Inferno

On Wednesday Anna & I descended into the depths of the East-End to stare on as the ‘Creative Socials‘ (a collection of London’s Creative Directors) discussed the art of NO! When is it ok to accept someone telling you NO!? And when it’s better to react to NO! with a swift punch to the face.

Sam Ball took to the stage first “We talk a lot of shit in this industry”, no-one disagreed. He then went on to categorise the bullshit into two piles, generic bullshit including predications about the future and stating the obvious. In pile two, specific bullshit like “a YouTube clip should be no longer than a minute to go viral”. It’s nonsense. The point is that not enough people within the Ad Industry are doing enough to overthrow the norm.

Do you think the “bullshit merchant” who is currently telling you what will, and won’t work, would’ve stopped Einstein or Newton? No. Exactly. “Any revolutionary in every walk of life has been a young experimenter”. He left the stage to a quote from Greek Philosopher Xenopanes who said: “The gods did not reveal, from the beginning, all things to us, but in the course of time through seeking we may learn and know things better. But as for certain truth, no man has known it, nor shall he know it, neither of the gods nor yet of all the things of which I speak. For even if by chance he were to utter the final truth, he would himself not know it: for all is but a woven web of guesses”

Here’s Laura Jordan-Bambach with a real insight into the state of todays society. On a serious note she talked about not questioning yourself when you’re brave enough to say NO! Just make your decision and do so with integrity. Steve Price then took to the stage with a statement: “If you were to say NO! a little more often, you’d have time to do better shit.” I agree in the most part but on the flipside what about potential opportunities you may miss by not being open enough?

During the most memorable eight minutes of the night Flo Heiss simply said NO! to over sharing. These days we’re all digital to the core and the point he was making was that sometimes we simply don’t have to be.”Put your phones, laptops and iPads in the air. Ok now put them on the floor and do nothing”. What followed was a very uncomfortable five minutes of shuffling and silence as Flo simply stared on. Very weird, very memorable, very refreshing.

Last up was Andy Sandoz, always far-out and scientifically motivated I didn’t really know what to expect from him. And not to disappoint his subject the #NoFilter. “We all need one, importantly it’s not a switch, it’s more of a dial”. When it comes to a decision always set your dial. Obviously your dial can never be 100% YES or 100% NO! – your passion and belief in a project should help you set your dial appropriately. Check out Andy’s thirteen slides for more, including his list of eleven things to say NO! to. Point six is especially hilarious as Andy highlights never witnessing rain in Google Street View. “We should all say NO! to rain and move into Street View instead. Street View or not it always rains in Manchester, or at least gets wet anyway (great spot Palmer).

As a part-time music journalist and a full-time music snob I cringe everytime I hear artists referred to as brands or their career development as a business plan (the latter is apparently disgustingly common with the major labels). Still, I have to admit that Jack White is an amazing brand.

White, the front man of legendary bands like White Stripes, The Raconteurs and Dead Weather, songwriter, record producer, multi-instrumentalist, label owner and general Mr Rock’n’roll, threw his first ever solo gig in the UK last night at HMV Forum, and proved that he really can do no wrong.

The ‘product’ is pure genius. White’s attitude and talent are uncompromising; he is substance over style all the way, although his style is impeccable and only topped by the ridiculous substance. He his humble yet knows his worth (which is a lot, about $20 million). He has an aura of mystery around him created by clever little stories (remember the rumours about Jack and drummer Meg White’s relationship, their fascination with the number three, and use of certain colours?) and yet he seems like a man with whom you could drink whisky at a local pub. He is an icon, already a living legend at 36 years, and will be remembered in fifty years’ time. Guaranteed.

Last night’s set was perfectly balanced between his new solo material from Blunderbuss LP, released yesterday, and some old hits and crowd pleasers (e.g. Blue Blood Blues, My Doorbell, We’re Going To be Friends and Seven Nation Army) and it held together tightly, each song gripping the audience a little bit stronger, until the six-song long encore which turned into a mental guitar fiesta and ended pretty much in tears with a slow, melancholic and eerie country ballad Goodbye, Irene – of course with a playful, mischievous grin.

White is touring with an all-male and all-female bands, and last night was the latter’s turn. And never has a pregnant cellist in a satin dress or a fairy-like violinist – with whom White battled a few instrumental sessions – looked or sounded more rock’n’roll. There were times when White’s guitar bashing started to borderline Jimi Hendrix-esque, demonic measures (especially in Blood And Biscuit) and his screeching vocals were bleeding blood on the stage. Add in maracas, tambourines and an angelic, soulful backing vocalist – the mix was rather astounding.

