Feature 006: "When To Take My Name Off The Door"

Brace yourself people, this is another one long post from me.

I am 2/5 through the book '5 Giants of Advertising'. This other advertising giant is Leo Burnett. What I am about to share is something I picked off from a site. This is a speech made by Burnett during those last moments before he gave up on his operations due to health issues and old age.

A very inspiring speech titled, "When To Take My Name Off The Door".

"Somewhere along the line, after I’m finally off the premises, you – or your successors – may want to take my name off the premises, too.

You may want to call yourselves " Twain, Rogers, Sawyer and Finn, Inc."….. or "Ajax Advertising" or something.

That will certainly be OK with me – if it’s good for you.

But let me tell you when I might demand that you take my name off the door.

That will be the day when you spend more time trying to make money and less time making advertising – our kind of advertising.

When you forget that the sheer fun of ad making and the lift you get out of it – the creative climate of the place – should be as important as money to the very special breed of writers and artists and business professionals who compose this company of ours – and make it tick.

When you lose that restless feeling that nothing you do is ever quite good enough.

When you lose your itch to the job well for it’s sake – regardless of the client, or money, or the effort it takes.

When you lose your passion for thoroughness…you hatred of loose ends.

When you stop reaching the manner, the overtones, the marriage of words and pictures that produce the fresh, the memorable and the believable effect.

When you stop rededicating yourselves every day to the idea that better advertising is what the Leo Burnett Company is about.

When you are no longer what Thoreau called "a corporation with a conscience" – which means to me, a corporation of conscientious men and women.

When you begin to compromise your integrity – which has always been the heart’s blood – the very guts of this agency.

When you stoop to convenient expediency and rationalize yourselves into acts of opportunism – for the sake of a fast buck.

When you show the slightest sign of crudeness, inappropriateness or smart –aleckness – and you lose that subtle sense of the fitness of things.

When your main interest becomes a matter of size just to be big - rather that good, hard, wonderful work.

When your outlook narrows down to the number of windows – from zero to five – in the walls of your office.

When you lose your humility and become big-short wisenheimers…. a little bit too big for your boots.

When the apples come down to being just apples for eating (or for polishing) – no longer part of our tone or personality.

When you disprove of something, and start tearing the hell out of the man who did it rather than the work itself.

When you stop building on strong and vital ideas, and start a routine production line.

When you start believing that, in the interest of efficiency, a creative spirit and the urge to create can be delegated and administrated, and forget that they can only be nurtured, stimulated, and inspired.

When you start giving lip service to this being a "creative agency" and stop really being one.

Finally, when you lose your respect for the lonely man – the man at his typewriter or his drawing board or behind his camera or just scribbling notes with one of our big pencils – or working all night on a media plan. When you forget that the lonely man – and thank God for him – has made the agency we now have – possible. When you forget he’s the man who, because he is reaching harder, sometimes actually gets hold of for a moment - one of those hot, unreachable stars.

THAT, boys and girls, is when I shall insist you take my name off the door. And by golly, it will be taken off the door. Even if have to materialize long enough some night to rub it out myself - on every one of our floors. And before I DE-materialize again, I will paint out that star-reaching symbol too. And burn all the stationary. Perhaps tear up a few ads in passing.

And throw every god-damned apple down the elevator shafts.

You just won’t know the place, the next morning. You’ll have to find another name."

When will it be, before I find my own belief and total commitment in what I have chosen to do?

Feature 004: Maximum Minimalism Conference

Came back from the KL Design Week Maximum Minimalism Conference (MMC) a while ago. So very tired... but I have a feeling if I didn't blog about it now, I wouldn't find the desire to tomorrow. I went with Tze Yee to the conference. She was the only without sanity who would accompany me to something like this. Apparently, I managed to convince Kee Theng to go for the conference too. She came all the way from Penang and I met her during the MMC, it was so nice seeing a familiar face from home.

Supposedly, the MMC was one of the most expensive conference held during the KLDW. Luckily for us, Tze Yee knew someone who was working there and we managed to get a heavily discounted student price. We deliberated for a while, not sure if this would be worth it. And then I thought, what the heck, why not? This was the first time such an event was held in KL, it would be a valuable experience to be able to listen to all the invited designer speakers.

