Here Be Monsters|blog

NEW BETA

Here's a lovely little beta site that might help anyone who made the standard new year's resolution to,  get fitter. Called GPSies, you can create, view and download tracks which have been recorded by a GPS device. Whether you're searching for running courses,  mountain bike tracks, with GPSies you can see what Tracks others have recorded.

why don't creatives blog?

As anyone who has taken even the most casual of glances at the ad industry blogging community will know, planners blog.

Do they blog.

And perhaps that's not surprising, I've often found them to love discussing their theorie, thoughts and ideas. And in the most part have enjoy their company for that very reason. Sure, I also know one or two who are linguistic bullies who only want to show off their smarts, but they've been the exception.

What surprises me though is the lack of creatives blogging. They can be just as smart, original, opinionated and forceful with their views as any planner, after all. So why no blogging?

And if the future of the creative team is one where there is a much closer alliance between these two disciplines,  I thought I'd  try and start a debate on it and so have asked around a good few of my mates and peers and I've come up with the following reasons;

1. They don't have any interest in it. Their world is one of the televisual. Of film. Of Hollywood. And as such they are not interested in the Internet beyond buying stuff from it.
2. The creative department has been long been built on macho camaraderie and to expose oneself in a blog to the extent you would have to to make it interesting, would see you ripped to pieces by your mates.
3. Creativity is a job. That is to say there is very little interest outside of the work place to continue to express oneself in any way.
4. Fear of failing. Bizarrely, in a job that exposes you to rejection 98% of the time, creatives can be delicate flowers afraid to expose themselves and their 'creativity' unnecessarily.
5. You're use to keeping your ideas to yourself. You don't share, not your ideas, not your inspirations. No they are yours and yours alone, slotted into your memory bank or bottom drawer waiting for the moment for when you and you alone can use them.
6. Lack of a client. What can you do when you have no excuses to hide behind?  The answer is nothing.  Which is why every creative I know hates doing the agency Christmas card.

Well that's for starters anyone want to add to it? Or is everyone reading this too much of a creative?

I heart work

There's a great post over at Noisy Decent Graphics that talks about the love of being a designer. You don't have to be a designer to appreciate and recognise what he's saying, just someone who is passionate about what you do.

So if you don't recognise yourself in this, shouldn't you be looking for another job?

After all, if you find a job you truly love, you'll never have to work again.

the blog as soap or sitcom

Spent a fascinating time yesterday working with a client on different ways in which to use blogs. We had this thought that a blog could be treated in much a similar way as you would a soap opera or sitcom - a drama that's played out in regular episodes (posts). The more we looked at this and the more we looked at the structure of storytelling within the confines of a soaps and sitcoms, the more we thought we were onto something, so we're going to experiment around this and see what develops. If blogs can be streams of consciousness, diaries or gossip columns, then why can't they also be given a strong narrative structure? The big challenge as we see it will be to adapt the everyday events into story lines that will be both engaging and entertaining while still remaining true to the spirit and honesty of blogging.

So this weekend I'm going to be re-reading  Jospeh Campbell's The Hero With A Thousand Faces