I'm trying to think

The Audi R8

This is the new Audi R8 site from GT. It’s all about time, engineering and beauty.

July - Officially Blog Free

Wow. A whole month without a post, that says a lot about life right now. Either too busy, or relaxing after being too busy. It's all left me a bit flat right now. However, I'm working on restoring my mojo as I write this. Maybe I need to spend a little less time on Facebook, the crack of the internet and a little more time reading interesting stuff. Onwards and sideways.

Airport Terror Prevention - Not!

Or, should that be called 'Carry on bombing.' What a surprise that someone has attacked an airport terminal, where masses of people queue to have their moisturiser confiscated. Taking bottles of water off old ladies was never going to stop someone attacking a terminal was it? It shows our anti-terrorism policy up for what it is, badly targeted, misguided reactive poppycock. Because in the past someone had a plan to make a composite bomb on a plane, let's stop normal people taking small amounts of fluid onto the plane, meanwhile large cars and trucks pull up outside the front door unchecked. If we behaved like this we'd take the front doors off our houses but have a mousetrap at the bottom of our stairs to stop burglars. Oooooh, it makes me mad.

10 things I learnt at Interesting 2007

1) Build it and they will come. It’s not only true of baseball grounds, it’s also true of homespun conferences built on nothing more than interesting things. (I think it all started here for Russell, this post got something like 5 times the hits of his usual stuff.)This is also a principal demonstrated by many people who write for wikipedia, blogs and set up organisations like We are what we do, one of the first speakers. They went on to sell tons of their books 'Change the world' and we all know the story about 'I'm not a plastic bag.' They made a difference because they had a go, they built it.

2) Real things count more in the digital age. According to Tim at Artomatic, just as painting stopped being a record with the arrival of photography, so print and film should become liberated with the arrival of digital. I think you can already see this with the films of Michel Gondry and commercials like Sony Bravia and Skoda Cake where doing it for real takes the place of CGI. This gives the brands an emotional resonance that only the best digital work can achieve and an authenticity that people crave. Very much like the Interesting conference itself.

3) TV is like advertising, but harder. Richard Wilson, producer of ‘Have I got news for you’ and ‘Room 101’ describes commissioning editors as people who are paid to say no. This may sound like advertising, but remember that at some point the client will need a campaign, so they can’t say no for ever. Whereas TV is awash with hackneyed formulas, repeats and people peddling the next ‘Wife Swap’ so they’re never going to be short of content. (Apparently you can only make the next ‘Wife Swap’ if you make Wife Swap type programs already. There’s a lot of pigeon holing in TV.) And what was also interesting is that whereas digital and advertising is full of bloggers and people who want to share their ideas and opinions, TV is full of people who are extremely protective of their ideas. I guess you’re only going to come up with one ‘Who wants to be a millionaire’ every ten years. By the same token, if everyone shared their ideas, maybe TV would end up much more diverse and risky and not full of the formulaic nonsense that fills our screens (although not Richard Wilson’s stuff of course even if his ‘sitcom about a reality tv star trying to make a sitcom about his reality’ starring Paul Torrisi from the Apprentice, will never see the light of day.)

4) Opinion always wins over reportage but not always over anecdote. The speakers who stuck their necks out and tried to make a new connection like Beeker did with the Muppets and Ibsen were the most interesting. However, you can never beat a good story and Grant McCraken told a whopping tale about going on Oprah.

5) People love to share. There was a particular loveliness to the sharing that went on at Interesting 2007. It was a very open, smugness free, soul bearing sort of stuff. The amount of ideas pinging around the room by the end of the day was testament to the have a go attitude of so many of the crowd (including Mathew Ancona’s Al Pacino impression, not the kind of thing you expect from the editor of the Spectator.)

6) Richard Dawkins is one of the most referenced men in marketing, and for good reason. Matt Black Belt Jones referenced his Ted Talks talk on ‘the middle world’ and how our view of the universe is ultimately confined to what we are evolutionally designed to understand – i.e. our middle view of the world rather than the very small quantum level and the macro big bang level. He applied this to marketing and how we should try and look beyond the immediate problem at much bigger or smaller concerns. I’m inclined to agree.

7) Don’t bootstrap products. Another one from Matt who I think may have borrowed from Ray Kurzweil. His example of Nike+ was a good one. Yes, it’s a great product but it doesn’t let you ‘play’ with it beyond its intended use. For example, you can’t walk with it or it stops working. Look at Google maps, it’s not just a boxed product, it’s a shared resource that people have already thought up thousands of previously unimagined uses.

