You know how I wrote the other day that "people make the difference" at Aquent? Well, a week later, I still think it's true!
But you know, it's not just me. When we ask Aquent employees what they like best about Aquent, they consistently respond, "The people I work with." Guess what? I would say the same thing. I feel peculiarly fortunate to work with a bunch of people who are smart, funny, and friendly.
For example, take our creative director, Mark Saperstein (that's a picture of him in his incarnation as an undead warlock). Mark is a talented and funny guy who actually proposed to his wife via a job posting on our website (she accepted). He's passionate about zombies, cannibals, and Conan the Barbarian. He's also an articulate, detailed, and sometimes harsh, I mean, "frank," critic of creative work.
Aside from frequently asking me to be less boring, blogwise, he's overseen some of our endlessly clever direct mail and marketing pieces like the ever-popular "furry" card, the infamous "valium" card, the mirror card, the cow, the beach ball, and the Kim Jong Il: "I Ate the Big Slab at Aaron's House O' Ribs" card.
Mark's sense of humor has sometimes been too "out" for corporate consumption -- like when he wanted to advertise our interactive staffing capabilities with a pixelated rendering of a hand making an obscene gesture -- but it's never been too "out" for me, and, gosh darn it, I love that MMORPG-playin', kimchee-eatin', plaid-shirt-wearin', anime-watchin', erstwhile-astronomy-lovin', "what art school did you go to?"-askin' guy.
At the end of last year I wrote a post proclaiming that I was going to make this blog more about Aquent. As part of that effort, I've wanted to introduce more and more voices from around the company into this channel. Of course, I've continued to highlight Aquent talent, their insights, abilities, and achievements, and I've also given periodic shout-outs to my environmentally conscious and often funny comrade-in-blogs, Tim Donnelly. But I know I could do so much more.
For starters, check out our Tampa office. The folks down there were talking to me about starting a local blog and so I asked them to say a little bit about the market for this one. I ended up speaking with Tampa's Isela Santisteban, and this is what she told me:
"I've been working with Aquent for the last 9 years, first in Miami, then Fort Lauderdale, and now here in Tampa.
"Tampa is like the mid-West of Florida. It's a great place to raise a family, have fun, and go to the beach! A lot of businesses are located or headquartered down here - Home Shopping Network, OSI Restaurant Partners (that owns and operates Outback Steakhouse, among other properties), and Publix Super Markets, for example - and there are plenty of opportunities for people looking to work in healthcare, finance, hospitality, technology, consumer packaged goods and related fields.
"About half the work Aquent talent do in Tampa is interactive. The rest consists of marketing, graphic design, and print production. Our clients include a number of high profile companies as well as agencies with major accounts. The way the market is right now, I can find a job for anyone with interactive experience at any level.
"What I love about my job is that today's talent becomes tomorrow's client. I'm still talking to people I placed 9 years ago and I'm sure there are people I've just begun to work with that I'll still know 9 years from now."
It's not unusual for Aquent staff like Isela to be with us for a long time. This sort of longevity gives our clients and our talent a lot of continuity. It also means, as you can imagine, that the Isela's of the Aquent-world are centers for ever growing networks of talented, creative professionals. To get in touch with Isela or any of her equally enthusiastic and connected colleagues, call them at (813) 287-9119.
On another note, and speaking of Florida, right now Aquent's training arm, AGI is busy putting on the CRE8 Conference in Orlando. One of the presenters there is none other than Todd Tibbetts, a consultant with Aquent Studios in Seattle, whom I've mentioned here before. He's blogging about his adventures at CRE8 and, more than anything else, making me feel like I'm missing out on something magical. We'll be hearing more from Todd in the days to come, so stay tuned!
Random searching in Google brought me to this site: Smashing Magazine. Created by two German fellows (they live in Germany, anyway), who claim that, "Our aim is to inform our readers about the latest trends and techniques in web-development - clearly, precisely and regularly," the magazine threatens to, and I quote, "SMASH YOU WITH THE INFORMATION THAT WILL MAKE YOUR LIFE EASIER. REALLY." Well, forewarned is forearmed.
I browsed through the "INSPIRATION" category and found this post on "Beautiful Handwriting, Lettering, and Calligraphy." You have to scroll a bit to get into the meat of it, but they have collected an amazing assortment of lettering styles and approaches.
