One of the side-effects of putting out this blog has been the people I've met.Take Len Weinreich, whilst trying to find Paul Leeves work for an upcoming podcast, I came across Len, it turns out he lives down the road from me.Alan Parker had referred to him as 'the bloke who taught me everything I know about advertising', Dave Trott said he gave him the best piece of advice on advertising he ever got and Paul Leeves simply said he was 'very, very clever'.Len had set up two agencies; sixties hot-shop Alders Marchant Weinreich and Burkitt Weinreich Bryant in the eighties.It turned out that not only did Len have the ads I was looking for, he also had the ads I wasn't looking for.He explained that, like most creatives in the sixties he used to cut out and pin-up his favourite ads, he then reached for a giant envelope and there they all were. After a bit of negotiation, he reluctantly let me take them home to scan.Looking these ads, with their little pin-holes in each corner, that had been carefully stored over the years got me thinking. There used to be a more public appreciation of advertising. I'm not talking about awards, I'm talking about people actually liking and admiring the creativity that went into advertising. I visited virtually every agency in London in the eighties, in the hope of escaping the one I was in at the time, and I'd assess each one the minute I stepped through their doors; their output covered every inch of the walls, whether it'd won awards or not, it was who they were and they were proud. It's hard to find an agencies output today, it's certainly not on their walls, sometimes it's not even on their site. When I'd arrive at the creatives office back then I'd be presented with a wall covered with a mixture of work they were proud of and work they admired. It was like looking into someone's wardrobe or Spotify playlists, it gave you a little insight into their personality. The work they'd pinned but not created was viewed with a mix of admiration and envy, it may even irritate them into working late that night to try reach those heights. Unfortunately, creatives no longer have corkboards, because they don't have office walls to screw them to, so it's tougher to get a snap shot of who they are and what they aspire to. This is what Len Weinreich aspired to in the sixties and beyond.Here are the bits I found interesting in this batch:a) A John Webster press ad; 'Churchill' for The Telegraph.b) An ad for PKL welcoming DDB to London, 1965, I think?c) I'd forgotten how enormous broadsheets used to be, each need to be done in four quarters on an A3 scanner, look at the size of the name of the paper on David Abbott's '29th Oct' ad for Volvo, tiny, but probably the same size as it'd be printed today.It makes you realise just how powerful that or the ads around them would've been.d) Boy, newspaper printing was bad back then, take the ad above, it looks like a potato print.e) The earliest ad from Len's corkboard is probably the PKL one, about 1964, the latest is probably John Hegarty's Newsweek ad; 'The History of the word in weekly parts', 1983.They don't look twenty years apart.I wonder whether ads saved to a creative's desktop today be as similar to those from a creative's wall in 1998?It's tempting to say no, because the business is so radically different, but I suspect the answer would probably be yes, the reason it'd be saved would be the same; the words and pictures created a smile in the mind.
Thanks for hanging onto them Len.
“In this, one of the most epic of Adam’s landscapes, humanity is signalled by a field of scattered crosses in the near foreground.The settlement itself makes an irregular diminishing rhythm from left to right, in contrast to the flowing horizontals of the mountain range and the swift, painterly markings in the sky.The whole of this musicality is related to the imperceptible slowness of the moon rising.” - Ian Jeffrey.I don’t know whether I agree with that, but it’s very nice. It’s called ‘Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico’, and it’s by Ansel Adams, probably his most famous picture. Adams is widely regarded as THE landscape photographer. Legend has it that the picture above was taken at the end of a very frustrating day, he’s been trying to capture the beauty of the US landscape for the Department of the Interior, but it’d in failed exposures and missed opportunities. Then he spotted the scene, not a problem today, just whip out your iPhone and bingo! (Or, if you’re on Facebook, stick your face in front of that moon, pull a funny face, then bingo). But in 1941 it wasn’t that easy. For a start, his camera was the size of a small suitcase, every shot required loading a separate sheet of film, but by far the most tricky element was the maths. Adams had perfected a new style of broad, sharp, long-exposure landscape photography. Assessing the light to time to aperture ratio was crucial to this style of photography, so a light meter was vital. But once he’d screeched his car to a halt, set up his suitcase-sized camera he couldn’t find his flippin’ light meter. The sun’s going down fast, the light’s changing, it was already going to be a challenge, now it’s an impossibility. But Adams knew his stuff, so he thought he’d give it a go. He knew that the moon threw off approximately 250 c/ft2 of luminescence, so working with this figure, he calculated that a shot such as this would require a one-second exposure and an aperture setting of f/32. Not convinced he’d got it, he started loading up more film, but by the time he’d finished the sun and the moment had vanished. The detail, composition and technical brilliance of the shot influenced a generation of landscape photographers.Without the technique there would be no picture.John Margolies wasn’t great technically.To me, his images often look too dark, there’s no discernible composition, some look wonky, not cool, deliberately angled, just not lined up properly.They look like just recorded what happened to be in front of him.The things he chose to record were the things that his parents wouldn’t let him study as a kid. Whilst on family road trips he’d see these odd, quirky bits of American commercialism and would ask to stop and look, only to be turned down, “My parents’ generation thought it was the ugliest stuff in the world, I liked places where everything was screaming for attention: ‘Look at me. Look at me.’”So when he grew up he’d rent Cadillacs and head for the flyover States, often for as much as eight weeks at a time.When he wasn’t in a Cadillac he was the editor at Architectural Record, but his views of what was or wasn’t of value didn’t always go down well with the establishment “they think Toronto’s City Hall is important, but not those wonderful gnome’s-castle gas stations in Toronto.”When he put on a show of his pictures in 1970, they were appalled at his cheap 35mm images of the crass commercialism of America. Where’s the technique?As much as I admire Ansel Adams’ technically perfect pictures of mountains, I can only look at a handful before I start wondering who the next Arsenal manager might be or what Donald Trump has been up to, whereas I can spend at all day looking at cafes in Utah shaped like Guppy.They’re just more human.
Nb. Postcards sold by Margolies.