So we went! The overview of the MMC was that it was not as exciting or educational as I thought it would be. In fact, there were moments when I fell asleep during the speeches (was so darn tired from a late night, I only had two hours sleep prior to the conference, so cut me some slack!). But for what some of the designers shared and for the chance to see them in person, this trip was worth it. Not exactly great, but I am not regretting the decision either.

Do you know who David Carson is? No? Neither do I.

He was one of the main speakers during the event. To give you an idea on how important this dude was, I'll tell you that his name was the first listed among the speakers, his bio was the first printed on all booklets and there was another conference with him as the only speaker and you can only attend that conference with him by invitation. That's how big he was. Well, at least that was the idea I got.

But after the speaker got off the stage, the MC informed us that David Carson was ill and could not make the flight to KL. Everyone in the room groaned, and I thought, who?? Heck, I was only there for STEFAN SAGMEISTER!!! Let me bring you through the speakers of the day. I have only selected speakers that I admired and listened to without falling asleep.

The first speaker who got my attention was this pair of designers from France, Kuntzel + Deygas. I remembered them from this feature piece I read from IdN Magazine some time ago. One of their most famous creations was this pair of dogs, Caperino & Peperone. The basic shape of these dogs were the letters 'a' and 'b'. One was rounder in shape while the other had more edges and rectangular. With these basic traits, these characters could be modified in many ways and yet remained recognizable. They were selling T-shirts with the characters printed on them at RM 180++, I think.

Hehe... I managed to get both the designers' autographs as well as a stamped Cap and Pep. So cute~ it was amazing to me how popular these dogs were and how far they have travelled in the world.

Another project they shared was this credit clip they did for the Steven Spielberg's film 'Catch Me If You Can' staring Tom Hanks and Leornado DiCaprio. The modification they did on the typeface with the extended stroke was refreshing to me, the first time I saw them. Since then, I have seen many modifications that followed the same style. I, myself have attempted it without success. See the silhouettes of the people? Those were made using stamps of individual parts ie: head,torso, arm, leg.


The next designer was Shun Kawakami from Japan. I confessed I fell asleep during his talk. How could I not with soft zen-like music playing in the background and his soft spoken English lilted with Japanese accent. Listening to him was like practically listening to a lullaby! Anyways, boredom aside, I enjoyed looking at his work tremendously. I liked his calligraphy-like graphic works below. He didn't illustrate them, apparently, but he was the one who came up with the concept, I think. Not very sure, my brain was induced with sleep at the time.


As sleepy as I was, I did pay attention when he elaborated on this project of his called 'Art and Sound'. See those wires coming out of the canvasses from the picture below? All those wires were connected to a CD player thing, I think, and hanging below the canvasses were ear phones. The idea was to treat yourself visually to the artwork while you put on the ear phone and listen to the music playing. I found the concept to be different. I wonder how listening to the music played would affect how you look at the illustration.

Part way through this, I caught Tze Yee falling asleep on camera. Bwahahahahah~~

The most exciting typographic design from all the artworks shown, to me, would be the one from the picture below. These was a creation from a team of designers, Troika, from the UK. But none of the designers originated from there, I think. Notice how the typefaces were formed following the geometric guide on the right?

See how the lights ran down from above and formed the typeface by running through the grid as programmed?


Oooo... I saved the best two for last!

During the Beijing Olympic 2008, the bird nest stadium had created a hiatus for its unique design. Another architectural wonder was the aquatic center, more widely known as the Water Cube. If I were to compare the two, the Water Cube captivated me more with its out-of-this-world design where the walls were shaped like bubbles!

The reason for the above comment was one of the architects who designed the Water Cube was here for the conference! His name was Chris Bosse. I found it amazing that throughout his talk, I was completely awake and there never was a dull moment. Not that he was an incredibly good speaker or that he peppered his talk with jokes or anything, but with the sureness and beliefs that he injected into his talk. I have always thought that a great design would not only look beautiful, but used its attractiveness to achieve a certain goal. The Water Cube was a prime example of a great design. The bubble walls were not there to merely look pretty, but served the purpose of storing heat to warm up the pool (sorry if I didn't get this point straight enough).