The fellow who made this, Chuck Lewis, is also known as "The Poetic Prophet," and, more to the point, "The SEO Rapper." In addition to dropping science on the importance of design and coding - "please don't use tables even though they work fine/ when it come to indexing they give searches a hard time/ make it easy for the spiders to crawl what you provide/ remove font type, font color and font size" - he kicks serious k-nowledge on conversion, social media, and paid search. Check it out, boyeeeez! (I almost can't believe I just wrote that.)
Long story short, if your page rank is illin' and your SEM isn't "fillin'" it, go on and pick up on what the SEO Rapper is puttin' down. He'll school y'all. Peace. Out.
Special "shout out" to Shelli and Mariam in Aquent's Detroit office for turning me on to this dude.
Ever since I spoke to Erik Hauser last year I've been looking for an opportunity to speak with him again. He's optimistic, he's infectiously enthusiastic, and he has a lot to say on a lot of different topics almost any hour of the day or night (as anyone who follows the Experiential Marketing Forum knows).
Long story short, I asked him if I could interview him for this here podcast, and he amicably agreed. Rather than asking him to define "experiential marketing" for the umpteenth time, I thought instead it would be more illuminating to talk about emotionally connecting with brands, using experiential marketing techniques when searching for a job, and, of course, Gene Simmons. So that's what we did.
I invite you to listen in on our conversation. You can do so by clicking on the Flash device below. You are also welcome to download an mp3 of this interview by "right-clicking" ("control-clicking," Mac-wise) on this link. Finally, this and other Talent Blog Podcasts are always available on iTunes. Heck, you can even subscribe to our podcast there!
A few highlights of the interview can be found at the following time coordinates:
00:59 - Gene Simmons: The Genius
05:19 - You need a 3rd Party to serve as "Keeper of the Brand"
10:04 - You want to raise demand? Decrease the supply! (From Hydrox to Polaroid)
12:01 - The "outside perspective"
14:45 - The EMF: How moderating discussions increases their value
16:08 - Keys to nurturing a vital online community
20:05 - "Experiential" is a methodology, not a tactic
Maybe I was just desperate, but, in order to come up with a blog post today, I went to Google and searched for the coolest thing ever. That search led me to this site, Webware, which features, "Cool Web 2.0 Apps for Everyone."
The coolest thing ever? Even though I did use it to make the adjoining hideous graphic in about 10 seconds, I'm not so sure. I'm kind of leaning towards MindHabits, a game that apparently makes you happier and more self-confident. It even boosted the self-esteem of telemarketers and made them more successful.
In Part 1 of our podcast interview with James Intriligator, Senior Lecturer in Psychology at the University of Wales in Bangor, we talked about branding, loyalty, and consumer psychology.
In Part 2, we discuss personae and customer motivation, different neuormarketing approaches, and how understanding the brain can help us make more effective commercials (among other things, of course).
Listen in on our conversation by clicking on the Flash device below. You are also welcome to download an mp3 of this interview by "right-clicking" ("control-clicking," Mac-wise) on this link. You can also check out this and other Talent Blog Podcasts on iTunes. Heck, you can even subscribe to our podcast there!
A few highlights of the interview can be found at the following time coordinates:
01:50 - How to Get the Most out of Focus Groups
03:52 - Aunt Sally and the Straw Man
05:03 - Customer Motivation: Dreams and Aspirations (not just Fears, Uncertainties, and Doubts)
09:59 - Marketing and Branding from a Strategic, Artistic Perspective
11:55 - "There are a lot of good things you can do with marketing"
13:39 - Defining "Neuromarketing"
15:16 - Pros and Cons of Different Neuromarketing Approaches
17:15 - "If someone wants to pursue marketing from a neuromarketing perspective..."
20:44 - The Classic Mistake that Most Ads Make
21:58 - Another Classic Mistake
24:16 - Segment the Emotional and Attentional Aspects of Your Campaigns
Way back in late 2001, Adam Greenfield published an essay entitled, "The Bathing Ape Has No Clothes (and other notes on the distinction between style and design). In this essay, he posits "problem-solving within constraints" as an essential component of design. In fact, as he sees it, this component separates design most definitively from "style," which is characterized by a relatively personal, unconstrained creativity. That some designers, he cites Paul Rand and Saul Bass as examples, were, in spite of real constraints, able to develop a recognizable style, testifies to the level of artistry they achieved with their work.
