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we are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the starsArchive for Creative Social
Creative Social Antwerp!
Better late than never… what an incredible time was had at the latest Creative Social gathering, even if it was a bit short.!
Not only is Antwerp STUNNING, the venue amazing and the company of wonderful and talented friends utterly enjoyable; the speakers that These Days organised were top-notch.
First up was “That’s me that Is”, where CDs spend 5 minutes each showing the best piece of brand-spanking-new or just-to-be-launched work. Accompanied by the lovely Theo, we presented the D&AD New Blood piece. The rest of teh work can he seen here, and included some awesome live-concert-to-banner pieces.
Next, Reginald Van de Velde – passionate Urban exploration (Urbex) photographer (and designer at These Days). Look it up. In short he documents places that everyone else has chosen to leave behind and quite simply this leads to fascinating photography where every picture has a story.
Here’s Reginald’s site, http://www.suspiciousminds.com/ and here’s an overview of his conquests.
“Take nothing but pictures, leave nothing but footprints…”
Second speaker was the AMAZING Muriel Scherre – leading lady of cult lingerie label La Fille d’O. She turned the Belgian fashion scene upside down with her sexy and sensual collections, and her provocative book, Lingerie & Lollipops. What started as a home industry is now an international business. Scherre’s take on femininity is seductive and humorous, and her love of life is utterly infectious. Taking it’s name from Pauline Reage’s infamous erotic book L’Histoire d’O, La Fille d’O is a brand that has fun, throws sensational parties, is locally made and engages unusual marketing. Her self made Facebook group ‘I hate Murielle Scherre’ is a good start.
More on Murielle and La Fille d’O
Third speaker was Belgium’s premier current-affairs-come-humour daily TV show Man Bites Dog. After 10 years it remains one of Belgium’s most loved TV shows. Content rich, it digs up bizarre and often tragic-comical stories, but always real, always human and always respectful for both the audience and for the people they interview.
Elke Neuville is editor of the show and joined us to share her experiences and some of the stories. She also offered us some insight into their network of story touch points, the places they find these colourful characters.
Here’s a couple:
The final speaker for the day was food scientist Bernard Lahousse, an internationally renowned collaborator with the likes of Heston Bumenthal,he’s leading the way in the molecular kitchen. Bernard is also one of The Flemish Primitives, a group of well-known chefs that meet, share and criticise each others work. Bernard presented his theory of food pairing, molecular gastronomy and new kitchen techniques. He talked about the concepts of coupling and replacing ingredients based on their chemical components. And we got to be the guinea pigs.
Finally for the day, the Round Tables, where we discussed how we could bring Muriel’s passion and zest to our own work. We decided we needed to share more openly with each other and our clients (job swaps anyone?), force your staff (and yourself) to challenge safe zones, and to have multiple orgasms daily 
.
Then to dinner, where the only Antwerp chef of The Flemish Primitives, Roger Van Damme, opened his restaurant especially for us. Situated in Antwerp’s botanical herb garden, Lunch lounge Het Gebaar is where Roger van Damme, Belgium’s most innovative pastry chef, serves up his magic. And what magic it was! See the video of him experimenting in the dining room here, and check out the picture below:
Peter Saville at Creative Social
Yep, saw the Black Prince talk tonight (haha).
He was well entertaining. And wasn’t half the ego I expected.
The most interesting point he made was about working with the dynamics of a band, and how there’s ALWAYS one person in control, who is effectively your client. One strong personality in the group. Except for New Order once Ian Curtis and Joy Devision had departed. It was very much a band not wanting to take on that role in case they were struck down by lightning… And they all started to disagree with each other just out of principle. Must have made for interesting times…
Our first She Says viral goes live!
Entitled Cannes Party – Check out Sebs crazy dancefloor moves
Kingdom of Fools
I’ve been hitting the speakers trail this week:
Firstly, attending the lasy day of the Wildfire – Flammable thinking event in Brick Lane…
secondly seeing Crab speak at an NMK event on the future of digital design…
and thirdly, Ale and I ran our 2nd She Says night this week.
A week of really interesting (and not so) thinking, and a real energiser for me in the development of She Says as something that will really help to change the industry.
So, to Wildfire, and Tom Savigar from The Future Laboratory.
He spoke about the “yoof” generation… pulsing through some really interesting insights coming from his recent research…
I won’t recap everything in full here, just publish some of the cooler, more interesting and quirkier finds:
THE FUTURE IS NO CERTAIN PLACE – fear, uncertainty and doubt is normal and they live in a benchmarked culture where they are constantly measured. In fact, ranking can be seen in stores such as Tokyo’s Ranking Ranqueen, which sells only the top-ranked products in a vast array of catagories… and in sites such as ethiscore.com where consumables are ranked according to their green creds.
They all equate creativity with real financial worth, and are hungry for creative careers… and they WILL TRY ANYTHING ONCE.