A few months after setting up Campbell Doyle Dye a publisher came in for a chemistry meeting.Before we'd set up I'd been at AMV/BBDO, The Economist was one of the clients I looked after, so I was excited to share the work Sean and I had produced as it was not only relevant, it was arguably the best campaign for a publisher ever?"Did you do those here?""Er...well, no, that was at our last agency, Abbott Mead Vickers"."Oh?""We've only just started, but we wrote, art directed and creative directed them all, so...y'know.""I see, could I see some work you've created here?""What...in this building?"We didn't make the pitch list.This question would be asked again and again throughout our first year.I was conscious of this when I started DHM.I tried to generate work created in 32 Southampton Street as quick as possible.Consequently, anyone walking past our front door were offered free creative work. I've always been an easy touch for empty-pocketed types needing something creative.I can't help it, people generally seem nice, (as they do when they need something for nothing), and I'm optimistic, so the minute people start talking about their problem, I start thinking, I begin scribbling and before you know it I'm phoning others to let them in this glorious opportunity to work for absolutely nothing at all.So it wasn't a problem when, just after opening our doors, we got a call from a client saying 'We don't have much money, but we'd love to talk to you about our product?'. My new partners and I schlepped up to Birmingham to get briefed. We arrived to find an enormous building, ch-ching! Maybe we have different ideas on what constitutes 'not much money'?Once inside, the receptionist seemed to have trouble finding the names we'd been given.Eventually, we were introduced to two people sitting at a work bench in the warehouse.Maybe they'd come down from the management floor to deal with a stock issue?Nope, we were looking at the whole company; Andrew, Hayley and the wooden work bench.Flip! We'd spent £500 train tickets and burned three full partners days to talk to a company that was smaller than ours.Although you couldn't doubt their honesty, they didn't have much money.We tried to hide our feelings as we were taken through the ins and outs of the world of dried fruit.I made notes.
By the end of it we were won over, they were both thoroughly decent and incredibly charming.Hayley in particular, she seemed obsessed with fruit, where it's from, when it's best, she talked about 'chasing the sun throughout the year' to get the best, ripest fruit.How could we not help this lovely husband wife team?Besides, we had some capacity, (as people call it when they're not busy).'Do you have any money...for our time?''No.'Jeez! Technically, that's even less than 'not much'.'We could send you some fruit? Maybe if you just tell us what you think of our pack and name...and anything you think would help?'Sod it! We agreed and gave an address to send the fruit to.
THE NAME: Terrible. The fruit wasn't 'urban' or 'fresh'. Only one of the three words was true.THE PACKS: Terrible. Bland, cheap-looking and they carried the lie 'Urban Fresh Fruit'.A shame, because it was a very high quality product, it just didn't come across.Hayley laughed and politely thanked us for our insults.She said we wouldn't be able to address those issues until the next packaging print run, about three months.A few days later, a bundle of dried pineapple turned up, it was the size of a small child.In our next meeting Hayley told us the one thing that was really driving her nuts; supermarket's wouldn't put her products in the snacks aisle, they insisted on putting them with the baking ingredients, (ironically, next to the nuts).She felt it was a healthy snack, so wanted it to be in the confectionary aisle, near the competition; chocolate, crisps and the like.Everyone looked blank as we all tried to think how the hell we could change that?Maybe we print something on the trays in-store?It's the only 'media' we had.I wrote a bunch of messages pointing out that either these trays contained snacks or were in the wrong aisle.Things like 'Not chocolate','Snack not ingredient', 'Delicious at 9.07pm' or simply 'In wrong aisle', these were in printed in the brightest neon inks across the fronts.(I guess they'd call this disruption at TBWA.)
Within a couple of months they were moved to the snacks aisle.I can't remember how much of this was down to the trays and how much was down to Hayley's ongoing campaign, but they certainly helped.Next, Hayley had an idea; 'Could you write a manifesto, to give us a bit of a personality?''Sure, do you have any money yet...for our time?''No. We could send you some more pineapple?'Er...ok.So, what are Urban Fresh Fruit about?I couldn't really get past the fact that Hayley was so into fruit, she seemed so obsessed, charmingly so.I remembered a thought I'd had whilst pitching for Innocent.
Maybe we could print them as posters and send them out as shops or get people to put them up in-store?I enlisted our brand new team, David and Phoebe, to come up with more ideas for favourite fruit things.If we wanted to get people to put it up in-store we'd have to make it look more attractive, more visual some-how.Maybe I could mix in little pictures with the words, like that old Heineken poster?But more home-made.Not corporate.
Hayley and Andrew loved it.I asked if they could raise a bit of cash to get a decent illustrator involved.They said they could.I asked if they had any money for our time yet?'No. We could send you some more pineapple?'Another baby-sized batch of dried pineapple arrived in Covent Garden.
We printed a lot of them.They were sent out to supermarkets, corner stores and head offices.It became the 'warmth and personality' of the new stand at trade shows and festivals.Hayley even sold the posters at both, for £5 a pop.
The visual style, wording and phrases used on the new pack design.
The next phase was actual, paid for media!Cool, should be fun.'Do you have any money yet...for our time?''No. We could send you some more pineapple?'Ok.Right, how do we make these things come over as a healthy alternative to chocolate and crisps?It's probably best to mention the opposition so that we can give them some context.Also, we need to make them really pop, oh, and look natural, keep that home-made, un-corporate vibe we had in the poster.
As time went on DHM started to pick up clients who actually paid, it was getting difficult to justify being paid in pineapple. Hayley said she loved our work and would love to find a way to continue working together.We talked about taking a small percentage in Urban Fresh Fruit as compensation for our time moving forward.The sticking point was whether 1% or 2% was fair, and also how much time would that buy going forward?It wasn't a stand off, Hayley and Andrew were in no rush to give away any equity and we were doing it simply to justify giving away so much time, not because we thought it would be worth much.We also had to justify to our accountants, very dyed-in-the-wool, buttoned-down types who were insistent that it's better for a businesses to be paid in actual money than fruit, old school.About a year to 18 months in, we reluctantly told Hayley and Andrew we were just too busy to keep working for fruit.We wished them well.I hadn't heard much from them since.I just came across this.
Flip!
