Stamp superlatives

Finished pieces to be shown at this week's Upstarts exhibition.

Exhibition latest, latest

Mildly warm off the press, the invitation for next week's show:


Ladies and Gentlemen, The Big I Am.

Rothco reconnaissance

With last night's briefing still ringing in my ears, I got down to Rothco at lunchtime today to do a reccy on the new gallery space.





A fun game of cat-and-mouse was had with this lady who was also there to 'officially' photograph the place.

Exhibition meeting, take 2

The Upstarts design group was summoned to ICAD towers this evening to discuss the latest twists, turns, and twists in the exhibition planning process.


Kate Brangan, forewoman on the job, told us what's what.


ICAD gaffer Elaine McDevitt chaired the discussions as to the implementation of Kate's work across the event, before assigning us all jobs to take-care-of-or-else and kicking us out into the cold Dublin night.


It was nail-biting, pen-sniffing stuff.

The exhibition will open on the evening of Thursday, November 6th at the Rothco Gallery, Pembroke Lane (off Baggott St, just before the canal) and will run to the next Thursday, November 13th.

U-turn

Hold up/hold on/hold on a second/hold on a minute/hold your horses/hold it right there!


After the visits, briefings and presentations for the Factory Space Gallery of Capel St, Yes Sir Alan Sugar belled Officeless at a ridiculously early hour this morning with the news that the Upstarts exhibition has 'only gone and been bloody moved somewhere else 'asn't it?!'

With or without Yes Sir Alan's backing, the new exhibition venue is the Rothco offices of Pembroke Row, Lower Baggott St. I hope, for their sakes, that the Advertising Upstarts were not set a brief for Bord Failte...



If anyone spots the hawaiian-shirted geezer hanging about on the night, keep away from him.

In other news hot off the press, the show concept and artwork has been selected from the work presented last week. Roll up, roll up... below is a sneak preview of Kate Brangan's project.


The design group meet again next Monday to organise the promotion of the event. Rumours that this meeting will involve nailing the doors of Rothco closed to prevent a further venue change are unconfirmed at this moment in time.

Synth Eastwood 'Cycles'

This is a poster I sent off this evening for the upcoming Synth Eastwood 'Cycles' show, at Filmbase in Dublin on 24th October.


It is a tribute to the 2007 Tour de France which passed through Dartford and Gravesend, and is entitled 'Fast-track' after the dubiously-titled bus link that runs between the two towns. It is based on Kraftwerk's Tour de France videos, and is composed in a similarly geometric hand-drawn type style that I have been experimenting with in a series of greetings stamps for An Post.



Whether or not the Synth Eastwood crew have any interest in the poster is another question altogether.

Lay-offs abound

The other day I was put in mind of a good book I read last year: Then We Came to the End, by Joshua Ferris. The tale is set in a high-end Chicago advertising agency, which, in these belt-tightening times, appears to be spiralling down the swanny – and fast. Those who have worked in an office environment will recognise the nuances of the story and the variety of personalities throughout; those who have experienced said office life in a ‘creative industry’ environment will appreciate them even more. Email perils, lunch-break politics, forced conversation and niceties, distractions, gossip, corporate camaraderie, the group dynamic, the creative process and the myriad opportunities for timesheet padding. Add to these the introverted, skeptical stirrings of regret, insecurity, isolation, mental block, purposelessness, lack of self-worth…the list goes on. And if all of that wasn’t bad enough, now the firm are letting people go.

After he left college, the author worked as a copywriter for an Ad agency for three years. He was “fascinated by the behemoth structure in place – the hierarchies, the coded messages, the power struggles… such an awesome, malignant, necessary, pervasive, inscrutable place deserved a novel’s attention.” In terms of what his Then We Came to the End creative department would produce in terms of a slogan to promote his book, Ferris conceded: “They wouldn’t have a single clue. They would bemoan the assignment while being happy to have a job to bill time to. After a couple of days they’d get down to business and feel woefully inadequate to the task. Eventually something would emerge, but there would be no consensus. The book would disappear from bookstores within two weeks and the firm would go bankrupt.”

It was after discovering this brilliant website that I wanted to write a few words about this book. The site is laid out as a blueprint of the office floor. Echoes of the creatives' deepest thoughts and daydreams reverberate around the walls. The dull groan of the photocopier is just audible over the whirr of servers and other overheated hardware. There are even links to some of the characters’ MySpace pages. I never encountered a book so meticulously supported before. Maybe there are lots of other examples, but this is the first I’ve ever discovered. The teaser below, as well as the interview used above can also be found on the site.