part of the conspiracy for three days

Ok, so i was sort of waiting for the podcast to come out in order to write this post, but in the end, i couldn't help it. As i was saying some time ago, Filter Design Competition was a perfect pretext to have some great designers come here and talk to our young designers. Happily, Ben Terrett was kind enough to accept our invitation, and, more than that, his colleague, Kingsley Gratrick (an adorable guy, whose name we kept on misspelling), also expressed his interest in coming here and helping us out.

Ben and Kingsley proved to me once again, in case this was necessary, that if you actually want to do something, one first step would be to simply try and ask. Just as they reminded me that failure is to be embraced, and that you have to be persistant if you really want to achieve something. Radu was talking the other days about the students who keep on complaining that agencies don't want them and about the people who always seem to think that luck is somewhat against them; well, Ben admitted that he applied for a job loads of times until actually getting one. Just like he admitted that they sometimes lose pitches because they didn't explain properly the reasoning behind their work.

The days spent with them were amazingly refreshing and inspiring - pretty much like Oricum, The Design Conspiracy started as the dream of some college friends to do cool stuff. To "create intrigue and provoke reaction", which is an aim anybody working in our industry should have, in my opinion. Brilliant, modest, funny, Kingsley and Ben didn't mind spending a lot of time with a bunch of kids, listening to us and trying to provide solutions or at least pieces of advice, coming from their experience. They were extremely open and helpful, and, apart from feedback for Filter finalists, as well as their conference which was filled with case studies and insights, they also agreed to record a very constructive podcast with us. As soon as we finish uploading it, you can hear them talking about The Design Conspiracy, their policies and projects, how it feels like to be a designer, how design is the new management consultancy. And we've also talked about hiring and firing people, how to manage the tension between being friends and colleagues, measuring efectiveness in design, sustainable design. And many other things, including Kingsley's musical career, planners, fonts, websites, the relationship between strategy and design.

All in all, we can hardly wait for them to come back here, and, as Cosmin said in some comment: "we miss them already". Thank you very much, guys !

snapshot

isn't it wonderful to spot such things ?

not tired of sleeping

i've been doing so many things lately, that i go to sleep really tired, i wake up really tired, and actually last night i was so tired, i couldn't even sleep. Which is why all day today i've had this song in my head. Which is anyway slightly better then when i wake up mumbling songs such as "Blue Velvet" or "The man who sold the world". But the good part is that i don't feel exhausted or something, it's a sort of a really exciting and energetic tiredness, if that makes any sense.

In the mean time however, i am trying to finish the huge post about Ben and Kingsley's wonderful visit.

you're getting a little cuckoo, viskovitz

I have recently read a book called "You are an animal, Viskovitz", which i loved for a number of reasons.

It may sound funny, but the first thing that attracted me was the writer's biography, which i'll try to translate from the book's cover. Cause his story is really interesting in quite a literary character sense. Alessandro Boffa was born in Moscow and worked for two years as a biologist in an animal genetics lab. He further dedicated himself to the study of the human brain. During the financial crisis in 1986, he won a considerable amount of money on the stock and left to California and Eastern Asia, where he remained for eleven years. Then, he got a degree in gemology in Bangkok, and started doing business with gems, after which he spent five years on a small island in Thailand. He wrote "You are an animal, Viskovitz" in 1998, and had great success with it.

Then, the second reason i liked it is the fact that i think it's a great book for planners - cause the reader is offered so many different perspectives on the world, each subjected to different rules, different "cultures", different social constraints. This happens cause the reader is invited to step into Viskovitz's shoes, who "reincarnates" into 20 different creatures, each of them featured in a different short story. And of course, the hilarious fables are actually insights into the human nature.

Switching to the third reason, i must say i totally love the books that don't really end with the last page, but inspire you to look for something else as well. And that's what happened with this one - its language is very biology-playful, combining scientifical terms with very common terms in quite a funny way (Boffa is a biologist among others, and that's kinda obvious in the book). Which made me go straight away to a book shop and buy some biology scientific book. It's really nice when some joke helps you start learning something a bit more serious.

And, last thing which comes in my mind right now - it reminded me about a book i read and adored when i was in the second grade. The book's called "Instantanee din viata animalelor" (i guess it would be something like "Snapshots from animal life") and it was written by Ionel Pop in 1963.

why i have fun online

Gavin, who doesn't just have one of the most inspiring blogs, but who has also gathered an equally lovely community around him, tagged me to post 5 reasons why i blog. And i think he couldn't have found a better time to make me think about this :). So here i go:

1. Community - when i first started blogging, i was a very lonely junior invited by the creative director to switch from copywriting to planning. I had no idea what planning was all about, no idea whom i could ask what planning was all about and so on. Then i discovered Russell's blog and a great deal of things derived from this. I slowly drifted in the lovely planning community. At the beginning i was crazy about reading more and more communication and brands-related posts, i felt like i was getting so many bits of knowledge from so many different great people. Now, it's far more than that - i feel like i have great friends all over the world, friends whose posts inspire me, give me food for thought and brighten my day. Brilliant people who are willing to answer my questions, give me advice and feedback, because they don't mind sharing. It's like in some very nice school. What could be greater than that ? Besides, one way or another, the blog actually helped me meet other Romanian planners.