My first office didn't have a computer on the desk.The key piece of kit Art Director's needed to operate in those days was a pen.The people who were best at drawing were generally the best at Art Directing.It probably seems like a weird coincidence now; what has drawing go to do with Art Directing?It wasn’t the drawing.Because they could draw they ended up in art colleges, the better they could draw the longer they got to hang around.The longer they hung around the more they’d be forced to learn about composition, colour and proportion, the more people they'd have to listen to people wang on about underlying ideas and the hidden meanings in the compositions.It probably sounds like hell?But after having this stuff beaten into you it’s impossible for it not to come out in your work.Take the photographer Andreas Feininger.Like most great photographers he has a link to Art, his was through his dad,Lyonel, the expressionist painter.But the biggest influence on his photos was the stuff that was beaten into him at college: Architecture.He studied it at the Bauhaus.Whilst there he got into photography, he got so into it that when he left he had two jobs; Architect and Photographer.He later moved to Paris to work in Le Corbusier's studio.In 1939, when war broke out, he fled to New York, working for the U.S. Office of War Information.The reason I go through all that background guff is that you can see his background in his images.They aren’t human, they’re clinical.He's not trying to capture emotion or a fleeting moment, he's documenting and organising.Whether he shot nature, machinery or anything in between, it’s if the elements have been arranged on one of those weird architects desks.With a sharp scalpel and ruler.1. NATURE."Things under our nose invariably look good when blown up really big."
2. SIGNAGE.“Experience has shown that the more fascinating the subject, the less observant the photographer.”
3. STREET.“Photographers — idiots, of which there are so many — say, “Oh, if only I had a Nikon or a Leica, I could make great photographs.” That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard in my life."
4. NEW YORK.''This world is full of things the eye doesn’t see.It’s nothing but a matter of seeing, and thinking, and interest.”
5. LANDSCAPE.“The first impression of a new subject is not necessary the best. Seen from a different angle or under different condition it might look even better. Always study a three – dimensional subject with one eye closed.”
6. ARCHITECHTURE.“Before you shoot an irresistible subject, mute all your senses except sight to find out how much is left for the camera to record.”
7. SCALE.“No one can do inspired work without genuine interest in his subject.''
8. AERIAL.“The more thoroughly a photographer explores his subject with the camera (i.e., the more pictures he makes), the more he sees and the better his chance of getting good results."
9. SHADDOWS.“Light is the photographic medium par excellence; it is to the photographer what words are to the writer; colour and paint to the painter; wood, metal, stone, or clay to the sculptor.”
10. TRAINS.“As an amateur you have an advantage over photographers – you can do as you wish… This should make amateurs the happiest of photographers.”
11. TECHNICAL.“Every successful photograph, except for lucky shots, begins with an idea and a plan. The more precisely a photographer knows what it is he wishes to do, the better the chances are that he will do it.”
12. PEOPLE LOOKING THROUGH THINGS.“A technically perfect photograph can be the world’s most boring picture.”
13. PEOPLE LOOKING AT THINGS.“No one can do inspired work without genuine interest in his subject and understanding of its characteristics.”
14. COLOUR.“What matters is not what you photograph, but why and how you photograph it. Even the most controversial subject, if depicted by a sensitive photographer with honesty, sympathy, and understanding, can be transformed into an emotionally rewarding experience.”
N.B. Here's a great documentary about Feininger.
I prefer this blog to be about stuff I like.To be positive, a refuge from the endless whingeing and complaining you find on every street corner of the web. But something caught my attention that got me thinking. I’ve often wondered how a business based on creating words and pictures came to be run by people more comfortable with numbers.Scroll back to the eighties and we’d find Sir Martin Sorrell and John Wren sitting in finance departments, whilst Maurice Levy sat in the I.T. department. I'm not knocking those departments, but they aren't at the core of what clients want from agencies.Usually, career paths are based on matching the strengths of the individual to needs of the business, so how they think is important. People's brains come in two very distinct flavours; left-brain, (facts and logic), or right-brain; (intuition and imagination).Is it good to have a few left-brainers in charge of millions of right-brainers? Think of it this way; remember that kid at school, the one who was top of the class at maths? Imagine them being put in charge of the English and Art kids. I think there would be issues. The maths kid is unlikely to understand why all the Art and English lot never seem to be working, appearing to just chat, moan and make wisecracks. As for listening to their endless opinions, theories and demands for extra time because ‘it just isn’t there yet', don't ask. The Art and English kids would also have issues. They’d resist the move to bring in process and order, complaining that you can't be precise when estimating how long it takes to have a good idea, or that it's hard to correctly score how much of someone's heart you've captured, how much you've touched them or made them think. It's tough to turn feelings into numbers, It’s why it's always made perfect sense to me that people above would be so much more excited about the arrival of digital, big data and all the associated businesses over advertising; it’s numbers, it's their playing field. (At one point, when I was working at one of Sir Martin's companies, advertising agency JWT, he declared 'We are no longer in advertising', like a mob boss telling people 'Today, we're a legit business, no more drugs, killing and prostitution'.) The problem is, the most important part of the communications business is the communicating. And if you want to communicate your message to people you’ve never met, the public, intuition and imagination are more useful than logic and facts. So I’ve often wondered what those left-brainers running things made of us right-brainers creating things.Having to listen to people double-down it being Dougal not Feargal to shoot the goddamn script, that 'cheeky' was a better description than 'awesome' or whether the thing even works now with all these bloody changes.I suspect it's painful to watch.All that pfaffing about over words and pictures - 'GET A LIFE!'This week a bit of evidence came out that backs up that theory."WPP isn’t just a matter of life or death, it was, is and will be more important than that." – Sir Martin Sorrell. It was based on this one: "Some people think football is a matter of life and death. I assure you, it's much more serious than that." - Bill Shankly.I don't highlight it to criticise him, what Sir Martin says or does is none of my business, but I do wonder whether it offers up an insight into what he values, or doesn't, in communication.If, in the unlikely event he'd popped into my office for advice, Id say:1. 'Don't use that quote, you've run a massive communications company for donkey's years FFS, it looks bad to nick someone else's quote, and it's famous!, let's come up with something original?'SIR MART: 'I like it.'2. 'Don't use that quote Mart, the structure doesn't fit you're message, it feels sellotaped together.'SIR MART: 'Not bothered.'3. 'Don't use that quote, you're coming off a bit tone-deaf Mart.Bill Shankly comes across as funny and self-deprecating, because it's ludicrous to suggest kicking around a bag of air is more important than life itself.You're coming across as self-regarding and pompous, you're saying your life’s work is more important than life itself.Not good.'SIR MART: 'Whatever!'4.'Mart! Mart! Mart! Well,You're killing me here! Well let's at least sort out the structure? The Shankly quote works because he buried the lead, we think he’s going to knock those foolish people who think kicking a football around is more important than life and death, only to make a left turn at the end saying ‘it’s more important’.SIR MART: 'Geek alert! Geek alert!'5. 'You don't want to change the structure either? If you're going to insist on using that bloody quote we have to fix the “it was, is and will be” bit, it's a car crash!SIR MART: 'But I want to thank ex-WPP-ers, I want to big up the current WPP-ers and imply that WPP won’t collapse once I've gone.''Finally! Well why not just say that then! Muppet?'No-one had more imaginative, intuitive communications professionals at hand to help him out, over 2000,000, but presumably it wasn't felt necessary, it's only a bunch of words?NB. I feel I should point out, in the spirit of full disclosure, that Sir Martin Sorrell has made £495m from the communications business. That is, and I checked my bank balance this morning to make sure I was factually accurate, more than me.
