Phillip Toledano has done fantastic pictures of people playing videogames (via wonderland). Superb.
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archaeology of strategy
Gareth's found an old HHCL document which just reminds you how great and forward-thinking they were. This was written in 1994 and I remember it fondly.
As he says, they were one of the few places that made you excited about working in advertising. Richard describes this stuff as advertising archaeology which is a lovely idea. You can get a pdf here. Well worth reading. If someone started a company now with a manifesto like this they'd be more cutting edge than 99% of agencies in the world.
in praise of overthinking
Whenever you want to make a planner shut up the approved thing to say seems to be "you're overthinking'.
Creatives are very prone to this. But everyone does it.
I hate this. Not only is it a dumb thing to say but it's also hugely self-congratulatory. It always suggests that you, you silly dear planner, have got lost in the thickets of your little intellectual shrubbery wheras I, the mighty empath of creativity have divined the way forward through instinct alone. I am never confused between forest or trees because I stand like a mighty redwood of intuition, master of the whole landscape, never thinking too little and never, ever thinking too much. And it is clear to me, as clear as a freshly minted contact lens, that the moment I stop understanding something is the moment it becomes overthought.
I exaggerate. But you know what I mean. It's a synonym for complicating. Obfuscating. Confusing.
But overthinking is a much maligned art.
Overthinkers are exactly what we need more of. Because all the expected answers have already been had, by all the people who just think the industry standard amount of thinking. We need people who can't leave a problem alone, who will persist in gazing at and thinking about something until it yields some unexpected truths.
My favourite piece of fiction is a masterpiece of overthinking - Nicholson Baker's The Mezzanine. Some of my favouite writing on the web is all overthinking. City Of Sound is a great example. Or this great overthinking about meat from Schulze and Webb. Or Standinaqueue. And one of the reasons I like working with jeffre is he can't help but overthink everything, and it's always brilliant.
I can already hear people saying it - come on russell, you're overthinking overthinking.
But I don't think I am, I think overthinking is that fantastic ability some people have to really examine, illuminate and understand the value, joy and interestingness in something that everyone else is already bored with, or ignores because they assume all the thinking has been done. That's a core skill for planners, designers, all sorts of people because, let's face it, a lot of the time, we're being asked to find something interesting to say about something that no-one thinks has much value. And it helps if we can find real value rather than just make stuff up.
It's the overthinkers that notice things. That think beyond the expected. I feel another t-shirt coming on; overthinking is not a crime.
one lucky post
Occasionally people will ask how to get more readers to their blog. I have no idea. And if that's why you're doing it then only misery will follow. But clearly the real answer is 'get lucky'. Or write so much that sooner or later you'll catch someone's eye with a post. Above is the boost in traffic due to that 'how to be interesting' post which is clearly where I got lucky.
Reasons it may have got lucky:
1. Slightly interesting title
2. Annoyed as many people as it pleased (annoyance gets you links)
3. A list (people like lists)
bye ny
Blurry photography from the plane on the way home.
slab-sided and slow
I've had enormous fun spotting this kind of stuff in New York. I love the way North American commercial vehicles look.
The design brief seems to be - these vehicles are going to be slow, they'll have to contain lots of stuff and it'd be good if it didn't show too much if a few accidents happened along the way. So they're basically square boxes on wheels, the anti-porsche.
This is pretty much what I'd ask for in a vehicle of my own, but they don't seem to make things like that for regular people. The closest I got was an old Land Rover Series III we used to have.
There's a completely different design vernacular for commercial vehicles over here, the least European things you could imagine. I think it's because US vehicles are designed to travel long-distances in straight lines and European vehicles are designed to go short distances and around lots of corners.
And this is fantastic. I think it's a sanitation vehicle, but it looks like you could set it to 'blow' instead of 'suck' and end up on Mars.
hotel TV again. sorry
All the channels on the TV at the SoHo Grand
inside knowledge
There are huge advantages to seeing a city with a local. Samuel showed me this stately picasso which I was subsequently able to show off to two other New Yorkers - who'd never known it was there.
