(Yep, let’s start with a cliché, but you have to start with some sort of attention grabber don’t you?)

A friend posted on a site today announcing he had started a blog and would like people to see what he’s written and we – hopefully – would pass some comments. He was rather bashful about it all but he needn’t have been.

I read the blog and zapped off a reply, then recalled that it was something that I have been asked quite a few times before – how do you write a blog?

So, unedited (pretty much) here’s what I wrote.

Don’t apologise.

Be tongue in cheek (avoid the smileys in a blog – they are fine on Facebook and forums of course) but don’t apologise.

People who like your style of writing will stay, people who don’t will not. It’s your blog not someone else’s. You. Your opinions. Your feelings.

Your take on life.

Be proud of it.

Hold your head high.

It’s one of the few places (apart from Speakers’ Corner) where you really can rabbit on about anything that you want to without fear of ejection, interruption, castigation or even expurgation.

(And another tip – every so often add a word you wouldn’t normally use in everyday conversation.)

Be yourself and have something interesting to comment on and people will drop by from time to time to see what you are up to these days.

It does take a while to develop a style, whether it’s a wry take on life, or a rant on officialdom, or just a general chat on things that are close to your heart.

Everyone has that novel in them as they say, and that novel (well blog in this instance) is the stuff that people can talk knowledgeably about.

And that is themselves.

So let’s hear about you!

And don’t apologise.

Oh – and showing a sense of humour (even if warped / opinionated / left field) is always good.

If it helps, that’s great.

If it doesn’t? Well, if I do get to hear back and you respond in a way I don’t approve of, I am also the Administrator too.

As Alan Partridge would say, “Back of the net!”

Or is it “Kiss my face”?

Browsing through Twitter the other day I read a rant from a fellow marketer where he bemoaned the cost cutting of companies these days.

(OK, we all know it’s pretty grim out there and budgets have never been tougher, clients more demanding, competition more cut throat, and… well I think that’s enough of the stating the obvious, but the point I shall make here depends on accepting the fact. Let’s just say, things are not going to change in the foreseeable future.)

Anyway.

The said rant was about a company that thought they were getting something done more cheaply by using a designer to make some coding changes. It had plainly not worked out that way in his case, not surprisingly as the two skills (design and coding) are so different they rarely go hand in hand with the same person.

One’s a left brainer and the other’s a right brainer. You could say it was a no brainer.

I responded half jokingly but with sufficient acid to say I too was frustrated by companies that think because they have forked out for a copy of Adobe’s Creative Suite that automatically makes the person using it a designer.

Well my colleague and I would say that wouldn’t we?

But the point is there to be made.

Sure, you can cost cut in your business to your heart’s (and Financial Director’s) content, and on paper there are many things you can do to achieve that. “Why not have an in-house solution to our web / creative / coding needs – no paying costly freelancers – and there’s so much to be saved by doing it internally!”

But is that necessarily true?

Is your in-house resource always going to give you a fresh response day after day? Are they going to have the experience and the wherewithal to be adaptable to different needs? Are they aware of what can be done, how a job needs to be done (and alternatives to doing that too), and whether there’s another, better way of looking at it? Quite seriously, a collection of programs such as Adobe CS are immensely powerful – but they take a while to learn.

I would argue that agency designers are used to having to come up with something fresh all the time – that’s one of the reasons why they love the freedom of the ‘every day is different’ opportunities.

An agency employs people that are at the top of their league and want to succeed in a demanding job that requires constant adaptability. That’s why the best, most creative ones, are working in agency land and not directly employed in a single organisation.

And there are also experts on hand for every part of the process from conceptualising right through to building the back end.

Granted, I am an art director by training who happens to be able to write a bit too. But I’d never have a clue where to even begin when it comes to the tecchie side of things.

And long may that continue…

Print isn’t dead by any means.

Integrated really means integrated.

You cannot call yourself an integrated agency if all you do is web or email work. You need to know about ‘traditional’ media too.

