I'm a Creative at MediaFront and Co-founder of The Refinement Club. Seeker of inspiration, knowledge and ideas.

This is a feed of my thoughts and things that I find enlightening. Basically its a 21st century version of the commonplace book.

Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.

Ludwig van Beethoven’s 5th Symphony 5, First mvt., accompanied by a scrolling bar-graph score.

This visualization reminds me of Guitar Hero, and makes me wonder how a Guitar Hero kind of game would work out for classical music. What do you think?

Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will.

The 10,000 Year Clock

I want to build a clock that ticks once a year. The century hand advances once every 100 years, and the cuckoo comes out on the millennium. I want the cuckoo to come out every millennium for the next 10,000 years.

The prototype of the clock, displayed at the Science Museum in London.

Designed by Danny Hillis, the Clock is designed to run for ten millennia with minimal maintenance and interruption. The Clock is powered by mechanical energy harvested from sunlight as well as the people that visit it. The primary materials used in the Clock are marine grade 316 stainless steel, titanium and dry running ceramic ball bearings. The entire mechanism will be installed in an underground facility in west Texas.

The 10,000 Year Clock, an enthralling and ambitious project… 

Simply put: we don’t build services to make money; we make money to build better services.
To chase cool, you’re chasing something that already exists, which means you’re always going to be on the wrong side of it, you’ll always be following.

Andrew Keller, Crispin Porter & Bogusky 

How do japanese multiply?? (by 15XG)

April 19, 1955

Dear Mr. Calt:

On March 22nd you wrote to me asking for some notes on my work habits as a copywriter. They are appalling, as you are about to see:

1. I have never written an advertisement in the office. Too many interruptions. I do all my writing at home.

2. I spend a long time studying the precedents. I look at every advertisement which has appeared for competing products during the past 20 years.

3. I am helpless without research material—and the more “motivational” the better.

4. I write out a definition of the problem and a statement of the purpose which I wish the campaign to achieve. Then I go no further until the statement and its principles have been accepted by the client.

5. Before actually writing the copy, I write down every concievable fact and selling idea. Then I get them organized and relate them to research and the copy platform.

6. Then I write the headline. As a matter of fact I try to write 20 alternative headlines for every advertisement. And I never select the final headline without asking the opinion of other people in the agency. In some cases I seek the help of the research department and get them to do a split-run on a battery of headlines.

7. At this point I can no longer postpone the actual copy. So I go home and sit down at my desk. I find myself entirely without ideas. I get bad-tempered. If my wife comes into the room I growl at her. (This has gotten worse since I gave up smoking.)

8. I am terrified of producing a lousy advertisement. This causes me to throw away the first 20 attempts.

9. If all else fails, I drink half a bottle of rum and play a Handel oratorio on the gramophone. This generally produces an uncontrollable gush of copy.

10. The next morning I get up early and edit the gush.

11. Then I take the train to New York and my secretary types a draft. (I cannot type, which is very inconvenient.)

12. I am a lousy copywriter, but I am a good editor. So I go to work editing my own draft. After four or five editings, it looks good enough to show to the client. If the client changes the copy, I get angry—because I took a lot of trouble writing it, and what I wrote I wrote on purpose.

Altogether it is a slow and laborious business. I understand that some copywriters have much greater facility.

Yours sincerely,

D.O.

Igor Stravinsky, at the age of 82,  conducting the Lullaby suite from his ballet The Firebird.

Next page Something went wrong, try loading again? Loading more posts