Our thoughts

(image: https://www.superdream.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/new-year-new-you1.jpg alt: new year new you) New year, new you.” This is the line that every copywriter has, at some point in their career, thought about writing, or even written for an ad that’s gone out in January. “New year, new you” might be passable if it is used in body copy. By a…

Creatives are occasionally – no, often – given a brief that is accompanied by the giver (sometimes a suit, sometimes a creative director) uttering the phrase, “We want something award-winning.” It’s a sentence that’s intended to inspire and motivate. It makes me want to curl up in a ball under my desk. Perhaps it works…

The terrible events in Paris last week saw a wave of fraternité sweep the world and so social media. The single image that spoke to so many in their declaration of kinship with the French nation was London-based French illustrator Jean Jullien’s Peace for Paris (link: http://www.jeanjullien.com text: sketch). As an indication of its great reach,…

Someone brought Halloween cakes into the office this week. I didn’t know that cakes for Halloween was a thing, but I like confectionaries, so didn’t question it with any real fervour. I liked the Mr Kipling Witches Hat Fancies the most (although, should that not be Witch’s Hat?). Among the others in creative, Spooky Mini…

In the mid-seventies, Brian Eno, in collaboration with his friend the artist Peter Schmidt (no, me neither) published a set of cards called Oblique Strategies. Each card was printed with a question or an instruction intended to help when a producer or a band at work in the studio has wound up in a creative…

Having worked in the creative agency circle for quite a while now, I’ve seen a lot of print and production managers come and go, both working for me and with me in a team. I’ve seen the suits with short trousers and expensive briefcases crunch numbers, and make printers do work for nothing. I’ve seen…