A LESSON FROM HALO 3.

I've been gone for a month, slaving away on advertising. So please allow me to share a little something that I've learnt over the past month. Only you can make yourself happy at work. It's all about changing the chemicals in your brain. If you're not happy at work, I completely blame you for not having the willpower to change things! Make a f-ing difference.

Do great work. Let nothing stop you from doing great work. Fighting to keep your work alive is part of the job.  If you've done any creative work in your life, you know it is rewarding to see your work living and breathing in the world rather than it being trapped in your sketchbook. Finish the fight.

AD!DICT LABS. REACH BEYOND YOUR INDUSTRY.

Ad!dict Labs is probably one of my favorite...I don't really know what they are. In essence, they're a great source of inspiration. I've seen a lot of companies try to do what Ad!dict Labs does. It's got a lot of great information on design, technology, trends, art, architecture etc. All the "inspiration books" are beautifully designed. All the articles are also beautifully written. Anyway, this magazine completely complements and supports what I'm trying to do with my new agency - look beyond our own industry to learn and appreciate everything beyond our comfort zone, and perhaps one day, use it.

Look into this guys. It's worth 30 seconds of your free time. Here are some sample spreads and here's the website: http://www.addictlab.com/index.php/labfiles

FURNITURE SKETCH.

Okay so I'm sorry for disappearing all of a sudden. I've recently moved from Dubai to the Asian front. Unfortunately, I'm not at liberty to say but obviously, career moves such as this takes a toll on my personal life and this blog.

In any case, I discovered this at my new office and I thought this was just brilliant and worth sharing. There is a design group in Sweden called "FRONT." 4 girls, Swedish girls might I add, run the place. That's hot...but their work is even hotter.

The video below is a mixture of illustration, industrial design and performance art. It's quite something and it's just hard to explain. Enjoy.

UNITING THE WORLD WITH U2ube.

For the first time, YouTube has teamed up with a band to, for lack of a better word "televise," a free concert. This was probably a huge step in music and technology and of course, there's only one band so ahead of the curve: U2. No doubt, with the success of this historic digital event, we will see start to see more concerts online.

The show started with a 30 minute countdown to U2's stage entrance. The growing anticipation, I must admit, definitely added to this virtual concert experience. And then voila, the show began. You probably forget immediately that you're watching it on the internet and believe me, it's something that you have to experience. I found myself singing along with Bono and if I had more space, I probably would've danced. And with all great concerts, I noticed the very familiar exhilaration of hearing great hits.

U2 is probably one of the only bands that can perform for about 2 hours, continuously playing hit after hit. They played such a beautiful and diverse set and as Bono put it "We've got old songs, new songs and songs we can hardly play."

This was truly the cheapest and one of the best concerts I've been to.

BE A NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC PHOTOGRAPHER.

For some strange reason, I never bothered going on the National Geographic website. That was stupid. The National Geographic site (http://www.nationalgeographic.com) has a wealth of information on what's happening around the world accompanied with beautiful imagery.

Here's what's really cool for you photography nerds out there: you can submit your photos to an online contest (http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/photo-contest/photo-contest) and you can have your own national geographic gallery. If your shots are selected, they will be published. Now here's what I've gathered from spending an embarrassing 5 hours straight on the site (obviously, I'm addicted): anyone can be a great photographer. You just have to pay attention to your surroundings.

Have a look at the photos below. These are all taken by "amateur" photographers with sometimes, nothing more than a point and shoot.  Impressive isn't it?

STRANGER THAN FICTION.

I have never really been a fan of Will Ferrell movies but Stranger than Fiction, I love. Apart from the incredible performance from all the characters, the best thing about this film is the beautifully written script. It's clever, it's funny and it's surprisingly touching.

The design geeks out there will love this movie too. A motion graphics house in Kansas city called MK12 did a fantastic job with the intro sequence. It's one of the best pieces I've seen in film.

Anyway, this movie was a pleasant surprise and I highly recommend you guys watch this. Pay attention to the script!

DIFFICULT IS WORTH DOING.

This is probably the best piece of advertising I've seen in years: a live ad. It is also the best advice I've come across in years and I thought I'd share it. DIFFICULT IS WORTH DOING. As creatives, we have to do things we think we cannot do.

