Okay, so where am I?

Yesterday’s email from the Telly Awards letting me know that I am now an 11-time winner launched a quickie celebration until the very next email reminded me of the pending deadlines I have on a handful of  projects, each demanding their own slice of greatness.

Great.

Just great.

Where to begin?

So now I’m hunkered down Unibomber style with a hoodie on covering my forehead, face barely visible as I chug caffeine trying try to craft that unicorn of a big idea I drone on about endlessly.

It’s been a process on my old 1940’s typewriter as I pound out rotten idea after crummy thought after regrettable copy. Yeah, the creative process can be drag, but usually it all works out at the 11th hour. I love to work alone in the middle of the day, blinds closed with a stray light somewhere near and talk radio blabbing on about everything and nothing at the same time. When I work in a team, I tend to drive people a bit insane. I talk and talk a lot once I grab the floor of the conversation, filibuster-style, never relenting long enough without recapping a life of dreams, with just the right blend of decades-old agency stories and ex-wife nightmares. Or so I think at the time. This is, after all, my strong suit. I love to lecture about our moral responsibilities in advertising.

Sometimes being alone allows me just the right space to find the right mix of genius and tact necessary to deliver a winning campaigns.

One thing I’ve discovered is that the first step to creativity is knowing how to ask the right questions; and it doesn’t have to happen on a hilltop while meditating in Zen mode during deep Buddhist chanting while birds chirp the rhythm of your future jingle.

No…creativity comes out when you need a solution — and none of the old solutions work. That’s when you get imaginative.

A Harvard Business Review article on creative thinking says it this way:


…Imagine ways out of the fix you’re in by imagining that the circumstances blocking your progress are being lifted one by one. This produces different versions of the challenge. One of these new hypothetical versions may well resemble a type of problem that you have solved in the past. Your mind will then fire out a whole new set of solutions, one or more of which may work. If the solution you select for the new version of the challenge is untypical for the original version, it can certainly qualify as a creative solution to the new one…

It’s like dreaming. One of the theories about why we dream states that we dream to prepare ourselves for things that maaaaaaaaybe, just maybe, will happen to us. This exercise in creativity goes the same way: by reimagining our situation to appear a tiny bit different, maybe we’ll see an out — or an in — that we couldn’t imagine before. You know, goof old fashioned mental magnet flipping.

When I’m stuck I pull out the typewriter and churn out lyrics from the Rolling Stones or The Dave Clark Five. It gets the melodies flowing in my head and the creative flows a bit better. Another motivational tool is looking at classic ads to reveal the brilliance and spark new thinking.

I stumbled across “Madman,” a Nike running classic from 1990. The mind can only remember so much, so when I see this ad, I can’t but marvel at it’s everything. The photography, the copywriting, the concept…it’s one of the seminal pieces of advertising craft.

It’s perfectly crafted with an economy of words that somehow has always driven my core feeling that less is more and more is less:

Click to enlarge

Agency: Wieden + Kennedy
Art Director: David Jenkins
Copywriter: Jerry Cronin
Photography: Arthur Meyerson
First Published: Runner’s World, January 1990

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“Can you whip out the logo for new client today?!”

Are you kidding me? “Whip out a logo?” It’s not as easy as it looks. Every person from the CEO to the janitor gets to weigh in on the new brand identity. It’s simple, right? Think again.

There’s more to whipping out a logo than playing in PhotoShop, slapping a name on a circle and calling it a day. Just because Nike swindled Carolyn Davidson out of her $35 was super efficient in the purchase of their Swoosh Logo in 1971 doesn’t mean they grow on trees (or in college computer labs)**.

Impact is job one of a logo. The subtleties come from special training and a sharp visual eye. Some of this you can learn and some of it, quite frankly, you have to be born with.

“Born with” you ask?

Take a look at some of these logos. They are instantly recognizable. But do you know the real stories behind them? Some of them might surprise you…

BASKIN ROBBINS
We all know and adore Baskin Robbins’ ice cream, founded in 1945 in California by Mr. Baskin and Mrs. Robbins. Their slogan has changed many times over the years, but it often mentions their famous 31 flavors: “31 Flavors of Fun,” “31 Flavors at Their Best,” “Trust 31” and “Celebrate 31,” just to name a few. In the logo, you can also see the number ’31’ in pink in the Baskin Robbins logo, just one of many stories behind famous logos.

APPLE
The Apple logo is well-known worldwide, but did you know that it was created because Steve Jobs had just come back from an apple farm after starting a fruitarian diet? The Apple logo was first rainbow-colored to show that Apple products could create color graphics. The bite was taken out of the apple because Steve Jobs was worried that people would think it was a cherry!

NIKE
The logo for Nike, otherwise known as the ‘swoosh,’ was created by a lady called **Carolyn Davidson in 1971, after she was chosen while working on a graphic design assignment at school. She wasn’t initially happy with the design, stating, “I don’t love it, but it will grow on me.” She was paid $35 for the design, which is crazy considering what it would be worth today!

STARBUCKS
If you look at the original design of the Starbucks logo, you might be shocked – it’s a shirtless mermaid with two tails sitting in a surprisingly sexual way! It is thought that the mermaid is one from Greek mythology. This mermaid design was often criticized due to its sexual nature, so it was adapted and changed to what it is today.

CHUPA CHUPS
The logo for the famous lollipop brand, Chupa Chups, was designed by the wacky painter known for his melting clocks, Salvador Dali, in 1969. The colous for the design were taken from the Spanish flag, because the name ‘Chupa Chups’ comes from the Spanish word chapur, meaning ‘to suck.’ The logo was designed in an hour while Dali sat in a cafe with a friend.

MERCEDES BENZ
Essentially, the Mercedes Benz logo was designed to tell everyone how wonderful they are! The three points on the logo are meant to represent three elements – water, air and earth – and Mercedes Benz’s dominance over all three (due to their boats, airplanes and cars). Modest!

It’s easy to see these logos every day of your life, but be so unaware of how they came to be! There are so many interesting stories behind all kinds of famous logos, it’s definitely worth checking them out. Did you know any of these? Which other logo origins do you know of?

PEPSI
The colors in the Pepsi logo are meant to represent the colors on the American flag, showing the company’s patriotism and pride. That’s not the end of it, however – apparently the Pepsi logo represents feng shui, the Pythagorean theorem, Einstein’s theories, the Earth’s magnetic field and so much more. How? Your guess is as good as mine.

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