8) If you do something well, do it more. A perfect 5 minutes from a lovely guy who described himself as Cluso on land and Fred Astaire in the water. He’s since worked out why he’s so good at swimming and it’s due to anatomy. His point was that everyone has at least one thing they can do well. So do it.

9) Om is the sound of the Universe. Red is the colour of his pants.

10) You can get a great tune out of a household saw. If you don’t believe, watch this fantastic performance from Rhodri Marsden.

11) Lists are good. Ann at I like

Sorry is not the hardest word…

…Onomatopoeia is pretty tricky. Even so, I’d like to say sorry to any fellow bloggers I may have offended in last week’s Sunday Ramble. It was intended to be a discussion point rather than a point of division.

Theo (who also has a new blog), summed it up with ‘reportage vs opinion’. Do we blog just to diarise or do we blog because we have opinions and ideas? I guess it’s up to the individual blogger, but I’d like to see less sitting on the fence and more people putting a hand grenade amongst the pigeons. Jim Stump has done just this on his blog and stuck up for his and Ben’s hard won pencil at the D&AD awards this year. Scroll down and Jim’s also written some really good thoughts about Digital Art Directors vs Offline ADs. Meanwhile Ben has been continuing his brilliant idiosyncratic view of life on his blog and Hale has been doing what a Hale does. The Creative Social is also thriving and I’m really looking forward to seeing some digital clever clogs this evening at Play.

Highway wobbery

Here are some companies I suggest you never do business with:

Europcar - Becuase they take £650 off your credit card for damage you didn't cause and give you no way to get your money back. A complete bunch of crooks and I'm not the only one.

Vodafone - For changing my contract from 12 to 18 months which means I have to wait until 2008 to upgrade my phone. Haven't they noticed that technology moves faster than this. I can buy my way out of my contract for £350 apparently. I've got a better idea, change my tarriff to the granny tarriff, cancel my insurance and pay them £10 a month whilst I switch to Orange.

Ikea Kitchens - For making it so difficult to buy a kitchen. Did I really have to spend 5 hours in the Edmonton branch listening to 'bargains, bargains, bargains' every 3 minutes over the tannoy. Prisoners get treated better in Guantanamo bay. We've had to go back another 3 times to return the stuff we didn't need and get all the little bits we did. Not the vision of Sveedish design I had in mind.

Sunday Ramble

There's a great piece in today’s Observer by Richard Dawkins, it's a ramble through his week, his views, his interests and his frustrations. He's spot on about all the hoops we have to jump through every time we go anywhere near an airport. He links to a fascinating piece about just how impossible it is to cause a chemical reaction capable of bringing down a plane with the contents of one's hand luggage. In spite of this, every time we go to Stanstead airport, my girlfriend has to put a tiny bottle of moisturiser in a clear plastic bag before going through security - but they only tell you this at the front of the queue. After which she is then made to take off her flip-flops in case they contain explosives. I'm thinking of writing a screenplay for Samuel L. Jackson called 'Bomb in a flip-flop.' It's no more ridiculous than snakes on a plane except the resulting explosion would only be enough to blow the lid off a milk sachet/carton (what do you call those things anyway?)

We should all take a leaf out of Richard Dawkin's book. He doesn't rail against religion because he doesn't believe in god, I'm sure he's more than happy to let individuals believe whatever they want, just as long as it has no impact whatsoever on the rest of our lives. Reading his piece, he clearly allows this common sense to steer the rest of his life and he can't understand why the rest of us blindly walk into a police state every time the government plays the terrorism card.

When are we going to remember that we live in a democracy and that the MPs we elect are meant to represent our interests? We need to start blogging about meaningful things instead of - 'Check out this new twitter application', or 'I really like this new ad'. It reminds me of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy when the hairdressers and economists have the chance to set up a new civilisation and all they do is create money from leaves and then invent a blue hexagon and call it a wheel. We have a chance to change things, to exchange views, influence society rather than just exchange random tidbits in the playground of advertising, swapping today's equivalent of football stickers and other trivia. What a waste.

It's why I haven't blogged for ages. I'm genuinely disheartened by the all the pseudo Russell Davies blogs. He does it, that's his thing, he does it well. Please, the rest of you, blog about something you really care about, write something that matters, that represents who you really are rather than just some very narrow industry version of yourself. Have an opinion, don't just jump on the bandwagon and blindly follow the crowd. Don't be afraid to have views on real subjects and real issues. It will be a hell of a lot more interesting than all the cobblers that's flying around on most of the blogs listed in the left hand column of this page.