2. Learning - i see all sorts of things, i read all sorts of things, i make all sorts of connections, and get all sorts of ideas and often forget about them. However, when i write about them, they all add up like in a sketch book - some of them are really stupid, some others are an incoherent pile of inspiration. And that's lovely.

3. Sharing - sometimes i come across stuff i am simply dying to share. I daily come across so much unexpected stuff, that a blog might easily pass for a sort of "travel diary". Even though i have become really really lazy when it comes to posting lately.

4. Playing and experimenting - ok, so i am not a tech girl, but i simply love to play with all sorts of internet toys - and i wouldn't know how to make the most of them, if i didn't use them somehow. The blog is an excellent place to test the many possibilities of adding things to the little sketch book - pictures, videos, recordings, stuff that i'm sure i'd otherwise lose among loads of files and bookmarks.

5. Portrait - the blog shows a glimpse of myself - and that made it easier for people interested in the way i see things to contact me, and it also made it easier for me to introduce myself to people i contacted. Which i think is great, cause that's how i ended up being involved in some wonderful projects or mere conversations.

All in all, i realise that the blog brings so many good things, that i simply have to re-gather all energy and start posting and posting, cause it sure is worth the time :). Thank you, Gavin !

For further motivations, i summon Bogdana, Stefan, Andreea, Ben and Cosmin.

the truth is out there...

just when i got back all my blogging enthusiasm, Blogger's spam-prevention robots locked my blog. So until some human checks it out and decides i am a human as well and all that, i will only be able to save drafts. Blimey !

ps: now i know how Gavin must have felt when he was experiencing commenting issues.

pps: and yes, this did give me an X-files sort of feeling :)) - actually, maybe not exactly the feeling, but it did make me whistle its theme song.

ppps: now that i think about it, is this evidence that maybe i should have paid a little more attention to "The Secret" experiment Sharon kept on posting about ?

heading to the corporate little coffee

when i go to work very early in the morning (which means around 7:30), i often spend a little time looking at this bit of Bucharest. It's such a forced and sad piece of nature (or what's left of nature, anyway) - it reminds me about the road from Severin to Orsova - some parts of the landscape along the road look so beautiful and free, some others look so butchered by human interventions, like actual leftovers of nature (mainly around the power station).

Which reminds me about Edward Burtynsky (do visit the site for amazing photographic works, as well as for inspirational videos), who spent a great part of his time exploring the residual landscape, in order to catch glimpses of nature transformed through industry - you know, all those interventions that we often end up taking for granted. All starting from a very important statement:

Nature transformed through industry is a predominant theme in
my work. I set course to intersect with a contemporary view of the great ages of
man; from stone, to minerals, oil, transportation, silicon, and so on. To make
these ideas visible I search for subjects that are rich in detail and scale yet
open in their meaning. Recycling yards, mine tailings, quarries and refineries
are all places that are outside of our normal experience, yet we partake of
their output on a daily basis.

These images are meant as metaphors to the dilemma
of our modern existence; they search for a dialogue between attraction and
repulsion, seduction and fear. We are drawn by desire - a chance at good living,
yet we are consciously or unconsciously aware that the world is suffering for
our success. Our dependence on nature to provide the materials for our
consumption and our concern for the health of our planet sets us into an uneasy
contradiction. For me, these images function as reflecting pools of our
times.

branding trivia

while we're having our own piece of sad fun with the latest hit in the branding Romania series - the ''Romania - Fabulospirit'' slogan (by the way, i am still having trouble understanding the word - i am thinking about writing a post analysing its possible deep meanings like we used to do back in school, when we were given metaphors and asked to comment upon them), apparently Canadians are having their bit of nation fun as well.