I find this whole Facebook situation really disappointing.Sometimes you just have to do the right thing, regardless of cost. I mean, how much money do they need?FACEBOOK: YOU HAVE A MARKET CAP OF $494bn, hire yourself a typographer!
I keep spotting my mate Dave, (a future podcast guest, when I can pin the fucker down), and at the bottom of the ads I'm reminded that overhanging punctuation hasn't hit Facebook yet.It got me thinking.Maybe someone else out there hasn't heard come across overhanging punctuation?What other typography basics have Facebook been deprived of?Who's passing this stuff on?So I thought I'd put down ten basic typography tips.Actually, tips is overselling them; basics.(I wonder whether Facebook's market Cap is still at $494.82Bn?)
Most graphic identities are a better representation of the people who created them than the companies that paid for them. Consequently they are very ‘of the moment’, because their creators want to look cool. The process will start with a quick trawl through the coolest sites, magazines and blogs, checking out what the cool kids are up to. Gradually, patterns emerge; certain colours, photography styles, fonts, etc. If you're in that process today, you’ll get something that’s very 2018. Great in 2018, less great in 2020, worse in 2022. Two or three years down the line someone’s going to say ‘our marketing is looking a bit tired, we need to refresh it’.You can refresh a point of view, but if there isn't one, if it's just whatever felt good a few years back, it's hard to refresh.If you stand for something you can interpret it a thousand ways, if you don't you can't. So the process will start again; a quick trawl through the coolest sites, magazines and blogs to check out what the cool kids are doing. Over time, the impression is that of a brand has no sense of self, a bit schizophrenic.Also, and probably worse, the most basic of marketing requirements is that people know who’s doing the marketing, so making it more difficult to recognise is unhelpful. Take Apple, they evolve their look and feel about once a decade, maybe a slightly different sans-serif will turn up, or maybe new logo treatment.They don't reinvent the wheel, they refine it.It means you always know Apple are talking to you.So when creating a personality for a brand, rather than looking out for what's hot, look into who it's for.Last year the good folks at Anomaly asked me to help out on a task like this for Virgin Trains. Some work had been done where the graphic identity was based on speed, lots of Virgin Train lines had been electrified, so were quicker, so it made sense.
The problem was, it was very ‘trainy’. whether they were quicker or not, lot’s of train companies talked about speed and therefore used the graphic language of speed. So there were two options a) Find a distinctive, Virgin Trains way of doing speed. b) Don’t do speed. So rather than base my thinking on the second word from the Virgin Trains logo, I began looking into the first. I was lucky, if it'd been Southeastern or Arriva Trains it might have been tough, but Virgin? They have an incredibly rich history.1: THE SHOP. In 1972 record shops were formal places, often selling radiograms and other electrical devices.Virgin offered listeners free vegetarian food and bean bags.
Unfortunately I seem to keep writing the same intros to these interviews; 'Wow! I knew Person X was good, that's why I wanted to interview them, but having gone through their archives I'd forgotten just how much great they'd done'.But never has this been more true.Today, in the ad world, Paul is best known as the director of the Walker's Crisps ads featuring Gary Lineaker. (He's shot about 150 of them over the last 20 years.)It's probably the longest running tv campaign in Britain and possibly the best known ad campaign amongst the British public.There are obviously plenty of upsides to this, the downside is that it can mask everything else he's done.I did consider trying to put all of them together on one reel, but then decided the work would be too weighted towards Walkers, So I've only included a handful.We had a great chat, I hope you enjoy it.[audio src="https://davedye.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Paul-WeilandFinal.mp3"][/audio](I couldn't find a scrap of work from Paul's time at either HORNIBLOW FREEMAN & COX or ROYDS.)BBDO. (Writer)
COLLETT DICKENSON PEARCE. (Writer)
A spoof of the above ad by the Not The Nine O' Clock News guys.
THE ALAN PARKER FILM COMPANY&THE PAUL WEILAND FILM COMPANY.(Director)
Hamlet Cigars.
British Telecom.
Bamboo Steamers.
Knirpps Umbrellas.
Heineken.
The Guardian.
G.L.C.
Schweppes.
Levi's.
Holsten Pils.
Fosters.
Comic Relief.
McEwans.
Walkers Poppadoms.
Walkers Crisps.
FEATURE FILMS:'Leonard Part 6'.
'City Slickers 2'.
'Roseanna's Grave'.
'Sixty Six'.
'Made Of Honour'.
Words.
Boy, they’ve really fallen off their perch.
They used to be so respected, as were the people who knew how to use them.
They could breathe life into cold, dead facts, in their hands ‘our beer costs a lot’ could become ‘Reassuringly expensive’.
Better and shorter.
Writers would often burn the midnight oil in an effort to get the maximum meaning from the minimum word count.
It’s odd, because people have never read more than they do today, Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Google, emails, texts, not to forget books, magazines and the odd newspaper.
In fact today, there’s no part of the communication process that doesn’t rely on words, including the deck that explains the communication process.
But for some reason, the skill of using them effectively is no longer being taught or even valued.
Tim Riley has been choosing his words carefully for three decades now, we had a great chat about his time using them at some the best agencies in London.
Hope you enjoy it.
Leagas Delaney.
Simons Palmer Denton Clemmow & Johnson.
BBH.
AMV.