Though he does not refer to it, Greenfield's essay was preceded by Jeffrey Zeldman's, "Style versus design: Why understanding the difference is what it's all about," which first appeared in 2000 (and was reprinted in 2005 by Adobe). Zeldman too emphasizes the real-world pragmatism of design over and against the modish self-referentiality of style. He laments that young web designers, along with design competition judges, fall for the trendy allure of style and thus overlook and avoid the less sexy, though more critical, challenge posed by plain-old usability. Eschewing a reductive "either/or," Zeldman simply states, "Not enough designers are working in that vast middle ground between eye candy and usability where most of the web must be built."
To show that this debate is far from dead, viddy this recent post by Eric Karjaluoto, provocatively called, "F--- Style." He echoes the positions of Greenfield and Zeldman by advocating "hardcore" design, which he defines as, "design focused on results." "This kind of design," he writes, "forces us to see ourselves as intermediaries, who facilitate defined outcomes. To do this, we consider and weigh business, marketing, communications (and other) challenges, and work to resolve them through design. The end-result doesn't have to look good, even though it might, but it absolutely must work."
Ron Leland of Real Life Brand Architecture is an architect by training, a surfer by vocation, and happens to be the president of the Orange County Chapter of the AIGA. He's an enthusiastic, reflective, and interesting guy who has worked with a broad range of clients including mutual fund companies, wineries, and jazz prodigies like Matt Savage.
I had the chance to record an interview with Ron towards the end of last year but fate conspired against my posting the interview until now. It was worth the wait. Please listen in on our conversation as Ron talks about the power of architectural metaphors when communicating with design clients, his sometimes serpentine career path, and getting inspired to go to the next level.
You can check out the interview right here by clicking on the Flash device below:
You are also welcome to download an mp3 of this interview by "right-clicking" ("control-clicking," Mac-wise) on this link, or check out this and all other Talent Blog Podcasts on iTunes.
A few highlights of the interview can be found at the following time coordinates:
00:46 - Defining the word "brand"
02:36 - The power of architectural metaphors
03:50 - Brand architecture in practice: A case study from the film industry
07:07 - The need for a flexible brand development process
09:00 - Branding challenges when a company reaches the age of 130
11:33 - Measuring brand success: "Clear $30 million in 45 days"
15:47 - Branding a jazz prodigy
19:20 - High-end designer homes, surf club newsletters, and "real estate propaganda"
21:42 - What's interesting about design conferences
22:26 - Getting the most out of the AIGA (Hint: It involves giving!)
26:00 - The outsider's perspective and the dangers of "techno-speak"
30:19 - "Oh my gosh, I've got stuff to learn"
Since we Aquenters are strewn liberally across the globe, we need to make a special effort to get everybody together and remind ourselves that the wide world of Aquent includes many more folks than we see around our particular office on a daily basis. To that end, every year or two we hold a big get-together called, "BTS," which stands for "Back to School." It's a chance for everyone to hear from the CEO, John Chuang, not to mention other luminaries like the CEO of Aquent International, Greg Savage, get some training, and have some fun.
I have traditionally been the host and MC for these things and that has usually involved writing songs and poems about the company. Three years ago, I performed a "rap" song entitled, "Milllion Dolla' Client," that showcased the 22 clients with whom we had done more than a million dollars worth of business in the previous year. It featured dope rhymes such as, "I came to drop science 'bout 22 clients/ They used to be tiny, but now they're giants," and, "I know it sounds whack/ But please stop laughing/ A lot of our engagements are/ Straight up staffing!" To this day I regret that I did not capture this performance on video and post it to YouTube to be mocked by one and all for my unrepentant corporate chicanerie.
Why am I telling you all this? Well, here's the rub. After I had thrown down, I ran into the CEO and he asked, "Do you think that seemed professional?" It was fairly lo-fi, goofy, and amateurish, so, I said, "No." But then I added, "My goal is always to get people to think, 'I've never worked at a place like this.'"
