in these harsh economic conditions

“A copywriter without a brief is like a NYC cop without a partner who brings him donuts.” – Bill Bernbach

Accept small children as payment.

LOVE Bill. He always grounds me when i get too Gen Y and ADD for the more traditional needs of clients. He keeps me real. When I accept my lifetime achievement award for working at a company for more than a year i’m going to dedicate my award to him, name my kid Bill (with one ‘L’ if its a girl) and call my own agency that i start one day Alex&Bill. That way everymorning walking into work i’ll be reminded to keep it real while i bang my secretary (only when my wife can’t take care of my needs because she has an early meeting and is actually doing better than me in her career so i feel threatened).

>>>>>>>>>>>>>Let’s get real for a second<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

According to bizcom these harsh economic times are good for freelancers, because it provides the perfect time for a small business to expand. Harsh economic times is not all fun and games tho because if you are NOT a freelancer by choice, you might be soon because of …the Retrenchments. yes, we have all heard those ominous words being spoken during status meeting lulls.

“Have you heard? My spa has been retrenching. They’ve let my manicurist go. It is devastating. I don’t know what I’ll do!”

Kind Regards, me.

For those of you who have had to come to terms with this harsh reality, just know this: it is a lot easier to be retrenched than it is to be the retrencher. If you get retrenched, you get to deal with the emotional ramifications by being the victim. You get to mull and dwell while you frit away your 2-month package on Johnnie Green and very expensive hydroponically grown marijuana (You deserve it!).

Ignore all calls, including Viv Gordon's, for at least 2 weeks. You deserve it.

If you are the RetrenchER, you have to live with the fact that you are taking away jobs from people you probably know personally. WHAT THE AGENCY GIVETH, THE AGENCY TAKETH AWAY. it’s never nice to know you’re as powerful as god. being god-like means you have to be responsible, and all anyone who starts an ad-agency ever wants is to be rich, adored by thousands, and drunk. retrenching is never part of the plan.

Breaking up sucks.

Be strong, my friends / friends of friends / office colleagues / facebook friends / myspace friends / flickr friends / onesmallseed.net friends/ blog readers / people i see around at Loeries / arb freelancer whose name i don’t know, Be strong.

reflecting on some good times

like i said, i’m going to miss jupiter. this whole missing-something has got me thinking about all the good times i had here in my practically lifelong 4 months career i spent on this advertising planet. :

- dialling the interkom and then setting off Brandt’s fart machine during the 3pm slump

- planting the fart machine at farewell speeches near the person who’s leaving

- planting the fart machine under the mike during the Good Hope FM broadcast

- strapping the fart machine to Nicole and following her around the office with the remote

- making giant cut-outs of Jason’s head and carrying them around Margate at the Loerie Awards

- taking the giant cut-out of Jason’s head to agency lunches and not inviting Jason

- giving my Traffic Manager Sarah all my lunch scraps

- framing a pic of an erect penis, putting it on Fred’s desk and waiting a whole day for him to notice

- moving the framed penis to the design studio and watching Jo notice the penis while showing a client around  and pulling a quick ‘hey look over there’ while pointing in opposite direction

- planting the framed penis on the new guy’s desk and watching him say nothing about it for fear of ‘being uncool’

- sending out an email from Traffic Manager’s machine saying ‘I am randy’ and then her dumping the contents of her rubbish bin on my desk while client looked on, fearful

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such crazy, zany times y’ulle. do you ever get scared that you will never be able to replicate the level of craziness you have achieved elsewhere? like, what if the model doesn’t work unless atmospheric conditions are just right? being a creative is like being a weird tropical fish that swims backwards or something. the water needs to have plenty of that blue droppy stuff in it, the temperature must be complimentary to scale growth, the tank must be cleaned every 2 – 3 weeks. failing that, regular hugs and maybe a tot of good whisky every now and again will do.

>>>Maybe i’m just thinking too hard about moving jobs and i need to chill out and listen to Cat Power.  <<<

"Come and be free, you know who I am."

get paid for your ideas. no, really.

there are a lot of dodgy companies around that ask ‘consumers’ to come up with ways for companies to improve their products / services. usually these companies take these ideas and present them as their own and then give you 150 bucks and a few slices of pizza for your time. not ideabounty, which allows you to submit ideas in a closed system, and if your idea is used you get paid $2 500 (yes, that is a dollar sign). i’ve signed up. i’ll be answering my first brief once i’ve finished the golfing headlines i have to write.

cool soon-to-be-marrieds

congrats to Nicole and Goran, who are now officially engaged. Nicole’s sporting a beautiful white gold and pink sapphire delicately set pretty little ring. will try and get her to upload pics. we’re sure they will have lots of medium-tanned babies who are very musically and artistically talented.

Getting Marrieds. Making marriage cool all around Cape Town.

an important announcement

this here week is my last week at TJDR. It’s really sad because i like it here a lot. from my first day here in the design department, i thought that i could spend a good year or 2 here, which says a lot since i am Gen Y and the lifespan of the average Gen Y job is 2.75 days. i’m gonna miss this place.

<3 you guys. gonna miss you. will think of you everyday.

But, as they say:

and i am excited to say that i have accepted a Group Head position at King James RSVP. which is just a fancy way of saying senior writer, but i like it because it reminds me of the colossal stone heads of the Olmecs.

don’t worry, this isn’t going to change me as a person. i’m not going to let the added responsibility, extra work and longer hours go to my head. i’m going to stay humble, stay focused, stay real. i won’t go getting all convoluted with the philosophies like the guy who wrote this:

Hmm. Deep.