Context.It's the word that comes to mind every time I think about writing one of these intros.What seems familiar today was once considered very left-field, risky or just plain crazy.Each pushes the peanut along for the next generation.Take the 1988 D&AD Annual, it’s hard to believe now, but all but one ad in the press and poster section had black headlines, the one that didn't was Graham Fink’s Metropolitan Police campaign.I was a generation behind Graham, so watched from afar as he and his writer Jeremy Clarke tried to push the peanut forward. They made ads taking the piss out of other ads, (Hamlet), they got England's Cricket Captain to stick two fingers up to the establishment after being arrested for smoking dope, (Hamlet again), and they were the first to blow a million pounds on the production of a single tv ad, (B.A.).I had a great chat with ‘Finky’, hope you enjoy it.
COLLETT DICKENSON PEARCE.
The Horry incident:
WIGHT COLLINS RUTHERFORD SCOTT.
SAATCHI & SAATCHI.
PART 2: 'THE JEZZA-LESS YEARS' WILL FOLLOW SHORTLY.
Taking good portraits isn’t as easy as it looks.The instant a camera appears people change, they stop being themselves and attempt to become someone else.Sucking in cheeks, arching an eyebrow or tilting their head to the preferred angle. Take a look at the profile pictures on Facebook, they look like they were taken a split second after someone popped a balloon behind them, or they've just spotted a long-lost friend from Junior School, surprise seems to be 'in' at the moment.The one thing they don't look like is those people in the flesh.A friend of mine recently took a picture of Giorgio Armani, before the shoot he was given the ‘Armani angle’, the one and only angle that he was allowed to shoot. The skill of a portrait photographer is to talk them down from this ledge and to just be themselves. Richard Avedon, one of the best portrait photographers ever, would sometimes ask his sitters this question a second before clicking the shutter; ‘what scares you?’. They would stop posing and start thinking. I can’t guarantee you that he used that technique on this bunch, but when you look at the expressions it's possible.
Unfortunately that technique isn’t very helpful when shooting album covers, record companies rarely want their artists looking like they’re mulling over the effects of a nuclear holocaust or pondering being caught up in a terrorist attack.Generally they want their artists to look authentic and cool.A portrait is a collaboration between the person in front of the camera and the one behind it.The key piece of equipment on this kind of job is as likely to be a bottle of Jack Daniels or a copy of The Beatles ‘White Album’ as it is a particular lens or a ring flash.Mood is everything.I don't know any photographer who make their subjects look cooler and more relaxed than Norman Seeff.I don’t know what he does, maybe he’s just a ‘great hang’, (as the kids say), but the people in the pictures look like there's nowhere in the world they'd rather be.His album covers capture people being the best version of themselves, whatever the mood.1. ECSTASY.
2. A PARTY MOOD.
3. A FUN MOOD.
4. A CHILLED MOOD.
5. A REFLECTIVE MOOD.
6. A SERENE MOOD.
7. A SERIOUS MOOD.
8. THE ‘YOU LOOKIN’ AT ME?’ MOOD.
Here's a few outtakes that give a sense of the relaxed vibe Norman creates in the studio.
Whilst putting together this post I noticed two things about Seeff’s albums:1.An incredible amount of them have hand written titles, my guess is that the art director is reflecting the humanity in the pictures. (Some seem to have an identical, idiosyncratic elongated style that I would imagine is Seeff’s hand.
2.An incredible amount of the albums featured another, even more relaxed portrait of the artist on the back, again I can only guess that the art director, when going through the contact sheets have found images they thought were too good to waste.
IMPORTANT: Norm, if you’re reading this; can we have a chat about how you do what you do for this blog? Also, if I ever release an album would you mind shooting the cover?
Nb. Norman has shot literally thousands of album covers, I couldn’t resist showing a few more.
Full disclosure; it's actually the 113th.But I noticed that when blogs or podcasts hit a significant number they do a kind of round-up, like a kind of house-keeping thing, so here’s mine.
10 THINGS I'VE LEARNT ABOUT BLOGGING.1. BLOGS HAVE A LIFE OF THEIR OWN. MAY 2002: My friend Paul buys me davedye.com. OCT 2013: I decide to bung all my old work on it, for easy access.NOV 2013: It’s a bit chaotic. Having presented the work in various creds meetings, I figure I may as well write down what happened with each campaign, the brief, the changes, etc.FEB 2014: I wonder why there isn’t there any of Tom McElligott’s work on the net? I write a post on him to introduce him to people who may not know him.(The first of 8 ‘Hands Up Who’s Heard Of’ posts.)MARCH 2014: Damn! It seems I didn’t give Pat Burnham enough credit in the Tom McElligott post, how can I make amends? Interview him!(The first of 35 interviews.)SEPT 2016: It takes me 10 hours to transcribe an interview I’d recorded with Joe Sedelmaier, Joe’s answers are great, but it doesn’t feel as accurate as hearing him laugh, swear or curse. Maybe I should’ve just put out the recording.JAN 2017: I put out first podcast; Tom McElligott.(18 podcasts recorded to date, 8 yet to be posted.)2. POSTS CAN HAVE UNEXPECTED CONSEQUENCES. A few months after I did the post on Tom McElligott, Bob Barrie sent me this:
They're part of the tools you get with Wordpress, they help you see a post is performing globally, the problem is, if you're a curious type like me, they get you thinking: Not much colour in Russia, how do I reach more Russians? How do I make Asia more orange? Why are the coloured areas primarily English-speaking countries when Google could translate it for the others at a flick of a button? After a while the curiosity will fades when it dawns on you that you didn't start blogging to make friends in the Ukraine and have no idea how to reach them anyway.4. PEOPLE PREFER TEXTING, EMAILING, DIRECT MESSAGING, PHONE-CALLING, VIRTUALLY ANYTHING TO ‘COMMENTING’. My blog is hosted by Wordpress and shared with Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, Google+ and Tumblr, each have their own comments section. Some are posted there, but most are posted via phone, email or whatever. It's a shame they can't be aggregated and viewed by everyone in one place, because most of them really add something to the post, particularly those on individuals, the interviews and podcasts. I was going to attach a recent favourite comment* to this bit, so I searched through 'Mark Reddy: Podcast' on Facebook, Wordpress, Twitter and LinkedIn, as if to prove the point perfectly; I couldn't find it.(*It was something like 'Mark speaks so softly, it's as if he's near a sleeping child, traumatised child'.)5. NUMBERS ARE HARD TO PREDICT. Posts that take an hour can get three times the views of those that take months. A perfect example are the two Tom McElligott posts.a) 'Hands Up Who's Heard Of Tom McElligott?'