If the printing press had just ended up being used to print bibles, court circulars and village news letters where would we be today? The blog is the new printing press. We all have the chance to really take a stand and make a difference, even if we only write something of real value every few weeks, do it. Don't worry about your 'brand' - if your blog is full of youtube videos 9 out of 10 posts, make the 10th post count and send it round. Look at Zefrank, he manages something really exceptional with his mix of comedy and political insight. The rest of us can only dream of being that smart - but he's not afraid to have a real opinion and express it.

I'm going to stop ranting there, and I'm going to try and practice what I preach and fill my blog with things that matter, not just some narrow Alan Partridge - 'let's keep it light and entertaining' view of the world. Comments please.

With Eli and I

Withnail and I and a trip to the countryside go together like young farmers and UKIP membership. Classic quotes from the film start to echo around my mind as soon as London passes into the rear view mirror and a ‘randy bull’ appears on the horizon. The first one to pass my lips is, ‘I’m making time’ as I gun the Punto up the motorway whilst Eli tells me to slow down.

The next compulsory quotes generally go in this order, ‘we’ve come on holiday by mistake’ when you arrive after dark in the piss-pouring-rain, followed by ‘I’m sitting down to enjoy my holiday’ as you do just that on a hard-backed chair in the kitchen with a glass of wine in your hand, knackered by what should have been a two and a half hour run from London but that’s not including roadworks and getting lost - because they haven’t replaced the road signs in Norfolk since they were removed to fox the Germans in WWII in case of invasion. Come on people, you’ve had 60 years to replace a few road signs!

It wasn’t long before the next quote sprang to mind. On our first Friday in South Norfolk we cycled to Reedham and hopped on the river ferry. (We’ve all read in the papers how a trip on the London Underground is the most expensive journey, per pound, per mile in the UK, I think I’ve found a more expensive one. As you can see from the pictures, 20 yards is £1 a person…)

Reedham itself is a nice enough spot, a couple of decent pubs on the river, but I’m always suspicious of anywhere with only one road in and one road out, not counting the ferry because it’s not, strictly speaking, a road. My suspicions were quickly realised as I cycled up a hill, overtaking a parked van, when all of a sudden I had a car right up my arse beeping. My London programming kicked in and I shot the car the blind-reverse-middle-finger which was greeted with shouting and abuse from the ‘girls’ in the car. It wasn’t long before we caught up with them since they’d parked up and the conversation went like this:

Me: What’s your problem?

Vicky Pollard: You’re meant to get out the road when a car’s comin!

Me: It’s a public highway.

VP: You were right in the middle of the road.

Me: I was overtaking a parked van.

VP: Yeah, but, what if I’d been speeding? I’d uv run you over… [She really said this.]

Me: What?

Eli: Don’t be so ridiculous

VP: If I’d been speeding I’d have run right into you.

Eli: You’re being ridiculous.

VP: I might catch you up and run you off the road.

Me: Oh go and shag your brother.

At which point I cycled off realising that you can’t reason with a cabbage whilst Eli told her to stop being ridiculous a few more times.

The Withnail quote that came out as we cycled off was ‘Not the attitude I’d come to expect from the H.E. Bates novel I read.’

She didn’t come after us, she didn’t run us off the road, although she no doubt hopped into the sack with at least one close relative that evening.

And finally, here's one you don't get to use very often - "A coward you are Withnail, an expert on bulls you are not." Just substitute 'bulls' for 'spiders' and 'Withnail' for 'Baylis'. Seriously though, would you tackle a beast like that armed only with a glass and a bit of cardboard. I think she was lucky not to lose an arm.

Hello world from Norfolk

I've got away for a week and a bit, so expect an email from me if you havn't had one for a while and some blog action - that's if the BT Yahoo account in our friends' holiday home stops going down every five minutes! Off to bed now, all that tea and sitting around takes its toll you know.

Bom Chicka What?

Never say never, so here is a soapbox rant about advertising. I hate 99% of advertising. It interrupts my life, it breaks up my occassional evening in front of the TV and if it’s going to do that – make it funny, interesting, beautiful or at least entertaining. Currently on TV is one of the worst ads I’ve ever seen – it leaves me diving for my remote control every time it comes on – it’s the new Lynx ad from BBH, the one’s with added Bom Chicka Wah Wah. What an utter pile of turd! It is such a contrived meme designed to ping round the playgrounds of the UK. If this catches on I’ll shave my arse and run down Oxford St. butt naked.