He looked at me and said, "I guess you've achieved your goal, at least in your case, because as of now you don't work here anymore. You're fired."
PSYCHE! In all honesty, I can't recall if he responded to me at all, but I believe my point was well taken. This company has always been imbued with a spirit of entrepreneurship, independence, and iconoclasm. It's also always been a place where fun and enthusiasm are not only welcomed but encouraged.
Composing and performing a rap song to celebrate our success may not have been "professional," but, it was quintessentially "Aquent."
Yesterday - February 7, 2008, in case you are reading this in the far, distant future - Aquent hosted a webcast on changes in creative technology (like InDesign, Acrobat, etc.), that not only have an impact on the type of creative work that gets done but also on the way in which it gets done.
The trends discussed by the presenters, Chris Smith and Jennifer Smith of Aquent Graphics Institute, ranged from the growing need to repurpose content for multiple platforms and devices to the emerging possibilities for collaboration and process improvement in creative organizations.
We got a number of good questions during the call but one that surprised me the most was, "What is XML?" It took me back because five or six years ago I was frequently called on to explain XML to our internal staff, in spite of the fact that I had no technical background nor had ever consciously used XML (it's all around us, so I had probably used it without knowing).
I was on the call as the host, so I portrayed XML as a customizable mark-up language that works like a universal translator on Star Trek. With it, you can tag your content in a way that can then be read or understood by a variety of technologies. Chris Smith put it a little more simply by describing it as a mark-up language that allows you to make content platform independent.
Any other ideas about how to explain XML to non-technical designer types?
Look, the interweb is really big and my time is limited, people!
Anyway, while trying to find out more about Mr. Webster and is non-stop funniosity, I came across this gem, apparently created for the ADDY Awards by The Meyocks Group a coupla years ago:
What I appreciate most about this video is the way that it makes fun of an entire industry AND every individual contributor! Thank GOD I don't work in advertising! Marketing is a whole different ball of wax....
Greetings, loyal followers and coincidental visitors of Aquent's Talent Blog!
I know I only did one post last week and I extend my heartfelt and sincere apologies for my shortcomings and unworthiness. I'm back in the saddle this week, though, and vow to return to my 3+ posts pace. Wish me luck!
In any event, I blame my other marketing duties for my blog-wise slackness . We've been pursuing a kind of "thought-leadership" strategy for the past year and I've kind of become "chief thought leader" (what else would a Minister of Enlightenment be?).
In addition to this blog and the Talent Blog Podcast, not to mention the numerous webcasts we sponsor, host, and produce, I edit several newsletters that we send out to clients and talent. Getting all the details wrapped up on those can eat up time faster than a dog eats homework. Not to put too fine a point on it, but the newsletters ate my blog-work.
The talent newsletter primarily features "hot jobs" and career advice while the client newsletter generally focuses on some particular aspect of marketing and includes interviews and insights from our talent and any relevant experts we can track down. I think the content in the client newsletter tends to be pretty strong - judge for yourself by checking out this article on expanding your brand's global footprint, or this one on building branded entertainment sites - though the newsletter has been "under-performing," in terms of people actually clicking on the links to the articles. I've got some ideas about improving things and will try them out over the next few months.
Obsessed as I am with the reach of this blog, I wanted to find out if my last post about absinthe had gotten me any Google-love. Turns out the interweb contains a boatload of absinthe-related content, so Ye Olde Talente Blogge wasn't showing up in the first several pages. I switched tactics and did a search for "Marketing & Hallucination." My post shows up first! I sent myself flowers immediately.
Although the likelihood of anyone doing a search for those two terms may be small, it did return 266,000 results. One concerned an anti-fungal drug that had the side effect of causing people to see Wookies. As strange and intriguing as that was, I was more impressed by a site called Logo.Hallucination. (That link goes to the Logo.Hallucination "concept" page, if for no other reason than that the homepage contains some, er, "adult" imagery.)
The brainchild of one Christophe Bruno, Logo.Hallucination relies on neural network image recognition technology to scan images on the web, detect whether or not an image contains a facsimile of a copyrighted logo, and then sends a letter to the owner of the image encouraging them to contact the company concerned. The most amusing part of the "prank" is that the letter suggests that the company should pay the image owner for advertising and promoting the company's brand.
