i’ve been asked to take a seat in the jury for the SJP ‘magneten’ awards this year (employment advertising) they mad a nice little viral film as a call for entries this year, the idea being that you don’t enter your work, the guy in
there goes another day locked up in a room full of ad-men eating sandwiches and arguing about what’s original… or not
the campaign was made by my mate ‘ronnie’ at steam and the ads were shot by ‘suzanne karsters’
my mum called this weekend and mentioned that ‘ian anderson’ founder of the designers republic was on a local ITV show recently called ‘my yorkshire’ if anybody happens to have a link to it online please let me know….
anybody who knows either him or yorkshire (n the UK) will know that yorkshiremen are very proud of their roots and are usually portrayed in a very cliché way as being very belligerent and hating southerners (i.e. london) well… we invited ian over to amsterdam in 1996 to talk about his work at a seminar (called ‘mind the gap’) along with a lot of ‘southerners’ like tomato, north, fuel & peter saville (amongst others) and ian, unfortunately, decided to confirm the cliché… because, although peter saville is also from ‘up north’ (like ian himself) the fact that he talked ‘posh’ was reason enough for him to be branded a ‘cunt’ as were the rest of the guests… the point is, ian is a bit of an ‘odd ball’ but i still love TDR’s work, his ‘difficult attitude’ is probably the reason he thinks and designs the way he does, nobody said you had to be friendly or polite to make good work
i found the following quote from a Q&A session on the TDR site… someone asked him:
when you have just finished some work do you ever turn it upside-down to see if it looks better? you know…just in case.
i always start upside down
was his reply, although he probably said ‘you cunt’ at the end too…
i know, i know, it’s not a very pretty sight but this… is me, me as in me but also me as in ‘me studio’, for anyone who thought otherwise, i’m a ‘one-man band’ right now… my original partner (the e in ME) and i (the m in ME) decided to go our separate ways last year so ME has been since then just…ahum… me
so what’s the point? well the ‘intern’ season has apparently started and i receive between one and two internship request e-mails everyday at the moment
just to be clear: i’ve been there too when i started ok? so don’t hesitate: do mail me but, as it’s a very small studio i will unfortunately probably say no, an internship is a big decision for a small business and as i’m often pressed for time, the chances are i would rather say ‘no’ than say ‘yes’ and be unable to devote enough time to giving an intern the help and advice he or she deserves… having said that i always reply and as my mum said ‘never say never’
the following words are fairly typical in most of my replies and i wanted to share it because it might be of help to somebody:
dear ….
many thanks for your e-mail and the kind words unfortunately i do not have room for an intern, so good look with your search and if you are looking for a company in the netherlands you could try these two sites
dutch designers
the BNO
and this site always provides lots of (international) inspiration too
for what it’s worth, i think you have some nice work but it’s perhaps a bit too broad in your presentation, i would advise you to follow the adage ‘less is more’ and show only
your very best work, quality always counts the most…
good luck once again and kind regards
be selective, don’t ‘blanket mail’ every design firm on the planet, try to motivate your choice… it helps and finally, don’t be disheartened by ‘no’ it’s probably nothing personal… good luck to you
the design museum in zurich is a place i must try and finally go to this year, they seem to have some good exhibitions all year round and of course an amazing collection of (swiss) posters