. Essentially a bunch of scans and screen grabs plus a bit of text by me, I probably spent five hours on it. (https://davedye.com/2014/02/07/hands-up-whos-heard-of-tom-mcelligott/)b) 'PODCAST: Tom McElligott'. After the first post a lot of Tom's old creative department emailed to say thanks. Many asked whether I knew where Tom was.After leaving Fallon's with alcohol issues, he spent less than a year running Chiat Day New York, then set up McElligott Wright Morrison White, only to close it two years later. Not only had he not been heard from him since, no-one knew where he was. As I started doing more interviews I thought it would be great to interview Tom, so I began making calls and emailing. 'He was last spotted in Hawaii', 'I think he works at Minneassota Art College', 'Isn't he in New York?'. All leads eventually dried up. Cut to two years later: I get an email from a young creative asking for a book crit, (he said his Dad told him to ask me). When he turned up I noticed two things: he was American and his surname was 'Hanson'; ‘You’re not Dean Hanson’s son are you?’. He was. I told him his Dad had done some great work and some of it was on a blog about his old boss I’d posted. He said he'd seen it. 'Your Dad’s not in touch with Tom is he?’.‘No.’ Of course not. Another dead-end. Damn! That’s that then.Cut to three months later: I get an email ‘My Dad said try this number’. I didn’t know what he meant as the email said no more than that. A few days later, before I’d had a chance to phone this long shot, Pat Fallon died. I put off phoning the number, on the off-chance that it was Tom's, I thought it'd look like my call was linked to Pat Fallon's death, like I’ve just remembered him after the death of his old partner.I wrote the phone number in a notebook and put it to one side.A few months later I remembered it. I dialed the number, the fact that he’d disappeared, had a drink issue and didn’t seem to want to talk to anyone anymore made me apprehensive. No answer. I tried intermittently over the next month or so, nothing. I had another go: ‘Hello?’. Rather than being the angry, miserable aggressive guy I feared might answer the phone, he couldn’t have been friendlier and more cheery, he seemed to me like the Jimmy Stewart’s character* in ‘It’s A Wonderful Life’.(*If you’ve seen the film, I’m talking about the Jimmy Stewart at the beginning or end, not the one in the middle). After a series of calls and emails Tom agreed to be interviewed. He wasn’t being difficult, he just didn’t know what a blog or podcast was. Sometimes I wouldn't get a response to an email, the following week Tom would say ‘Oh, sorry, I didn’t look at my computer last week’. Eventually a date to record was agreed.I turned up at Wave, dialed him in, his wife apologetically informed us he was still at the dentists. We rescheduled. Finally, we recorded, 2 hours and 45 minutes.He couldn’t have been lovelier, more candid or happier; 'Ask me what you want, I haven’t spoken to anyone in the last 25 years, I don’t plan on speaking to anyone in the next 25'.It's difficult to estimate the hours it took to get there, if I said it took five times as long as the previous post I'd be massively underestimating, but if I said it took more I'd start questioning what I'm doing with my life.[audio m4a="https://davedye.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/dave-dye-a-conversation-with-tom-mcelligott-with-intro-090117-export.m4a"][/audio]So, here are the numbers for each:
The first one got about 38,000 views when it was posted in 2014, the majority in the first month.The second has got roughly 2,800 views to this point, 9 months into 2017. (Weirdly, the first one has been viewed more in the last six months than the podcast; 4,300 views.)Why are the first numbers are so high and the second's numbers so low?I get to the same place as I do with the maps; I'm interested in the numbers but not driven by them, I'm driven by curiosity, I got to ask Tom McElligott every question I could think of for nearly three hours.5. HUMOUR DOESN’T ALWAYS TRAVEL WELL. I don't know whether it's a British thing, an irony thing or a me thing, but often the intent doesn't transfer.Eg 1: I asked DDB legend Len Sirowitz was ‘who's your favourite Len; Bruce, Bernstien or Fairclough?’ ‘I'll ignore that’ he said.Eg 2: I found a picture of Gerry Graf standing next to a very old guy and couldn’t resist putting the pink spot on the guy next to Gerry.
So far four people have told me that they were surprised how old Gerry was, ‘especially given that his work is so fresh’.Eg 3: Researching Dave Trott I found out that the first ad he got into D&AD was credited like this:
I couldn't help title the post 'David Troff Interview'. A lot of people shared the post on Twitter, attached were messages like 'Check out some cool work by British Creative David Troff'.6. NEVER PUT OUT A PODCAST OUT WITHOUT EDITING. It sounded like such a good idea. a) You put out a real, warts 'n' all genuine conversation. b) You don't have to listen to yourself wang on for three hours and worry about how you sound. c) You save time. Three minutes of dead air in the Peter Souter episode changed my views. (We went for a pee.) There's another benefit to editing, it's allowed me to capture and weed various slips of the tongue; someone slagging off their current boss, another criticising their friend, one even said 'advertising isn't as good as it used to be', nobody wants to go on the record saying that out loud, so he asked for that to be taken out. (After a while spent wrestling with RSS feeds, the podcasts are finally up on iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/stuff-from-the-loft-creativity/id1265125334?mt=2)
7. SCRATCH YOUR ITCHES.A lot of posts start with Google searches, I’ll look for a particular reference and won’t be able to find it, along the way I’ll discover there’s barely any work of Tom McElligott’s, Alan David Tu, Howard Zieff, Jeff Stark’s or whoever. Irritated at this slap in the face for creative people who should be better known, I’ll try to change that situation with a blog post. I remember Lester Bookbinder being the most stylish photographer from my early days in the business.He was the kind of photographer I could never have worked with at the time, he was crazily expensive and super picky about who and what he worked on.A Sarson's Vinegar layout from a 23 year old art director at Cromer Titterton was never going to break through that wall. He was truly world-class, just below Irving Penn, (like everyone else).He was one of the busiest, most admired photographers from the fifties to the nineties, working for agencies and magazines across globe. He must’ve shot tens of thousands of images over those fifty years, less than a dozen images would show up on Google. That just doesn't seem right. It’s a bit like finding out that Tarrantino shot a film between 'Reservoir Dogs' and 'Pulp Fiction' that didn't get released or that Lennon & McCartney recorded a bunch of demos in the spring of ’79 that have just been sitting on a shelf for years. You'd have to look for the bootlegs, wouldn't yo? Personally, they are itches I'd have to scratch. Lester Bookbinder's lost work was another itch. Searching for Lester's work lead me from tiny black and white picture of a Management Today cover in a 1968 D&AD Annual to Haymarket's archives in Twickenham in the hope I'd find and scan a few covers that may not have been seen.I discovered and scanned 45 magnificent covers, here's one of my favourites.