Many years ago, I met a group of people who, having encountered absinthe in Spain and despairing of it's unavailability here in the United States, decided to take matters into their own hands and distill it themselves. The concoction they produced was beguilingly exotic, shockingly potent, and of questionable legality, having been banned here in the United States since 1912.
Well, time changes everything. The European Union has got rid of the various bans against absinthe's production and there are now two brands available in the United States (and many more in the EU itself). Not only that, there seems to be a full-on PR blitz letting everyone know that Van Gogh-esque feelings are just a milky green glass away.
The first story I remember seeing appeared in The New Yorker last year. That article focused on artisans like Ted Breaux who were trying, fairly successfully, to recreate pre-ban absinthe.
More recently, the stream of articles about absinthe has grown steadier. In early November, the New York Times published this giddy column on the "mystique and misery of absinthe." Then, at the end of the month, Time published this article entitled simply, "Absinthe Is Back," and posing the question, "Do you want to party like it's 1899?" Suddenly, you could find locally produced articles on absinthe whether you lived in Raleigh-Durham or in Salem, OR.
Although I'm sure that the PR and marketing folk working for Lucid and Kübler have had something to do with this, it can't hurt the folks like Picasso, Monet, Toulouse-Lautrec, Hemingway, and, uh, Marilyn Manson, have been extolling the virtues of this divinely devilish substance for the last hundred years or so (collectively speaking). I mean, with friends like that, who needs marketers?
Which makes me wonder if there aren't other contraband substances from bygone eras that we could bring back to the market by leveraging their cultural cache. I mean, who couldn't go for a frosty mug of laudanum right now? I mean, if it was good enough for Dickens, Wilkie Collins, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, how could it not be good enough for us?
So here's how things work sometimes. While doing research in preparation for my conversation with William Lunderman, I discovered this interview with him conducted by Debbie Millman. Since her conversation with William tended towards the philosophical, as well as the physiognomic - they spent some time discussing whether or not brands should target the reptilian or the mammalian brain - I thought she might appreciate my conversation with him. Well, I scoured her blog looking for contact information but could not find any. [Insert "sad face" emoticon here.]
However, I did find her BuzzFeed feed, and after reading about the wayward Ms. Sophie Anderton, I came across this feed devoted to Tilt-Shift Photography, something that I had never heard of before but is really cool.
Essentially, tilt-shift photography relies on a special lens to allow you to take photographs of cities or mountains, for example, and make them look like miniatures. If you want to see what I'm talking about, check out the work of Olivo Barbieri or Vincent Laforet.
Being unusually tall, little things usually freak me out, but not pictures of little building I could squash like Godzilla!
PS. Debbie Millman, if you are reading this, I like your paintings and would love to interview you.
The upshot of the ARF et al. study was that advertisements which tell a convincing or engaging story more effectively make a positive impression on viewers than those that focus on positioning a product in terms of its benefits. Max Kalehoff insists that the real lesson here is not about advertising effectiveness but about brand effectiveness. Specifically, he says, brands need compelling foundational narratives that connect with people by distilling and embodying that brand's essence.
I believe that is just what I've been trying to do with this blog but, just in case that has not been entirely and intuitively obvious, please allow me to explain.
Aquent held a contest a few weeks back inviting designers to create a Halloween-themed logo treatment on our homepage. We got about 40 responses and the winning entry, created by Kevin Bonixe, a native of Massachusetts but currently a resident of Portugal, debuted on Aquent.com today.
Reaching him via the interweb, I asked Kevin how he got into design and this is what he told me: "I started out taking a course in photography and got introduced to digital photography. When I then began image manipulation in Photoshop, a new world of imagination, color, and creativity opened up to me. It fed my eagerness to learn, evolve, and to search for even better tools to create my vision. Design was the answer."
The work that Kevin ended up doing for us was is in Flash, of course (if you are reading this after Halloween, you can view it here. I asked Kevin what he liked so much about that application. He wrote, "The coolest thing about Flash is the ease of translating your creativity to the stage. When you have a timeline where you can incorporate images, movement, sound interactivity, dynamics, your creativity is your only limit."
Although, for now, Kevin is pursuing a career in business management, he does do some design work on the side, such as this site for a Portuguese hip-hop band, S. Clemente. If you are interested in working with Kevin, he can be reached via Aquent's Barcelona office.