Existential blog crisis alert

"I'm trying to think" has reached a crossroads. The last few months of blogging have been great fun and I've actually met a few lovely people throughout the blogosphere, many of whom are listed on the left below. However, in the last month or so this blog has suffered a certain amount of neglect due to a new job, the builders and a lack of time. As a result, it's taken on more of a public diary function which worked well for the life drawing experiment (which is now over) - and the question is, which way should this blog go next? Please feel free to leave comments and make constructive recommendations.

One way is to make it more advertising focused, but I feel like that is covered better by other blogs like Russell Davies' and new to the mix is Andy Sandoz's blog. Also, I've volunteered to contribute to the new blog for the Creative Social, which could turn into a really interesting area that reflects the collective consciousness of the digital creative world. We’ll see.

Blogging is an experiment for anyone writing one and up to now my experiment has resulted in a wide ranging mix of subjects and themes – which I quite like. I’ve tried not to use it as a soapbox, I’ve tried to make it interesting and I’ve tried to use it as a reason to look at the world in a different way and find something to say about life and the way we live it. I guess sometimes life is overwhelmed with duty and tasks and reflection has to wait for another day, maybe that’s where I am right now. Blogs get interesting when life is at a crossroads, and blogs hit crossroads when life is all about getting your head down. Of course, the reason for a blog is that it makes you stop and look at the scenery, it makes you slow down a little and enjoy the journey, so life isn’t just a collection of tasks and random events, it’s considered, recorded and captured. (Which is another reason I don’t want this blog to become an advertisng/branding “I saw this cool thing the other day” list.) Life is more than that, and I want this blog to be more than that – so thanks for reading and I will try and find the time to think a bit more about stuff and write it down here.

Look, flowers

We're not living in our flat at the moment because the builders are tearing it apart and putting it back together with great care and pride but all rather slowly as a result. Eli swung by today and witnessed the back garden being emptied of several tons of plaster, old ceiling and wood chip wallpaper. From behind the rubble emerged the garden that we rescued last easter from decay and neglect. This is a lovely shot of the Clematis that Eli planted climbing up the fence that I put up. Hopefully, when we get back in the house in a few weeks, the flowers will still be there to enjoy.

Life Drawing - Week 8

Week 8 was hard. Everyone in the class had a nightmare except Eli who expertly mixed washes, paints and carcoal while the rest of us bungled through like a bunch of overgrown 5 year olds. This picture was the final pose - we were asked to paint in the white areas first, no drawing, no planning - just straight into laying the bright areas onto the page. This paint was only defined when we carved into it with charcoal - but by this time the measurements were all out - arms were too skinny, legs too fat and feet just plain weird. The only chance to correct things was to effectively tipex out the mistakes with more white paint, grinding out an image that worked. This is how far I got in the time allotted, it's better than last week - so that's something.

Life Drawing - Week 7 (Don't laugh!)

Yes I know she looks like a mutant pixy with one leg - I haven't got my eye back in yet. Looking back over the life drawing classes so far, this is where we're at:

Since a high point in week 3, the trend has been decidedly south. As I said in week six, I am not a quitter and I will once again walk into the arena of truth, stand at the easelof possibiliy whilst sketching the breasts of frustration. I think the main problem I'm having is no time to practice due to the new job - which is also the reason for the lack of activity on this here blog. Never mind. Laugh yourselves silly at the picture below and let's see how we get on next week.

Life Drawing - Week 6

It's the first post for two weeks and you'd be entitled to think that after the week 5 life drawing wobble (plus a life-in-general wobble) that there would be no more life drawing posts. I may not be able to paint, draw and think like Damien Hirst (famous name drop for search purposes) but I am not a quitter. I got back on my metaphorical donkey and galloped along the metaphorical beach of destiny looking like a proper nana.

So week five was all about tone and light. Every time I mentioned I was doing life drawing to friends who had themselves done some life drawing, the laughter would slowly die down and then they'd ask me if I'd done the thing with the rubber yet. Well, this week it was the thing with the rubber - you effectively colour in the paper with charcoal to create a black canvas and then draw with the rubber, picking out the light in a Rolf Harris / Art Attack fashion. It's a lot harder than it looks. As someone who has trouble drawing with a pencil, drawing with a rubber was slow going. Rub a bit, clean the rubber a bit, rub a bit more until slowly a figure emerges from the blackness. I guess this is what film lighting must be like - finding the light areas, building an illusion from patches of white out of black. I'm not crazy about the results, but it was a fun week.