8. DON'T TRY TO PREDICT PEOPLE'S ANSWERS.Here's my favourite, Brian Griffin's unpredictable answer to my totally predictable question:
9. BE FRIENDS WITH THE PEOPLE WHO OWN THE BEST SOUND STUDIO AROUND.Obviously it's a big ask, but it really helps.So thanks again Parv, Wazza, Harry, Aaron, Jenn, Rebecca and the good folks at Wave.(http://www.wavestudios.co.uk/)
10. NEVER MAKE A TOP 9, IT SOUNDS SILLY.While I've got you, you don't have Charles Saatchi's email address do you?
The Wieden years.It’s weird, I only interview people whose work I really like, but whenever I lay their work out end-to-end, I’m always surprised at how much better it is than I'd remembered.It could be that there's much more of it, the sheer consistency of it or that it appears better with the benefit of time and a bit of distance.All three are true of the work in this post.Tony does a good job of shining a light onto how they produced it, hope you enjoy it.
VISIT WALES.
NIKE. (RUN LONDON).
HONDA.
YAKKULT.
NOKIA.
AIWA.
CRAVENDALE.
FISK.
KAISER CHIEFS.
NIKE.
THE GUARDIAN.
SKYR.
LURPAK.
FINNISH.
THREE.
CHAMBOURD.
TK MAXX.
SAINSBURY'S.
Obviously there’s more Fred & Fabien, but probably the most interesting things in there are the bits of old typesetting I rescued from the Leagas Delaney bin.The studio was going all digital, so PMT machines, drawing desks, wax machines, art-workers a and bits of old setting were dumped.I managed to save a few bits of setting, if you eat a lot of carrots and have 20/20 vision you'll be able to spot a few cut marks between some of the characters.
The arc of most creative agencies tends to be very similar; start idealistic and creative, become less principled and duller over the years as the realities of finance, earn-outs and fatigue start to kick in.Adam & Eve are like the Benjamin Button of ad agencies.They started burdened by the financial realities due to a situation called 'Sorrell'.Having come through the early sensible years they seem to grow more creative as each year goes by.They won no creative awards in their first year, they've won more than anyone else last year, they're currently top of the Gunn Report, their 10th year.Ben Priest has overseen their creative journey.We had a great, very candid chat, hope you enjoy it.[audio src="https://davedye.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Ben-Priest.mp3"][/audio]
SIMONS PALMER DENTON CLEMMOW & JOHNSON.
COLLETT DICKENSON PEARCE.
LOWE HOWARD-SPINK.Olympus Cameras.
Reebok.
Vauxhall.
TBWA.Thomas Cook.
Playstation.
RAINEY KELLY CAMPBELL ROALFE/Y&R.Virgin Atlantic.
ADAM & EVE/DDB.John Lewis.
Harvey Nicholls.
Marmite.
Skittles.
H&M.
When I write these posts I sometimes forget that not everyone reading them was working in advertising or design 20 years ago.After the last post a lot of people asked me what the hell I meant when I said that the green book shouldn’t be called ‘Type’, it would be more appropriate to name it ‘The Fred & Fabien Files’.It was a joke, so much of the work in that typography scrapbook was from the same two guys.FRED WOODWARD was the art director or Rolling Stone; One of the cleverest, most playful art directors ever. The way linked the typography and imagery was revolutionary at the time.FABIEN BARON was the art director of Vogue Italia, Interview Magazine and Harper’s Bazaar; Probably the most stylish magazine art director of the last fifty years.Both influenced everyone in the business back then, their influence can still be seen today, I’ll probably do a post on each at some point.Anyway, more ‘Fred & Fabien Files’, enjoy.
Amongst the 100 top selling albums last year were 8 dead singers, (Elvis Presley, Bob Marley, Roy Orbison, Amy Winehouse, and David Bowie, Prince, Michael Jackson, Leonard Cohen), 5 dead bands, (The Beatles, Bon Jovi, Abba, Queen, Oasis), and 19 greatest hits albums of music recorded in the last century.
It wasn’t always this way.
The introduction of the Compact Disc changed music buying habits from only buying the latest release to buying music from any point in history.
Video and DVD did the same thing for film.
The internet did it for virtually everything else.
The reason I drag you through this history lesson is to try to explain that there was a time when people didn’t have the ability and consequently the interest to look at back catalogues.
So, in 1988, when a super-hot director, showed me his prized u-matic commercials shot before I was even born, it was weird.
But they were magical.
The Director, Nick Lewin, laughed his way through the reel, a reel he’d presumably seen hundreds of times.
The Director of these old ads was called by Howard Zieff, and when you look at them again here it’s easy to see why.
It’s the sheer humanity.
And humanity never goes out of fashion.
Here’s what I know about Mr Zieff.
He was born Howard B. Zieff in Chicago in 1927, (October 21st.)
He then grew up in East Los Angeles, the Boyle Heights section, where his stepfather ran a club where neighborhood men played cards.
He attended the Los Angeles Art Centre.
He was enlisted into the Navy in 1946, pretty soon he became a staff artist on the Navy News, before being sent to Navy Photographic School.
Navy Motion Picture School was next where he shot his first film was ‘Day In The Life Of A Cadet’.
“I learnt the basics in the Navy; what a pan is, what a tilt is, how to strip a camera, how to print and develop film, I got an education if film opticals that was better than any photographer’s assistant could’ve ever had.
But aesthetics, the Navy weren’t interested in.”
When he left the Navy he decided to go back to The Los Angeles Art Centre to study photography, becoming a newsreel photographer for a tv station in Los Angeles upon leaving.
In the early fifties, Zieff moves to New York hoping to find work as a television director.