Over the weekend I attended the second annual PodCamp un-conference here in Boston. It was great for a lot of reasons, chief among them being the chance to meet people I've corresponded with or spoken to, but had until then never seen in the flesh, as well as the opportunity to meet folks I didn't know before but am glad I do now.
On the "glad I know them now"-front, there were, among others, the "Hollywood Podcaster," Tim Coyne, Doug Haslam and Sandy Kalik of Topaz Partners, the "golden" Jay Berkowitz, and the "twisted" Mitch Joel.
While many folks at PodCamp made an impression on me, I would say the impression I've been wrestling with most vigorously was that made by Mr. Joel. Mitch's presentation was entitled, "Building Your Personal Brand," and, frankly, I wasn't planning on attending it until C.C. told me that Mitch was a great speaker.
If you are interested in other resources that help designers design more greenishly, aside from the links you'll find on the "101 Things" site, you should also explore re-nourish.com, which has an illuminating "Sustainability Toolkit" section.
There is plenty of stuff out there that you can read about in-game advertising. What's strange is when games become so popular that they can serve as the setting for real-live commercials, like in this one for Toyota Tacoma:
In this episode, I speak with Jim Hauptman, Creative Director and Managing Editor at LL Bean. Jim addresses the complexities of "multi-channel" marketing, an approach that seeks to leverage the specific advantages of diverse channels, as opposed to "multiple channel" marketing, which tends to push the same message or content through many channels. He also reveals how winter camping off-sites can lead to great marketing insights.
In conjunction with the webcast we're presenting today, I interviewed a few folks we work with and asked them how they coordinate their marketing messages and programs across a variety of media from print to web and beyond. I then created a three episode podcast mini-series of these interviews.
In this episode Dave Harrell, the Director of Advertising at Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina, talks about some of the grassroots, infotainment marketing efforts that his group has undertaken recently. In doing so, he also discusses the processes they follow to keep messages and branding consistent from channel to channel and audience to audience.
A friend of mine sent me a link to this gapingvoid post, which contains forty-five random notes assembled by Hugh MacLeod on his experiences creating the site and his thousands of "cartoons drawn on the back of business cards."
My friend was also kind enough to send me an additional link, a very lengthy annotated list drawn up by Mr. MacLeod on the subject, How To Be Creative (apparently, the most read post on his blog).
Although the list is thirty-one items long and the annotations run to 10,000 words, I would encourage anyone who has ever struggled with striking a balance between creative pursuits (art, music, poetry) and making a living to read it (though, given that he gets something like 3,000 pageviews a day, you may bloody well already have).
I know that I said that I was not a fan of brainstorming. Be that as it may, there are some clever people, such as Sarah B. at Adaptive Path, who are fans of it. Specifically, she makes the case that skill and practice make brainstorming useful. According to her, there are a number of methods for brainstorming, from "loose and fast brainstorming to highly structured idea generation sessions," and that the key is making sure that the method you use fits the problem you are trying to solve and the folks you are working with.
Along those lines, if a paucity of brainstorming methods is getting you down, you might want to check out the Idea Generator created by the talented folks at The Directors Bureau. This neat little virtual machine provides you with three random words to help you bust through writer's block or any other ideational obstacle.
I found out about his astonishing device from the pica+pixel blog. There you can read that the juxtaposition of two or three random words is a brainstorm-jumpstarting technique utilized by none other than Stefan Sagmeister. That guy's a genius, so you might want to try it yourself. While you're at it, you should also consult Sagmeister's thoughts for students of design.
While it may indeed help with brainstorming, I think the Idea Generator can be put to better use as a kind of Magic Eight Ball. For example, I asked it, "What should I have for lunch?" It told me, "Fresh Levitating Websites."
If you are a marketer with an eye to the future and you don't know who Erik Hauser is, you've got some catching up to do. Aside from serving as founder and creative director at Swivel Media, who introduced Wells Fargo to Second Life, Erik is also director of the International Experiential Marketing Association, and moderates the Experiential Marketing Forum, which he started up. As if that weren't enough, he additionally maintains a busy schedule of speaking engagements, writes a monthly column for Chief Marketer, and probably does a bunch of other stuff I don't even know about yet.