THE IMPORTANCE OF KEEPING A JOURNAL.

I'm quite fond of this message. A lot of creatives today don't seem to value the importance of having a journal. I see a lot of creatives walking around with loose leaf paper. What the f***? During the brainstorming process, you come up with plenty of ideas that may not be appropriate for whatever it is you're working on but dig back a few years later and I guarantee you will find a gem.

THE PERIODIC TABLE OF TYPEFACES.

This was sent to me by a good friend and I thought this was definitely worth posting. If you ever spend a lot of time doing any print work, you often find yourself stuck for fonts. I don't particularly enjoy searching for fonts and this could virtually end up taking you a at least an hour to find the perfect one. So I tend to stick to a set of 10 I've committed to memory. This is not a good thing. So the image above is a really useful tool if you ever need to look for fonts. I think it's a fairly good set of fonts. There are enough that aren't generic and default and large enough so you have enough variety. Of course, the best thing to do is probably grow some patience and dig through your library of fonts. But until then, use the above.

GET YOUR MOJO BACK.

Sagmeister is a master graphic designer but for me, I love his forward thinking philosophy on life. What's important to understand is that his philosophy actually works. The TED talk below is Sagmeister's view on taking regular sabbaticals (an extended leave from the office) and how important it is to gain some new perspective and how it improves your work. Sagmeister's work is always fresh so he can charge more.

Anyway, for those of you workaholics who manage to see this, you can thank me later.

SHOOT YOUR OWN FILMS.

Red Rock Micro is a company that creates cinema rigs for DSLR cameras. It's not cheap but in relation to cinema rigs for film cameras, it's cheap. It'll set you back around USD 2500 for an extensive rig (the one above).

Red Rock Micro is also sponsoring a great DSLR film festival called dailyfilm and here's the site: http://www.dailyfilm.tv/festivals/dailyfilmtv-dslr-short-film-contest

The point of this is...anyone can do this.  Just do it.

Here are some more samples.

A NEW WAVE OF SHOOTING FILMS.

Welcome to a new age of digital films. I just got myself a Canon 5D mark II and it is...insane. I'm not gonna talk about the great images this thing produces at an astonishing 21.1 megapixels but rather its new feature: full HD video.

I must say, from what I've seen, this thing can compete with the best film cameras out there. I don't see a huge difference between the infamous Red Camera (http://www.red.com/) and the 5D mark II. The main problem with the 5D is image stability because of its light weight, unlike the Red Camera - you can buy stabilizers and rigs, etc.

In any case, here's a relatively cheap opportunity to start shooting your own films. Forget presenting storyboards, imagine presenting fully shot test commercials to clients. Have a look at these:

Canon 5D mark II - Commercial Shoot from Denver Riddle on Vimeo.


Mark II from Alex Delarge on Vimeo.


Tokyo Reality (Canon 5D MarkII) from Florent Porta on Vimeo.

IT STARTED WITH A CHAIR.

Juno: the little movie that did. For the folks that don't know this tid bit, most movies usually don't recover from their budget with ticket sales and only get it back with dvd and promo sales. Juno, however, not only recovered their budget in its opening weekend but profited 20 times over.

Anyway, this post isn't about money. It's about the intro sequence. For anyone that has done any work like this, you'd know that this is a grueling process. I managed to get my hands on the some of the production pics so you'd understand how this is made. It's tough...

FLIGHT OF THE CONCHORDS.

If you're from New Zealand or Australia, you probably know these guys. Their music is great and the lyrics are hilarious...super creative boys. These guys have become so successful, they now have their own HBO tv series and it's brilliant. It's about them: two innocent kiwi boys struggling to make it in America; and obviously, America is just like New Zealand.

Watch their live material too. It's equally funny.

HOPE.

Erwin Olaf is...something else. Nobody can get this look out of their photographs. You can definitely tell if you're looking at an Olaf. There's a simplistic look to his photographs but look closely at the image and you'll see an abundance of detail. The photographs have this painting-like quality and I have no idea how he does it. What can I say? The man's an artist: http://www.erwinolaf.com

Click the thumbnails below. They look more stunning large...I promise.