Disappointment is a career choice

Welcome to a career of disappointment. During our internship we got our first glimpse into the client/agency dynamic. The assignment was to put together an ad that was an announcement of a big deal: a newsy headline and the different 'deals' outlined in boxes. Simple enough. We get it done and are quasi-proud that something we worked on will run in the New York Times. Until they send it off for approval by the client. The client fucks with it. Completely changes the headline to something they had before and now Mike is currently on his 8th revision of the 'boxes'. Boxes! How can four black straight lines cause such agony? Vertical, no wait, horizontal. Move the logo to the top, but not before you try it on the bottom...again. So the lesson is the majority of our careers will consist of wasted creativity (in the end, it's never wasteful, but it certainly feels that way). We spend vast amounts of energy coming up with something interesting, only to have the client's preconceived dirt boring version run. And this is an ad that no one cares about. The most terrifying thing we heard during this experience, said by our art director mentor, "Wait until it's something you really care about." We are masocist bastards.

one thousand piece of illegitimate art

I hate this site. Anyone who paid for one of these pieces should be punched in the neck/throat.

what the blinkin' eff, the life of a creative

Every project is different. Every time the process is different. You will feel like you forget how to do it. You will feel like you never knew how in the first place. If you lose those feelings something is wrong. With every project there is an undetermined amount of time that you will want to kill yourself. You will feel like a complete failure and a waste of carbon material. You will question your value as a/an [insert job title]. That time will pass. The walls come down. You realize everyone is making it up as they go along. There is no handbook, there can't be. You want the volatility that comes with uncertainty. You want it to come from nowhere and everywhere at once. You want the process to be different every time because the end result will follow suit.

this job sucks, let's burn the place down!

Great media placement. There is too much gratuitous guerilla, where the message doesn't make sense in the environment and it's simply an excuse to put an ad somewhere. It just annoys people and they are increasingly jaded about advertising. Good advertising attempts to have a conversation with someone, drawing them in. Not running up to them and shouting. Of course, this is sometimes difficult to remember. It's so easy to become sucked in to the ad bubble and create things that we like, but doesn't necessarily connect with the consumer.

dissecting iggy pop

If you haven't seen this you have to check it out. It's Pandora by the music genome project. (click on title for link) It systematically creates a personalized radio station for you based on your favorite artists and the music that most closely mimics their harmony, rhythm, instrumentation, lyrics, orchestration, singing and vocal harmony. Basically, it's the first steps of an impending IRobot disaster where artificial intelligence can predict our every thought and exploit predictably "human" thinking such as a speciesism, insecurity, and naivete. And then exterminating the human race with the greatest possible amount of irony. Was that overly dramatic? Well, it's an awesome website.