I got in touch with Erik because I was curious to find out if there was anything aspiring marketers should know about experiential marketing from a career perspective. During the course of our conversation, however, I realized that there was much more that they could learn from Erik's career itself.
"I just want to create. My whole life is a creation. I'm just a creator," he says.
Please take a second and visit Aquent.com. I'll wait.
Thanks for coming back! Now, based on the homepage, what is it you think we do? Specifically, is it clear that we place so-called, "creatives" - designers, print production artists, writers, etc.?
Granted, the title of the homepage does read, "Aquent :: Search for Marketing and Creative Jobs" (though aside from search engines?), I'm not sure who looks at those - I know I don't), but most of the body copy focuses on marketing. "Aquent helps top marketing organizations and talented marketing professionals achieve their full potential" is dead center, layout-wise, and is typographically offset by the phrase "staffing for marketing organizations" beneath it. Even the business scenario depicted, while possibly evoking a futuristic ad agency, reinforces the "marketing" slant of the site. I mean, there is definitely a guy wearing a suit in that picture. Need I say more?
In typical blogging-daisy-chain fashion, I found out via whosucks.com that the folks at Coming Anarchy had posted this new logo for the Japanese Ministry of Defence. Aside from the strange Web 2.0 look and the utter lack of any predatory animals clutching weapons, as can be found in the many logos displayed on the aforementioned sites, I was struck by the fact that the logo was chosen from among 767 designs submitted as part of a design competition.
Certainly, asking designers to compete for business is not new -- it effectively occurs whenever you send a job or even an RFP out to several studios or agencies -- but the process is certainly becoming more organized and even commoditized. Consider, as a for instance, the contests listed on sitepoint.com.
Is this a step forward or a step backwards? I say both. The copy on the site says, "Need something designed? Don't Outsource it. Crowdsource it!" Sitepoint then allows you to solicit designs from folks around the world -- the web is "worldwide," after all - and you only pay for the one you choose. Sounds simple enough and a clever way of using the connective properties of the web. But isn't it also asking people to work "on spec," a practice actively discouraged by groups like the AIGA?
As I understand the AIGA's position, spec work devalues the graphic design profession and makes designers vulnerable to rip-offs. If I understand sitepoint's concept, their service allows designers everywhere access to jobs for which they would otherwise never be considered.
First of all, have I ever mentioned how consistently impressed I am with ADVERTISINGLAB, the self-proclaimed "blog on the future of advertising technology"? Well, if I haven't, let me just say for the record that I find this blog consistently impressive, chock-full as it is with posts and commentary on the cool, the interesting, and the downright mindboggling. You want an example? Why don't you check out this post on the Fog Screen. That's right, a projection screen made of fog. Is your mind boggled, or what?
And for all you creative types looking for cool places to work, why don't you check out this post on the design of creative workspaces? In addition to listing several books on inspiring interiors, the post also points you to a site called, "This Ain't No Disco," which features pictures of ad agencies from around the world. If you work for an agency and it isn't represented on this site, you can upload the appropriate images. Also, if you like or don't like what you see at a particular firm, you can express your opinion by voting.
OK, W+K's new site was an interesting though kind of messy and, dare I say, "ugly," use of Actionscript and database-driven dynamism.
By contrast check out this site created by burst Labs.
Burst is a company that produces/composes/records/licenses music for commercials, movies, etc. As the folks at Brand Flakes for Breakfast point out, this site is designed precisely with the producers in mind, since, when people are looking for music to incorporate in their work, they are thinking of it in terms of the mood or atmosphere it will invoke or in terms of the imagery it will accompany.
Richard at adliteratereally hates brainstorming. He believes it is the enemy of creativity and a time-wasting generator of bad ideas. I think he's got a point.
You know how I wrote the other day that "people make the difference" at Aquent? Well, a week later, I still think it's true! 
Maybe I was just desperate, but, in order to come up with a blog post today, I went to Google and searched for 
Yesterday - February 7, 2008, in case you are reading this in the far, distant future - Aquent hosted a webcast on changes in creative technology (like InDesign, Acrobat, etc.), that not only have an impact on the type of creative work that gets done but also on the way in which it gets done.