An article i read in last week's edition of The Economist talked (mocked, actually) a bit about Canada's Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper's wild suggestion that the national image was best captured by a wolverine (part of the weasel family, not the comics character). Apparently this caused quite some controversy. Not that the explanation behind this -"Canada is no mouse beside the American elephant, but a wolverine next to a grizzly bear"- couldn't be valid, but "skunk bears", "nasty cats" and even "gluttons" also seem to be describing wolverines perfectly. More on the story can be read in many places.

fashion

not everything that's called "therapy" is actual therapy

One of my best friends has been going through hell lately, and part of his recovery involves some group therapy. His sharing his experience made me think about various forms of therapy (especially since i'm becoming so interested in film therapy) and i ended up thinking about the concept of "retail therapy". Even though people sometimes do this because they perceive it as a form of dealing with depression, as well as a helping hand towards feeling better, "shopping with the primary purpose of improving the buyer's mood or disposition" or "retail therapy" might not actually be "a cure for the modern blues", but rather one of its causes, according to a 2001 study quoted in "The Guardian".

The short-term satisfaction that shopping gives one doesn't apparently compensate for the degree of regret and even remourse aroused when the person realises having spent money unnecessarily. Lucy Purdy, one of the research who carried out the study, said that "for significant numbers, dissatisfaction is now part of the shopping process; it's adding into the dissatisfaction that causes many people to go shopping in the first place. Shopping is offering a short-term buzz, but as a society we now recognise that and we're getting fed up with short-term emotions." And she also said that "unhappy people are most likely to be trying to change their lives through purchasing. They will be changing their diet, or their appearance, or their homes. And it does appear to be younger, more affluent people who are doing the most dysfunctional shopping for things they don't really want or need."

Moreover, a continent-wide survey into addictive spending carried out in Europe and published by The European Union found that 33% of consumers displayed a "high level of addiction to rash or unnecessary consumption", a tendency which often led to indebtedness. The funny thing is that this retail therapy might actually be just the starting point for a far more severe form of psychological disorder, which has been receiving a lot of media attention lately.

As an editorial in "The Age" states: "Just because you may not have heard of the term does not mean you are not suffering from oniomania (compulsive shopping syndrome). It is not yet clear, however, if a definitional upgrade of retail addiction will in any way help those shoppers who slip out with the credit card as a way of dealing with depression, who buy objects they don't need and cannot afford, and who hide their debts and purchases from loved ones. And other questions trouble us: is oniomania a medical condition or a symptom of a society that places an undue emphasis on shopping as entertainment, and on consumer choices as a form of self-definition? Is it a sickness or an unavoidable consequence when advertising everywhere urges us to shop till we drop - in the same way that anorexia and bulimia sufferers are influenced by the rake-thin images of models draped on billboards and magazines."

what to do ?

i have loads of drafts, but i simply cannot decide to publish them, and i think more and more about shutting this blog down.

photo by lasvegashardcore

filter design competition

Filter Design Competition is the first independent design competition in Romania. I am very excited about it and i can hardly wait both for the entries, and for the series of workshops and conferences that will accompany the competition.

Special extra thanks to Ben, to Grapefruit and to The Czech Center, who have been kind enough to show their support and accept our invitations.

thank you, russell

Russell's bitter post made everybody who realizes what this man has done for planners reflect upon things and react. Personally, i was at a loss of words. It was reading his blog that i found the courage to switch from copywriting to account planning in the first place. Books, links, advice, an entire community of passionate, helping people - it was all there, and it was more than i could ask as a junior planner in an agency where they had no planners before, in a country where at the time, the word "planner" still sounded weird. Then, his coffee mornings were the starting point for Romanian planners meetings, where i could meet some great people, listen to their opinions, and ask for their advice. Needless to say how much that meant to me. Russell's blog is the first thing i read each morning, and I don't even want to imagine that the wit and insight of his every post could simply stop, just cause some dude managed to hurt Russell's feelings. And what came into my mind when i was thinking about supporting Russell in some way, as well as illustrating what exactly his blog meant to me is a brilliant animation from 1984, developed by Brothers Quay as a tribute to Jan Svankmajer. Enjoy The Cabinet of Jan Svankmajer:

the devices of gustav braustache

Organ is by far my favourite musical instrument. Back in highschool, i used to listen to organ pieces each and every day, which made some of my friends call me weird and morbid. Then i made them listen, and some of them fell in love with this kind of music as well.

"The devices of Gustav Braustache, Bachelor of Science" is a short that uses the power of organ music. And it also uses the mad scientist theme. And the crazy inventor theme. And it inspires one to look at things differently. And makes one realise just how many things people invent daily, some of them practical and useful, some others really stupid and useless. A real treat for gadget-freaks.

the world is thinking

i have been awfully busy lately, so my time for watching movies was highly diminished. So i got addicted to other stuff instead. And besides Captain Planet, my latest addiction has become Fora TV. I like its concept very much, and i have learnt a lot from watching the interesting stuff posted so far (they even feature Neil Gaiman, yeey). It kind of reminds me of the Ted conferences, and it makes me want to help it grow somehow, especially since it gives quite many opportunities for people to get involved.

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