05-14-2007: In Praise of Simplicity

After much deliberation, due to what can be blamed as sheer laziness and lack of clarity on where to focus or start from, I finally decided to take on my favorite topic or area of interest head on, somehow. For now I've put it in a blog format, a medium I've become slowly used to. We'll see where it goes from there.

So without further adieu, welcome to the simple life. A meager attempt to understand simplicity in today's ever complex digitally connected world.

04-06-2007: The Fine Art of Waiting

Sometimes it is amazing when I think of the metaphysical question of how long we spent 'waiting' in everyday life. Like today, I spent certain number of minutes waiting for the bread to toast, for the bus to arrive, in the checkout line at the store, for the food to arrive at the restaurant, for a page to load on the internet etc etc. The list goes on day in and day out.

Brazilian street art extraordinaire Alexandre Orion has gone one step ahead to capture the waiting phenomenon on a wall in Sao Paulo.

[Originally found in the book 'Graffiti Brasil']

03-21-2007: Power Breakfast Wisdom

Some breakfast spreads are more powerful than others. This one on wednesday morning fell in the former category. Tim Broadbent of Ogilvy (He holds the double title of Regional Planning Director and Regional Effectiveness Director of Asia-Pacific) imparted with us some of his wisdom of building brands through effective advertising. He was charming in his own old-school way. A man who also holds the distinctive title of being the only person to win the British Effie grand prix prize twice.

The most thought provoking point, however, was raised by a guy in the audience, from M&C Saatchi, who questioned the feasibility of effective ad communication measurement when the so-called creative ads that sweep the Asia-Pacific awards shows are scam work. What's the point in measuring them anyway. The bigger question that popped up was are clients to blame for the lack of creativity in the real ads. Is the great creative ideas being axed at the client's editing table? If so, how can we stop it and raise the bar in real creativity seeing the light of day through effective advertising? Great thoughts to ponder if you are, like me, embarked on a hopefully long career in the advertising ideas business in the region.

03-10-2007: Human Density

A morning walk up Telok Blangah Hill Park turns into an opportunity to capture the reality called urban living, especially in Asia. The sheer need to accommodate human density results in matchbox size habitats in monotonous structures. Of course, the idea for the photograph itself was with a little inspiration from Michael Wolf.

02-03-2007: Remastered

In my job, I'm finding out day-after-day, that when we are working with brands and coming up with new briefs, strategies and what-not, we are more of recycling or reordering or reconnecting the same old formulas, structures and ideas. It is more in tune with the Eastern philosophy that the environment changes, we are essentially same. Just adapting to it in ways that please us and bring good results or harmony.

This weekend, while cracking my brain over one such brand project, this cover reminded me even more about how we are just sort of masters of remastering.

The book Remastered is about how new age artists and designers deconstruct some of the masterpiece art works of the Renaissance and Middle Ages to today's context.