Out of work and knowing few people in a new city he spends every afternoon in local cinemas.
Running out of money, he takes a job as a photographer’s assistant for ‘a guy who put together Ford catalogues.’
When his boss refused to raise his $45 a week salary, he quits, investing his entire savings, $200, in a loft above the Belmore Cafeteria.
(GEEK-FACT: It can be seen as the cafeteria of choice by ‘Taxi Driver’ nut-job Travis Bickle.)
He starts shooting for local companies, specialising in people.
This leads to more prestigious advertising jobs
He starts long term relationships with magazines like Ladies Home Journal, McCall’s and Esquire.
He starts to get a reputation for shooting that most difficult of subjects; kids.
His New York Daily News campaign gains him tremendous recognition
By the time he’s 25, he’s making $100,000 a year and has his own studio employing 15 staff.
The Lipton campaign for Y&R offers him a chance to demonstrate his lighting and child wrangling skills.
By the late fifties he’s shooting for the best agency in the World; Doyle Dane Bernbach.
Campaign’s like Ohrbach’s allow him to cast the previously uncastables.
Another DDB NY ad for Len Sirowitz and the Better Vision Institute.
He began shooting for Polaroid in the late fifties.
A relationship that would last nearly two decades.
Spoof.
The most famous work of Zieff’s career has to be Levy’s.A radical idea, particularly fifty odd years ago, beautifully shot.
“I shot many photos for Levy’s that failed.
They weren’t the kinds of faces that gathered you up when you went on the subway.
That’s what I wanted, faces that gathered you up.
The Chinese guy worked in a restaurant near my Midtown Manhattan office.
I saw the Indian on the street, he was an engineer for the New York Central.
The kid we found in Harlem. They all had great faces, interesting faces, expressive faces.”
The campaign went ‘viral’ before the term viral, being referenced and spoofed across culture.
The Utica Club campaign allows Zieff to perfectly replicate the America his grandparents.
A Zieff Christmas card from the sixties.
In the late sixties Zieff moved in to the former Grolier Club at 29 East 32nd Street.
He shot many VW ads, primarily for the station wagon.
The Sony ads he shot for DDB, (yep, we’re still on DDB), are perfectly cast.
(Sony outtake.)
He starts directing, unusually for photographers turned directors, his moving stuff is even better than his non-moving stuff.
‘‘I never looked at them as a commercials, to me they were mini movies.’’
This meant he wouldn’t cast his ads ‘pretty’, ‘In those days everyone in tv ads were blond and perfectly proportioned; I didn’t want that.’
Instead he wanted real people in his castings, searching not just for a look but ‘a certain quality’ the actors had.
It was reflected on his sets too, he was like the anti-Norman Rockwell, demanding imperfection.
That could mean cigarette burns on a coffee table, the plug socket overloaded or a button on a shirt that had come loose, no detail was too small in his search for realism.
It has also been said that Zieff was the first commercials director to treat the actors like actors, to let them do their thing, not the usual cliches of the genre.
Bill Bernbach said ‘he casts like no-one else, he makes you believe it like no-one ’.
At the time he was feted as ‘The Fellini of commercials’ and ‘The master of the Mini-Ha-Ha’, it meant he was getting budgets of up to $100k in the 1960s.
He told New York Magazine at the time; ‘I will only produce a commercial that solves a problem for me – for my ego, or my aesthetic needs or if they’re fun.’
(I have to give a shout out to Vinny Warren and his crew for sourcing the bulk of these ads.)
In the early seventies he switched to movies.
They were all big name productions, but aside from ‘Private Benjamin’ and ‘The Dream Team’ not films I’m aware of.
(I may try one or two, possibly ‘Slither’ or ‘Hearts Of The West’, I’m probably not going to give ‘My Girl 2’ the benefit of the doubt.)
He passed away in 2009.
(Possibly the only grave stone with an ad carved into it?)
Nb.
I bet there were few takers for the 1966 National Library Week brief amongst DDB New York's creative department.Because the previous year Charlie Piccirillo had produced the definitive ad.It looks so simple and innocent.But try ignoring it.Or forgetting it.It's impossible.It makes you think about books and libraries in a new way, without big dramatic photos or imaginative colourful drawings, using only the very product it's promoting; the alphabet.Whilst interviewing a couple of guys from that sixties creative department I stumbled upon this and couldn't resist sharing it."One of my earliest assignments after being made an Art Director was a PSA ad for the Public Library. Full page, NY Times. Wow. How did this one get by my supervisor, Bill Taubin who seemed to glom all the plums? Probably because he also assigned me a ton of small space ads for EL AL that would run in the Tel Aviv News, where the ads would be translated into Hebrew. In any event it was a big opportunity for me and Monte Gherlter so we spent some long nights working on it.We finally came up with the idea of using the alphabet as the visual.abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzI set the line in 12 pt type and placed it in the middle of a full page of white space. Monte’s headline still holds the record of being the longest headline ever written in DDB history. However, it was brilliant: In your Public Library they have these arranged in ways that can make you cry, giggle, love, hate, wonder, ponder and understand. I sent the copy out for type (remember that) and in the morning did a rough paste up. I was so excited I decided to show the ad off to the art director next door, which just happened to beHelmut Krone. He took a long look, then he said, or rather growled, “Boring”. I was crushed. I spent the next 2 days and nights putting together a dozen new versions, using every imaginable alphabetical visual device from children’s blocks to a bowl of alphabet soup.Then the trouble was, I couldn’t make up my mind. So I called Nancy and asked if I could come up and see Mr. Bernbach. To my surprise Nancy said he was coming down to see Bob Gage and would stop by my office on the way. Bill come to my office? I called all my Art Director buddies to come take a look.When Bill came in I had all 10 versions pinned to my corkboard. He glanced around and looked as confused as I was. Then he said: “This is a really good idea Charlie, but boy did you screw it up”. Why don’t you just put down the alphabet in small type across the page as the visual. It would be much more powerful.” I said, Bill, that’s the way I started, but Helmut thought it was boring. Bill shook his head, and as he walked out he said, “Charlie I’m going to see Bob Gage now, and the first thing I’m going to tell him is to give you a raise, then I’m going to tell him change your office”. The Library ad won my first Gold Medal at the 1962 Art Directors Club Award Show.It’s still my most treasured."