It was two hours of pure rock, with a hint of blues and a touch of Americana. It was hefty, impressive and regained my hope in guitar music, whose death has been declared by useless hip-hop artists and even industry press itself. I’m glad to tell you that rock music is alive and kicking and it looks a bit like a Tim Burton character at the moment.

Jack White’s career would indeed make a kick-ass creative business plan – but never the other way around.

Catch him playing live if you can; the UK gigs are sold out but this man is worth a trek.

(Apologies about missing live images, the gig had a strict photography ban and this was actually actively supervised by the security team. Never mind crowdsurfing or moshpits, camera phones seem to present the biggest threat at gigs these days. Rock music is not dead, but it might be resting its head a bit.)

On the 25th of May, Inferno’s strongest and bravest will tackle the dizzy heights of Scafell Pike – over 3,209ft of sheer mountain, to raise money and awareness for the NSPCC.

To do this, we really do need your help, because we’re letting YOU decide how far we get.

Every pound you donate is worth 1ft of mountain, and if we haven’t raised enough, we stop climbing. That means we need to raise £6,418 if we’re going to get to the top and down again for tea. And if we fail? Well, we’ll be stuck on the mountain with goats for pillows and our colleagues’ body warmth to get us through the cold and lonely night.

So please head over to our Just Giving page, dig deep, don’t leave us on the mountain, and help us raise money and awareness for the NSPCC’s latest campaign, ‘Don’t Wait Until You’re Certain’.

Oh, and to thank you for helping us share this important message we’ll be sharing your messages too. So when you donate, don’t leave us a ‘good luck’, leave us something more interesting. We’re talking quotes, lyrics, ponderings, facts and rants. Our 32 climbers will be picking their favourites to take with them up the Pike – so make yours a good ‘un, it might be coming with us to England’s highest point.

On Tuesday we were lucky enough to be invited down to opening night of the Secret 7″ exhibition at The Idea Generation Gallery in Shoreditch. and rather busy it was too.

The idea: “700 unique seven-inch sleeves inspired by tracks from The Cure, Florence + The Machine, Bombay Bicycle Club, CSS, DJ Shadow, Noah & The Whale and Ben Howard. The exhibition has an added air of mystery as no-one knows who designed each sleeve, or which of our seven tracks is housed inside.”

All are for sale for a minmum donation of £40 (per sleeve) and will be available to buy from the gallery on Saturday 21st April to coincide with Record Store Day.

Get down there and check out the sleeves today or tomorrow before the sale commences on Saturday. You could bag yourself a Shrigley for a mere £40 which of course goes to the Teenage Cancer Trust anyway, win, win, win!

See you in the queue.

We’ve been rather busy here at Inferno. Alongside producing recent work out for Nokia & NSPCC we’ve been busy injecting more interesting ideas into our internal activities too.

Inferno Intros is something that debuted last week that will be continuing through 2012 and beyond. In short we host intimate gigs inside the agency. We work with record labels to showcase talented bands and singers. Here is a bit of a teaser showing off what you can expect from a Inferno Intros event.

There are still a few precise details to iron out around the events but we’ll be sure to let you know once final decisions have been made. Trust us, they’re going to be pretty special. There will be opportunities to invite guests from outside of the agency along to the second event. What we can say is that the events are planned to happen four times a year, so that doesn’t give us too long until the next one.

On the opening night we played host to two acts courtesy of Felt Music (thanks Toby). First on stage were ErinK & Tash. They were so composed that the set began effortlessly, taking the pressure of the occasion off immediately and making the everyone feel relaxed.

The night was wrapped up by quirky Norwegian four-piece Katzenjammer. The talent phenomenal, the night a roaring success. What do you think of the performances? Would you like to come along to the next Inferno Intros? Please keep an eye on this blog for more info on Intros002.

Monday night saw a few Mad Men mad Infernoistas don their best 60s garb and head over to Kettners in Soho, where Sky Atlantic played host to the official Season 5 premiere.

True to the show, cocktails were flowing on arrival and as we settled into our third Old Fashioned and a popcorn dinner, the curtain went up.

**SPOILER ALERT**

Season five leaves you with no confusion of the era. Skirts are shorter, music is swingier and design is… oranger!? We’ve entered a time where equality is hot and Sterling Cooper Draper Price is more successful than ever.

Don’s 40^th birthday proves to be a perfect platform for highlighting the hang ups between him and his latest wife, Megan. And with her recent promotion to creative, tension starts to build as Peggy makes no secret of her frustrations.

Roger’s character continues to evolve with comedy touches that at one point, prompted a whoop from a few seats forward, but we’re still left wondering if the truth will out about Joan’s new baby.

And will Pete eventually become partner? It looks like this could be his season.

Last night a few of us headed to the ICA for a talk provocatively titled  ‘Advertising isn’t funny’ by the guys from Hoot. Hoot are a team of three marvelously experienced comedy writers who help agencies and brands make their ads or web content a damn sight funnier.