Another reason I absolutely admired this guy was because he was a very nice man in person. He was the only one who asked for a name when he signed in my book. I was very very happy to have gotten his signature!


Last but certainly not least, Stefan Sagmeister. In my first GD class, the first thing we were asked to do was to research on this man. Of all the speakers, his works were the one I have seen multiple times and was slightly more familiar than the rest. Apparently, he was like a super star in the design field. When it was his turn to speak, every drowsy head immediately cleared. This was surely because he was the reason many of us were there in the first place.

Unlike the others, Sagmeister was a very good speaker. He was inspiring. It also helped matters that he was the only one who made jokes, no matter they were bawdy ones. I couldn't say he was my favourite designer or that I looked up to him, but he was certainly an inspiration. It was also incredibly exciting to have finally seen one of the most famous and influential designer of our time (he's not dead yet, unlike many great others).


Going to the MMC was a good choice. Not going to regret it for a single moment. Will I go again next year? Ummm.... we'll see. =P

Feature 003:Brylcreem Xtreme Design Contest

Hahaha.. yeah, I know. Still stalling.


Anyway, this post will be for a good cause. I'm naturally a selfish person but this contest is too cool to keep for myself (as if I'm winning, anyway, hah!). Check it out, click on the image.

Extremely, extremely cool prizes! And deadline is end of November! After all my projects, if I have the dedication I can actually attempt to join the contest. Anyway, check out the prizes. For drooling at this point.

Feature 002: Butterfly Award

Thank you, thank you, Yu Jean, for awarding my lil' blog here with the Butterfly Award! Awesome, eh?

These are the conditions, in which I can choose to do or not, if I were to accept the award.

1. Put the logo on your blog;
2. Add a link to the person who awarded you;
3. Nominate any number of blog you want to share this award with.
4. Add links to those blogs on yours.
5. Leave a message for your nominees on their blogs.

Let’s spread the joy of blogging and warmth of friendship through this Butterfly Award.Please accept the award and happy blogging.

Well, I can choose to do everything listed, meaning going to all my awardees and put a comment in their blog telling them they have been awarded and then asking them to do what I am doing now; or I can use that time to finish my packaging project. Hah, I'm in a dead end with the project anyway. And it's all in good sport, yea??!

These are the people I have awarded (I have awarded, haha, never really used these two words in the same context before). And also a little snippet on why I think they deserve it. (and you can just find their links at the side bar of this blog)

Jaryn for the funny little posts you have that just put a smile on my face everytime I'm there
Farah for challenging my vocabs everytime I'm at your site
Tze Yee for letting me understand a little bit more about who you are
Eichi for the cute crazy looking pink rabbit
Chia Li for making envious over your lovey-dovey relationship
Kelly for the incredibly good looking Chaplin header
Kang Rui for having the initiative to create a Chinese blog

I guess that's all. The people that I read are pretty limited. Ta!


ps: oh yeah.. now I have to thread over to these people's blog and tell them that they are awarded with my ultra problematic line today.. okai!

Feature 001: Jimmy Pickering

I have many blogs before this. The longest lasting one was the one I had in Friendster. The rest didn't last for more than two or three posts. I hope this one will be different (it already is considering that I am blogging back-to-back here) for I am taking this down a different direction.

Besides blogging only on the mundane happenings of my life, I'd also like this blog to be a recording of my growth as a designer. If my interest persists, I will feature some interesting graphic finds I discover here.

Without further ado, I'd like to share with you my discovery of an ultra-cool artist: Jimmy Pickering!!

I found him in MPH, One Utama. I was doing research for my book in the children's corner. I was trying to look at the illustrations there to get an idea on what I was supposed to do. After some time browsing, a cover of a story book captured my attention. It was a children's book written and illustrated by Jimmy Pickering. On the first look, his style is very similar to the works of Tim Burton.

Looking through his portfolio, I find myself falling in love with his colours. They are all so bright and vibrant. His subjects are all spooky but there is a cheeriness in the colours he applied. It is strange, I know, but I find myself seeking inspiration from his works to illustrate H. C. Andersen's stories.

Below is an artwork of his, titled "Deadman". If you're interested in seeing more of his works, do click on the link I have on the left side under "Fav Design Sites".