And all methods of communication have conventions. You learn and understand those basics, so that everyone knows what’s expected and nothing goes wrong.

Let me give you a short but what I thought was rather telling example.

Client asks if I can do a quick ad for them and forwards the details for the ad from the publication it is due to go in.

The dimensions are 130 x 200mm and come from the ad sales department. But something doesn’t seem quite right about them, because the client has sent me an ad from the previous year and the proportions are the opposite way round.

The opposite way round from what you ask?

Well, anything to do with print was and is always spec’d in the same format. It’s always depth first, then width. So the ad from the previous year is 200 deep by 130 wide but the spec for this year is (allegedly) 130 deep by 200 wide.

Perhaps the format has changed?

So I email the publication with the following:

Could I just check that this is landscape – Dimensions: 130mm x 200mm?

And to be completely sure I add:

Convention dictates depth first, then width…

“Yes that’s correct,” they reply.

Yup, I’m finicky sometimes so just to be sure I send them last year’s ad and say – like this then? Yes, they say.

“But that’s portrait, not landscape,” I reply. “Your technical specifications tell me to supply it the other way round!”

“Oh, does it? Sorry,” is the response.

Knowing how a design document is set up is as important as knowing about CMYK versus RGB colour specs. And it certainly saves an awful lot of time if you have got that experience – and know what questions to ask.

Now I don’t want to appear like advertising’s Ed Reardon (well only a teensy bit if you insist) but it does illustrate a point that everyone needs to know and understand the basics of whatever language they are being asked to communicate in.

In the end, there’s a vast difference between how a printer wants to receive your beautifully crafted files and how a media owner expects them.

Only then are you truly ‘integrated’.

In due homage to the forefathers of advertising, Newsweek has just published a ‘Mad Men’ issue where advertisers were asked to submit ads in the style of the 60s.

The Johnnie Walker and Smokey the Bear ads were apparently unchanged from the originals, but some pastiches were unable – quite – to go the whole way.

The most glaring of these was the ad for BOAC which felt obliged to have a prominent BA logo at the bottom reminding the viewer that it was a “direct predecessor” of British Airways, in case anyone ever missed the point. Bit sad seeing the presumed intelligence of the average Newsweek reader, but to some, corporate guidelines will always have to be obeyed.

Estée Lauder had a positively wonderful opportunity with the actual ‘Mrs Draper’ January Jones as their model. But they failed to capture that feel with their attempt. Typography and photography missed the mark – the dress was about the only period detail in an otherwise half-hearted attempt at a retro ad.

But there were some absolutely wonderful examples there too, and a fascinating peek at what was considered groundbreaking in those days.

Back to that Johnnie Walker ad. I’m sure the small tagline Please drink responsibly would never, ever have been considered in Don Draper’s day.

Thanks to Ad Age for the alert. You can see more on the site.

(Anyone who feels they want to do the same for me or Gravitas are most welcome to follow the lead on this, of course.)

My friend Emma Williams has a day job as an English teacher, but has just written her first novel and it’s called World Enough and Time. Well, I am always in awe of anyone who can actually demonstrate that not only is there a novel in them, but actually go the whole hog and produce it; and that alone deserves a plug to a wider / potential audience.

So I took a look at the book through her Facebook page and spotted a link to another page that she was asking people to ‘like’. This was to a blog called Emma C Williams blogging as Anna Jones. What on earth was this?

Well, the novel is aimed at teenage girls and Emma took a clever way to promote the story that unfolds in her book, by also writing a blog set in real time and from the viewpoint of the subject of the book as well – a teenage girl. What could appeal better to the target audience than a blog written for them?

Are you with me so far?

Perhaps it’s best to let Emma describe the concept (she’s the writer after all):

…blogging in character is becoming an increasingly popular idea for promoting TV characters but still seems to be rare for books.

Part of my idea to do it stemmed out of the need for me protect myself as a teacher, but the more I thought about the idea as a concept, the more I liked it.

