Get Your Bleedin' Mits Off My Images!

A few weeks ago we wrote a post about photographer Mishka Henner's latest exhibition No Man's Land - which features imagery pulled from Google Earth.

I exchanged emails with Mishka and asking his thoughts on image ownership. To paraphrase, his take was that notion of ownership and usage doesn't apply in his Art realm, or certainly not to the same extent as in Advertising where I was coming at the issue from. Lucky bugger. Fair play though, I doubt Warhol sought rights for the images he repurposed. (Please correct me if I'm wrong on that - did he give Gene Korman anything for his Marilyn Monroe image?)

So now I've somewhat chilled the fuck out about image licensing and who owns what - I've been looking for other examples of this type of found photography. The more I think about it, the more I am starting to appreciate the process these guys must undertake, sifting and filtering through literally millions of images. Is it really that different to walking around with a camera, selecting the shot through the viewfinder and firing the shutter yourself?

Take a look at the work of photographer Jon Rafman who is creating a huge body of really intriguing and beautiful work.

Ally & Gargano Is Here

“It's important to separate agencies that create successful advertising from agencies that create successful agencies.”

– Blimey, has that ever been more true than today?

Big day here – at last Sell! Towers has a copy of the hefty tome that is Ally & Gargano. It represents a collection of some of the best work produced by any agency in the Twentieth Century.

Why do we seem so obsessed by Ally & Gargano? Well I suppose, along with Papert Koenig Lois, they represent the approach that we feel the most affinity with - these were street-fighting adfolk who used creativity to directly try to achieve things. They attacked problems head-on; they sold product, took-on competitors, challenged opinion.

They were unashamed of their obvious intent to accomplish commercial ends. We feel we have a lot more in common with that, than with the current fad for a touchy-feely, brand-y, sofly-softly, pretend we aren't-even-advertising approach. And I suppose seeing that others have worked this way, and that it can work, gives us a bit of hope that maybe we aren't the lunatics in the asylum.

I recommend you get hold of a copy. Or, if you're nice, you can come round here and read ours.

Are Agencies Attracting and Therefore Increasingly Staffed with The Wrong Kind Of People?

I've been mulling this one over for a while, and a few comments recently on post on this blog, and on Ben's have really made me wonder. Let's give this some context, there is the general feeling that the output of the industry has declined in quality, and alongside this, the relationships between client and agency have shifted. At the same time agencies have become very different places to work, more corporate, more fear, more late work, weekend working, more service culture.

There is a lot of debate about these factors and how they relate to each other, the relative cause and effect and so on.

I have a theory that at least part of this is down to the type of people who work in the industry today, and the type who are increasingly being recruited. Creative departments are almost exclusively staffed by people (mainly white, middle-class males) who went from school, to college, to an advertising course, then into the industry, child-like creatives to who seem happy to be treated like a tame crafter. Planning departments seem to attract and be staffed by scholarly theorists who are "intrigued by the human condition" or some such shite, with very little appetite for getting their hands dirty commercially. And account departments increasingly composed of people who quite like the idea of advertising but lack any discernible skills other than ability to say yes to everything.

People are encouraged to get on, collaborate, and be professional. Those who follow the line are promoted, those who question or make life difficult are cut down. In turn, this cycle encourages those safe types to hire more people like themselves, and foster the same play-it-safe, play-by-the-rules approach.

Who is standing up and standing out? No one, it seems. Just a bunch of boring yes-men too scared of losing their jobs to do anything about it, even if they wanted to.

Agencies, and the advertising industry, used to be defined by the dangerous, maverick thinking and attitudes of their people.

Conversely, these days advertising people seem to have adopted the servile, faux-service industry attitude of the agencies that employ them. Whilst the bean-counters run rough shod over the lot of them.

It's all arse-about-face.

If any of those descriptions above sound like you, maybe you're not actually a victim or symptom of the industry's malaise, but actually part of the problem.

This could have as much to do with the ad industry's decline as anything.

Save Small Shops - Every Little Helps

We plug for the little guy at Sell! Sell! We believe that in general, lots of small independents are better than a few giant conglomerates, not just in the advertising business, but on the high street, and beyond. We think it makes life better, communities richer, and ultimately makes for a better product and service. Maybe that why we tend to attract interesting challenger brands or independents, we love the fight against the big guys. And the big guys don't need the best thinking anyway, they just out-muscle the competition.

Whilst rummaging around our archive for a new project (we'll tell you about that shortly), we came across this campaign we did for Friends of the Earth a couple of years back. A bit of a blast from the past, but still as relevant today I think. It was made, as you'll notice, to deliberately ape a particular style of campaign that was everywhere for a certain large company. The simple message - if we don't use our small shops - we'll lose them. Everyone hates it when their local grocer or butcher shuts down, it makes them sad, the local community feels less rich for it. But people are busy, and have to be careful with money, they go about their business as we all do, and don't necessarily put two-and-two together - what you put in equals what you get out.
 
Alexi Sayle, being a supporter of the campaign, kindly donated his time for the voice-over, it was shot by Ben Jones and Greg Fay through the lovely people at Partizan.

This is a Cappuccino - I ordered a Macchiato damn it!

Ever done an all nighter and showered in the toilet sink before a morning meeting? Do you know the Deliverance takeaway menu by heart? Had to do an emergency prop shop the morning of a shoot because the cutlery felt off brand?

Boo-fucking-hoo.

Think we've got it tough? We don't even know we're born. Take it away Ranulph.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3K_9SrHIcQ0

All Kinds of Wrong/Right

There is no arrangement of words that can describe the weirdness of this video. Just watch it and thank me later.

The AIGA Design Archives

Earlier in the week we came across the AIGA Design Archives.

A tasty archive of over pieces of creative work that have featured in the annuals of AIGA over the years. There's lots of modern design stuff on there but there's also some classic gems from Papert, Koenig, Lois, Inc., Carl Ally Inc., Doyle Dane Bernbach Inc. etc.

Be careful though, you could easily wile away a few hours clicking through all 20'000 pieces.