Twas a fairly informative evening, and there were a few tips to be had (e.g. Pack your script with gags, get a comedy Twitter feed going to establish your brand tone, get the right actors, get a comedy director, take risks and enourage the client to do the same). There were even some pre-recorded tips from Angelos of Shooting Stars fame (e.g. if it’s not funny, just put a cat falling down the toilet in it).

However the evening didn’t really deliver on the title promise of saying what they believe isn’t funny about advertising, and how they would change it. Instead it felt a little like a two-hour infomercial for Hoot. But there were laughs aplenty (see their giggle–worthy Morris Johnson, Bear of London work below) and, crucially, a good helping of free booze.

At long last we can officially welcome you to the first ever Centrefold. At Inferno we believe the world needs more interesting. And whether it be in the work we produce for clients or in our own ventures this is always our guiding principle. Centrefold sets out to discover and showcase individuals or collectives who are doing things to make the world around us, well, more interesting.

Every two months we’ll be bringing Centrefold to you. Within the package you can expect a post (here) featuring work and a video interview with our featured individual/collective. If you drop by the agency you’ll also see some beautifully printed work on display too.

Without further ado, this is Centrefold edition 001.

We’re kicking off with a collective that have been making an impression on the East London club scene for some time now, their name Bridging The Gap. In their words “BTG is a music and art blog curated by a collective of designers, djs, filmmakers, producers and photographers. It is a platform for us to share our inspiration and creative outlets, which might be described as genre-less.” We took some time to grill the BTG chaps. Here’s what they had to say.

A huge thanks goes out to the awesome guys downstairs at Salt who were kind enough to let us descend upon their space for the interview. Oh yeah and if you’re reading this you must also go and eat there, it’s topper.

BTG London are (Left to Right): Rob Waite, Ross Gunter & Claudio Lillo. As discussed in the interview the nights that the guys put on have grown in stature, and fame. They have now moved from their first home in the West End up to the much more suited Dalston, with a residency at the Alibi. Our CCO Al Young searched through Ross’ artworks eventually agreeing on three masterpieces from the extensive series. We got the posters printed at a huuuugggeeee scale and they look absolutely stunning hanging in Elton’s bar.

The Centrefold001 art will be hanging for the next month and a half until the beginning of May. If you’re in the area then drop by and take a peek. Until our return with Centrefold002 keep up the good work lads. Here’s a link to get your tickets to Stop Making Sense in Croatia and a logo worth remembering.

Our football team is back in action with a new badge, a new kit and a fresh line-up.

We’re training and playing weekly in a 5-a-side league. Then we learned about ‘The Pitch‘. The advertising students from UCA Farnham are preparing for their grad exhibition and in their words: “Our university isn’t helping with funding, so we need to raise as much as possible off our own backs. But that isn’t a problem, because with constraint, comes creativity! Our main fundraising event is a huge football tournament between Advertising Agencies, Students and Graduates.” We signed up and made our way down to Wembley Goals on Friday night.

On arrival, we found out we’d be playing four games during the group stage, the top two teams then going through to the knock-out stage. Our first game was against a student team named Gareth’s Gazelles. It ended as a 1-1 draw, our main concern, Prad picking up a knock after only 5 minutes of action. Not a great start. We re-grouped and took to the pitch against BD Network, comfortably beating them 4-0. That was quickly followed by the biggest test of the group stage against The Marketing Store, our lads dug deep and earned a 1-1 draw. Three games down and 5 points on the board things were looking pretty good.

The only downside to a great tournament were prolonged gaps in-between games and later in-between rounds. To keep warm and kill the time we relied on aerobics (Martin) Coward style. The final group game arrived and we comfortably earned another 3 points beating Aquaduct 2-0, finishing 2nd in our league with 8 points and remaining unbeaten. We awaited news of the identity of our opponents in the knock-out stage. During the break in the competition we attempted to walk Prad back to the bar area, it wasn’t happening and he was carried instead. Paramedics were available and Prad was carted of to hospital for a full diagnosis (BIG thanks to Rosie for accompanying him for 5 hours in A&E). We’re assured that it isn’t broken but you can see the bruising below, ouch.

Back to the competition, the lads had to compose themselves for a knock out quarter final game against….wait for it….The Marketing Store!? But how was that? We’d just played each other in the group stages. After both teams questioned the decision, we were told that nothing could be done and that the decision was final. We headed out to the pitch for the return fixture. This time with much more at stake. It was never going to be easy going up against the team that had ended up top of our league and despite the efforts of our players we were beaten by the most slender of margins, 1-0. There was obvious disappointment, but also pride in our team. By the time all of our players were deservedly relaxing with beverages in hand we put our support behind our defeaters The Marketing Store. As they marched on to the final to take on one of the two AKQA teams the tiredness was certainly showing. After taking a 1-0 lead The Marketing Store lost their rhythm as AKQA stormed back and buried 2 decisive efforts. Final score 2-1 to AKQA ’The Pitch’ champions of 2012.

