tooth fairy

1. going to the zoo and laughing our ass off watching the lemurs. i didn’t know they are actually taking some yoga position while meditating on the strange people staring at them. the lemurs seemed to be happy and wisdom.

2. having a peaceful launch with our best friends, at madame pogany restaurant. a cool place in town with lots of advertising people usually showing off around there. it’s cozy and nice, though. i had a risotto with parmigiano, yummy.

3. while taking my “10 minutes dream of australia” break, i remembered about one of my fav ads - carlton draught - big ad. even if it’s 5 years old, it’s a cannes winner and i still enjoy it.

in my job (client service in advertising, but the followings do not apply only to this field), i have to be diplomatic, friendly and rational; i have to play in two opposite teams (client and agency) at the same time; and both of them must feel that i’m on their side.

maybe you have to be a little schizzy to have this job; sometimes i damn someone while calling him and i smile with all my face when he picks up, so it’s a matter of seconds. but you have to play it safe, all the people working under your coordination must feel your support and your problem solving attitude. actually you’re not even allowed to name the unnamed (“problem”), it’s a scary word; it must be something really wrong if we’re talking about a problem. we’re talking about solutions, proposals, better ways of doing stuff.

and very often you have to play it stupid. of course you listen to a new awkward briefing, even if you know from the very beginning that the client is doing the same mistakes and he didn’t learn anything from his previous failures. but you’re just listening, taking notes and smiling, waiting for him to finish the story. and then you start the debriefing part, asking the same questions and arguing the same stupid details, as if you wouldn’t have said all these dozen of times before. 

the worst part is that we have the predisposition of transposing this attitude in our personal lives. we’re playing stupid just because we don’t want to start a fight. we accept unfair remarks from so-called friends just to keep some false pretences.

but i think life is too short to spare it on doing this. for this kind of people. i mean really, you’re not even paid for acting like this in your free time :)

i sound like a 16 yo american girl writing on tumblr, but in a worse english. but i have to put this down to make it clear.

at the beginning of december, we already are sick of calendars, agendas, planners, xmas cards and traditional new year wishes. all these materials are ready to be sent to clients or, in the worst case, are still in production.

and we live the same nightmare year after year: lots of layouts full of rabbits and eggs in march-april (i still don’t know what’s the link between the stupid rabbit and the chicken egg); and lots of layouts with xmas trees and santas in november.

but some still have the time to work on something nice and clean, even if they are their own client (or maybe that’s the explanation). 

here is a nice calendar developed by redcloudy in south korea. it won an if communication design award in 2010.

and these are some alternatives to the classic corporate agendas. i’d love to have one :)