The coolest teen trend is a growing movement of teenagers dubbed the “Mad Hatters” with over 9000 members worldwide. Inspired by romantic stories of siting in cafés having real conversation and debate (think the original Avant Garde.) They collect through social networking sites to drink English Breakfast in bone china and chat over tea – in the real world. I tried to find them online, but I’m obviously just not under 20 anymore – I couldn’t find a thing. The idea was so appealing though – completely what I would have been into at the (this) time! I found myself longing for floppy hair, art school and Artaud again…
The other comment that really hit me is something that I have often felt (and still feel myself) is the idea that people constantly re-invent/rework/resample themselves these days – tha change and mutation is the norm – the feeling he captured from the 20somethings he spoke to: “Can I just have some time off before I re-invent myself again?” Its something I feel myself periodically…
Finally, a great quote from someone’s 5 year old daughter at a live football match, when she had to get up to go to the bathroom – “I need to go to the loo, can I pause it?”
It reminded me that there is a book about teenagers coming out in July by a girl called Jelly Ellie (often pulled out at the token teen by the BBC since about 2004) – “How Teenagers Think” . I hope this will prove just as insightful as today’s research – and hopefully a good read too.
He wrapped up the final discussion with the comment that we are living in a right-brain world: a feminine world full of empathy, joy and fun, but I have a real issue with the event organisers on this point: if its SUCH a feminine-thinking world, WHERE ARE THE WOMEN ON STAGE? Man after man strutted their stuff, but as usual, there was hardly any female representation… one woman on the first day only. Surely, not all the industry’s best brains have rampant nasal hair? OFFF festival last year was just the same, as was the NMK talk and most others I attend.
The other notable talk was by a Creative Social mate of mine from Anomaly in NYC, Johnny Vulkan (who agreed with me on the above point btw…)
One of his first points is that we haven’t managed the debate around our own industry – we’re seen as the bad guys.
Again, too much info to go into detail about here, save to say that apart from getting in a reference to GOLGAFRINCHAM his talk can be wrapped up in his final tips:
Make it easier for people to be good
Ask more questions
Expand your thinking/role/business
Help good companies grow, help bad ones change
Accept contradictions, learn, move on
Be good to your mother
Here are some interesting links from his talk:
www.janchipchase.com
www.core77.com
www.designcanchange.org
Unfortunately, the NMK discussion left me a little disappointed, though I must remember to use the quote “design has never been a profession where you have to wait for permission”… Crab had an interesting point about what happens to digital designers in a world where non-design or utalitarian design (eg. MySpace) is the norm… do we become the designers of the systems to allow people to publish rather than the publishers ourselves?
Unfortunately it relly wasn’t the environment for a real debate or discussion about this (I see Crab’s point but have a lot that I wanted to add in favour of doing both) as the audience consisted mainly of traditional designers who were struggling to get digital in the first place – and I had to agree with Crab here that they just need to get on with it or miss the boat – you don’t solve anything with inertia…
She Says Mark 2 was a great success… you can read more about it on our MySpace page, but we had about 35 women there for almost 3 hours of informative discussion and informal chat…
We called the meeting ‘BECAUSE YOU’RE WORTH IT’ as it was about how to take your career further and get what you want in terms of professional development.
The speakers were:
» Laura Ormerod – Creative Services Consultant – at Propel
» Tina Brazil – People Director at Profero
» Emma Witkowski from AKQA
» Rhiannon James – Graduating Creatives Manager at D&AD
Tina and Laura spoke about: ‘How to choose an agency that is going to help with your professional development’ and ‘how to handle work reviews and get the most of out them’.
Rhiannon spoke about women in the industry and how find the right agency for you and engage with them – as well as a little about D&AD itself.
Finally, Emma covered ‘Switching between disciplines inside an agency’
Tina’s talk in aprticular garnered a lot of interest! Our next event will be (hopefullly) at glue, on the 30st or 31st May.
Reichstag…
Parliament’s collection in the Reichstag is absolutely mindblowing… Jenny Holzer, Anselm Keifer and more… Here are some examples of the work – the greatest of which is the building itself, as transformed by Norman Foster for the opening in the late 90s.
Standing solitary, this is an original piece of the old tunnel connecting the Reichstag with the buildings next door – there is a conspiracy theory (with quite a lot of weight) that Göring went through the tunnel to set fire to the building in 1933, blaming the Communists and leaving the way open for a Nazi political victory a couple of days later. 
hello to sean and claire!!
Berlinertastic!!! Met up with Sean and Claire in Berlin, where they took me to a huge dancehall come pizza parlour/bar… It was swing night and we were surrounded by about 60 people in a sweaty dancing frenzy: from 18 to 80 everyone was cutting their moves on the dancefloor… They sold an artwork of there’s a few days later and took me out for brunch at Gorki Park – an amazing Russian Cafe… read all about it here and here.