Does anyone out there know what this means? Does it mean designers shouldn’t try so hard? Do y’ulle out there who went to university get this? My diploma never covered ‘the tension of opposites’ guys. Really wish i was intellectual right now. Then I could GET this. Are there extra lessons i can take in design philosphy that will make me a better Group Head? Or do i just need to concern myself with grammatical stuff since i am a writer and nobody actually reads signs like this anyway but if they do, at least nothing will be spelt wrong.

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Sometimes I wish spellcheck wasn’t invented yet because then my services would appreciate in value. It’s a designer’s world yo. You never read shiz like this targeted at design writers.

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here is a quote i like to keep stuck on my wall in Helvetica Extra Bold Heavy:

“Style = Fart.”

- Stefan Sagmeister

weekly round up vibes: soccer, balls and witches

self-discovery is really important. in this day and age, knowing yourself is almost as important as knowing your enemies when it comes to keeping a competitve edge in the advertising industry. this week i discovered something about myself that i never knew: i am freaking petrified of a soccer ball. luckily i discovered this while i was on the soccer pitch, about to make Jupiter proud as the only (legitimate) girl, so i was able to face my fears right there and then. i faced them by turning my back on the ball and running the other way. in me, the survival instinct is strong. some snaps of the event:

Very enthusiastic crowd of supporters despite awful wind. Note the sign in the background.

The sign in the background reads:

“Yet another pitch TBWA wasn’t invited to.”

Very funny. Much LOL. Jupiter’s doing (in fineprint it reads jobs@jupiterct.co.za). One of the highlights of the evening was Fred getting into a fight with some dude from FCB. There was pushing and shoving and pulling apart – for reals. Great stuff. I wouldn’t want to fight with Fred. I mean, who would.

Crazy eyes. Our Fred.

The old 'open your beer with your teeth' trick. Our Fred.

Fred may be mad, but to his credit he once went an entire day without noticing that we’d placed a penis in a picture frame on his desk. He has that kind of focus. That dedication to his craft as Creative Director that makes him so valuable. Also, he’s French, and can make your ‘fuck’ sound like ‘oh poo’. All-in-all, much fun was had, despite the freezing wind.

The more teeth you show the more fun you're having. Standard rules.

on Friday, Good Hope FM came to the agency and we planted VonBrandis’s fart machine right beneath the DJ’s mike to make things a little more interesting. of course, what seemed like sheer genius at the time fell a little flat since we couldn’t hear it going off. we hope listeners did though.

"Brrrlllllrrlllfffffft."

Ha Ha Fart Machine LOL Shhhh.

the weekend went by pleasantly – spent most of it lazing in the sun trying to brown the pasty chops since it was the first fully sunny hot as hell weekend since the piffly teasers we’ve been having. went shopping on sunday and was totally talked out of buying OMO by one of the Skip witches, who are totally the coolest promo ladies i have seen in a while. the fact that i’m talking about promo ladies says a whole lot.

Sexy Skip witches. In A Gardens Centre Pick 'n Pay near you.

how to get Telkom to actually help you

why, you sit in their stores and refuse to move until they do, just like this guy did.

South Africa's Most Loved Brand.

Good Hope FM broadcasting from Jupiter this afternoon

Listen in from 3 – 6pm today. You might even get to hear us talk very meaningfully about design.

Ballad for David Ogilvy

I’m just going to withhold judgement on this and let you watch it.

one for the flat in Paris: Light Blub

the Light Blub inspires me to nest again. love love love. found here.

Drippy blubby light source love.

spotted: packaging design egg in frozen broccoli

it’s not uncommon for graphic designers to sneak little personal jokes into their work. they do it because their lives are unbearably dull and most of their time is spent chained to a Mac wishing they were actually copywriters it’s their way of imprinting ownership on a project in a teensy little way, since deep down they are actually artists who are starved of outlets for personal expression. they might also do it because the project they are working on has become a complete nightmare and this is their small way of getting back at the nightmare in a fun, innocent and virtually invisible way. but a food blogger spotted this egg on a packet of broccoli. and it takes the form of little broccoli heads:

Can you see it?

Hello there!

the brand in question? that would be Cascadian Farm.

another human hamster ball!

Real Awesome Dude.

Called The Buzz Ball, it has a motor in it and strapped in seats. which makes it a completely viable form of transport in my eyes. Christmas in 2 months…

wishing i was a black woman in the 50′s minus the whole segregation / discrimination embarrassment

came across an amazing collection of scanned magazines from the 50s. it’s made my mouth water. i’d love to have a party and tell my friends to dress up like this and then take stupid amounts of digital pics and apply delicious fat bands of colour to them. i just might.

Old school. Always cool.

Turquoise daydreamz.

Eartha! Lover.

Pretty.

Green. Clean. Cole.

now YOU can vote in the American elections. kind of.

it won’t count, officially, but everyone will know the truth about whether the world is supporting obama or sexy sarah. you might as well have an opinion, since whatever America does ends up affecting you. even if YOU are an inuit counting your furs.

Someone make one for South Africa? Mothman vs Zoom-zoom-zoom?

when i grow up i want to be an interaction designer

so that i can be like Jooyun Paek and make stuff like this:

The start of the sneaker fad - for mermaids.

this is a self-inflating chair-shoe. walk-sit-walk…

Makes shopping at Canal Walk a breeze.

Last modification would be adding a nappy.