The blog starts just before the timeline of the book and follows Anna’s journey, so readers will recognise events and experiences that are referred to in the blog.

The blog is now continuing to follow Anna as she proceeds through Year 11, the year after the main narrative of the novel.

It’s a nice idea, and even if not totally new (as if anything was) is to be applauded. I will not in the least bit be surprised if the novel does well and the way it is being introduced to its audience indicates a savvy use of social media.

You can order the novel from the website as a traditional book with real pages and a nice cover, or as an iBook or Kindle version.

Want to make an impression on your website? I came across this simple to use plugin called Tubular that means you can set up a video on YouTube and then use it as a background on your site.

The blurb says:

Tubular is a jQuery plugin for creating full-size video backgrounds from YouTube videos. Usage is straightforward. The client browser needs to have JavaScript and Flash installed and enabled and you can embed any video with just the YouTube ID. You can use it for anything from promotional videos to simple moving backgrounds.

The developer is a chap called Sean McCambridge based in Chicago. Nice work, Sean!

I can see a lot of uses and applications for this – though the need for Flash may be a limiting factor. But still, worth sharing.

The Retronaut is an interesting site, a veritable miscellany of an archive with no particular theme other than “That’s interesting – let’s see more where they came from” that I can see.

But that’s what a good archive site should be – an eclectic mix, where you have no idea of what is coming next.

Its founder, Chris Wild, is obviously a man with a passion for letting the site do the talking.

The images range from (mainly) the 20th century onwards and cover a huge area of topics and themes. Be warned that it’s one of those sites that you can happily spend hours on, all in the name of ‘research’.

Take a look and see if you agree.

Upside Down, Left To Right: A Letterpress Film from Danny Cooke on Vimeo.

I recently came across this sweet film about how traditional letterpresses are seeing a resurgence.

Hard to believe that a few years ago you could probably pick these type trays and presses up for their ‘junk’ status, but now designers are once again discovering the unique way that the traditional compositing methods lend to a piece of work.

Apart from the olfactory delights of the ink and the oil from the presses themselves, there are the tactile treats too.

The mixing of the ink and prepping the galley.

The way the press actually ‘presses’ into the paper giving you that embossed depth that no digital medium can match.

The slight imperfections in the inking and the subsequent texture of the type – especially noticeable on the wood block characters.

Not to mention the texture and feel of a sheet of handmade paper.

And to top it all, the sheer joyous SLOWNESS of it all.

OK, I remember using all this equipment and learning the art from way before Macs appeared, and part of the joy of this film is seeing an almost forgotten art again. And I bet I could pick it up again pretty quickly.

But of course, more important is the way a new generation of designers are discovering the joys of letterpress for themselves.

Thanks to JB for the link and  Danny Cooke and Plymouth University.

At present, the cameras are only available in the US but I guess it won’t be long before they can be seen over here.

So what’s so amazing about these pictures? Well, to fully appreciate what they can do you’ll have to go to the website to try out the samples there, for if you click on any area of the picture it then becomes the focal point of the entire shot.

Sounds weird if not impossible?

Here’s a screenshot from the website:

See the tree and foliage is in focus while our friendly squirrel is not?

Well, click on the picture on the website and it has a little think about where you have clicked and then refreshes the shot with the new area sharply in focus, as here:

Yes, it’s interesting isn’t it and requires you to completely revise how you see a shot done this way.

I can only really liken it to how it was when I saw a hologram for the first time. You simply cannot fully describe it, you have to take a look and see.

So, is it the future of photography? I’m not sure as yet, but at least you read about it here first!

A lovely ‘lost in translation’ from Japan to entertain you in the dreary days of January. (Credit to Jake Adelstein and others for this!)

A department store in Osaka must have thought they were really tapping into mainstream culture when they came up with the signage to promote the January sales this year. Apparently the locals were completely bemused by the delighted camera snapping Zarina Yamaguchi who happens to be bilingual in English as well as Japanese.

What the former Marketing Manager is doing now has not been reported.