We’d like to say a big congratulations to all of the students at UCA Farnham responsible for the event, we thoroughly enjoyed our Friday night out West (well most of us). To everyone else please take a look at The Orchard for more info on the Farnham grad show. Thanks for having us, see you next year. Any agencies looking to challenge us in the meantime please leave a comment below.

On Thursday I popped along to The Book Club in Shoreditch for my first #printout experience. Run by Stack & Magculture this was the second event of 2012. In a nutshell the event involves influential people from the independent print, magazine and design sector to share their influences and stories.

There was also another very cool feature where guests were asked to bring along a magazine to swap with someone else. The basement event space was pretty big but restricted views meant there was standing room only. Not to complain though as the three speakers were prompt and to the point (and I had a pint of Guinness in hand).

First up was Rob Lowe from Anorak magazine.

Anorak is aimed at kids fr0m 5-10 years old. Rob’s passion for design came through immediately as he talked about designing a bespoke font for each and every issue. The design cues often come directly from the taget readers. “I use smiley faces all the time because kids like them more than sad ones.” Simple really. The Anorak logo was inspired by the building blocks used for generations by kids, with the letterforms beginning as very basic shapes before advancing. Key point for the design: colour, borders and frames.

Cagoule is a brand new magazine from the Anorak team. This one is for the grown-ups. Where most magazines tend to concentrate on a specialist area “Cagoule has different content on every page”. This meant that it felt right not to feature a specific subject on the cover. Abstract boobs basically. The colour palette that is established on the cover re-emerges inside the pages to ‘section up’ content areas. Just like with Anorak, bespoke typefaces and flat colour are key design points. Triangle details from the cover begin to form page features. Their arrow like appearance also signifies copy continuing on next page.

Rob summarised by highlighting his love of hand lettering and the way it can be used to great effect in stark contrast with hard edged graphical content.

Chris Harrison from Wrap magazine was next on stage. The publication is on it’s fourth issue after only being founded in September 2010. “Once you’re done with it you can turn the whole mag into wrapping paper.” Being so new, they’ve had their teething problems. Initially they added a cardboard ‘belly band’ to keep the loose format of the pages together. On the plus side “people liked turing something that was supposed to be a magazine into something more”. They learned from issue one that whilst the ‘belly-band’ was a good theory, it was actually quite restrictive for people who wanted to engage with the mag before purchase. On release of issue two this was changed. It had an an elastic band fastening device and a ’mascot’ featuring a little more detail about the content.

“As we go on, we’re incorporating more typography. The type is always inspired by the theme of the issue (hence the cactus characters in issue 4).”

And then it was on to the 3rd and final speaker of the evening, Paul Willoughby, Creative Director of Little White Lies magazine. – what face does your mag have? Hence the covers with faces. He talked about influences when growing up including Push Pin and Milton Glaser. “I loved the work of those guys but I was so jet lagged when visiting their studios that I fell asleep and didn’t get to see much.” During a trip to Japan in 2005, residents of Tokyo were throwing magazines out into the street. Paul talked about the quality of the publications “I was filling my suitcase with the things”.

In the early days of Little White Lies, Paul was designing every cover for the mag. Then when budgets got better it allowed him to commission some of his highly rated icons to help.

“We’re not commercially minded.” Paul tried to commission Michael Gillette (one of his heroes from way before the mag) for the Let The Right One In issue, but it didn’t quite come off and Willoughby ended up doing it.

Another legend Geoff Mcfetridge was commissioned to do The Where The Wild Things Are cover below.

David Carson helped come up with the final design for the Black Swan issue.

Illustration duo Kai & Sunny were commissioned for the Another Earth issue cover, naturally responding with two stunning interpretations of the cover.

Gillette was again involved in the cover design for the Drive issue.

For the Shame issue, Paul wanted to use Ian Wright, but he ended up doing it. “It involved our studio basement, lots of porn with porn and spending a lot of time down there during the making process.”

Issue 40 for Pirates is available now. The cover done by Jean Jullien, commissioned for his ”great line work”.

A couple of really memorable quotes from the night were ”As long as shelves are being made, magazines will be made.” and ”The physical piece that a magazine is in hand makes the difference. Once all three very individual magazines are inside an iPad they’re pretty much the same”.

After the talks were done and dusted it was on to the magazine swap. I bagged myself a very easy-on-the-eye issue of Grafik. What a bloody good night all round. Thoroughly recommended.