Chip Awards with the gents from Creative Spark and ahd mi. I am chuffed to say that ahd168 won two awards; Best use of Animation and the Anthony Wilson Original Modern Award. I am slightly [...]
Advertising and design has a lot of awards. A lot. Adforum lists 170 award shows from around the world. The Drum lists 15 award shows (at time of writing). They are big business, and they are here to stay. But are they are good thing? Do they benefit the industry? Maybe it’s worth having a proper think about them. I have listed 10 pros and 10 cons, in true sit-on-the-fence style….
Well this re-design took no time at all – seems I am getting much quicker re-coding CSS. The old layout of this blog was starting to feel a bit well ‘bit-y’, so this one is back to clean design basics, except of course the big chopped up background images. As monitors and internet pipes get [...]
As a freelancer, my contact numbers are obviously very important. But then everybody’s phone book is important, so I thought I would share this very simple back up; it helps me sleep at night. Maybe it is already common practise for the tech savvy amongst you, and I am merely displaying my luddite credentials. You [...]
So the shortlist for this year’s Big Chip Awards has been announced. And ahd imaging and I are on it, for best use of animation. Which is nice. To be honest the robot did most of the work. We just filmed him; I almost feel guilty. There is some very stiff competition in the category, [...]
March 25, 2009 – 12:33 pm
You set up a blog. You do some blogging. Then blog stops working because technology has overtaken it. Boo. Time to upgrade blog to latest version of blog. But that’s just plain scary. What might happen to blog? Blog took work. Blog precious. Well thankfully if you use WordPress things aren’t too bad. I have [...]
November 12, 2008 – 4:59 pm
I’ve recently (pretty much) completed a simple site for ehl, a supplier of ingredients based in Manchester. Design, copywriting, photography and code was all cobbled together by me. We still have a few tweeks, a little bit of SEO, and the odd shot to update but all-in-all it is done. It’s all singing and dancing [...]
November 4, 2008 – 11:06 pm
Last Friday evening I went along to the DADIs at the Royal Armouries in Leeds. Creative Spark and I were nominated for our moving viral. I drove, so I didn’t drink. Design award dos through sober eyes are interesting, I would recommend it – but maybe only once. Anyway, apart from the sobreity the evening [...]
