I have begun a new project, or rather, have revived an old one, but this time I am shooting it digitally – The Crystal City.

And here is one of them…

The Films page on this website has been updated. I have upgraded my digital media production facility, so I can take media production all the way through from initial concept and copywriting to post-production and release.

Also, the Films page contains an update on the current status of My Asian Heart, the documentary film on the multiple award-winning Bangkok-based Australian photojournalist Philip Blenkinsop that I conceived, researched and wrote and that David Bradbury is now directing. From now on I will be doing it all, directing and writing.

I have just added a number of freely downloadable PDFs of interviews I have done with famous photographers, many of them working in the area of fashion. Most of these were written for Black+White magazine, when I was its European Contributing Editor based in London, while I was also working for agencies like The Leagas Delaney Partnership, Saatchi & Saatchi and AMX Digital.

Andrew Douglas, formerly of The Douglas Brothers

The interviews are available on this website’s Magazine Articles page.

Here is the complete list:

• Albert Watson
• Anderson & Low
• Andrew Douglas
• Brian Griffin
• Bruce Weber
• Daniela Federici
• David Bailey
• David Burnett
• David Hamilton
• Don McCullin
• Duane Michals
• Fabrizio Ferri
• Geof Kern
• Greg Gorman
• Guzman
• Jan Saudek
• Javier Vallhonrat
• Jean-Baptiste Mondino
• Joyce Baronio
• Joyce Tenneson
• Larry Fink
• Malcolm Pasley
• Mario Testino
• Martin Parr
• Olaf Martens
• Patrick Demarchelier
• Peter Lindbergh
• Richard Avedon
• Robert Farber
• Spencer Tunick
• Stephane Sednaoui
• The Douglas Brothers

Enjoy!

These PDFs are intended for use as learning aids, and I encourage their distribution. Please note, though, that I retain full copyright and moral rights, so if you wish to reproduce these in print or on the Web then please ask my permission first.

I have a new digital camera – the Canon G10 compact rangefinder. It is, essentially, just about a professional camera in the guise of a consumer model. Here are two photographs I did the day I picked it up – everything set at Auto.

The camera has rather remarkable image quality – and an excellent lack of noticeable lag between pressing the shutter and making the image. These two images have been shrunk down from the original JPEG – in future I shall shoot in the RAW format exclusively instead of JPEG – with no enhancement beyond some minor sharpening.

Lightplay

Greetings

I’ve pioneered a few forms of communication, especially online via the Web, over the years, and it’s been fun, but you do pay a price for being a pioneer. Back in 1999 I tried to create a viable digitally-published magazine, and the price I paid was overwork, then burn-out.

Nonetheless, for the duration of its all-too-short life, the magazine was enormously successful, at 210,000 *readers worldwide, and some of the innovations I created for it – in online advertising and Web editorial layout – are now finding their way into other, newer, digital magazines.

Even better, the features I needed so badly in order to produce the magazine exactly as I had visualized it are finally about to find their way into mainstream design and publishing software. Adobe Creative Suite 4 has not been released yet, but I’ve been reading about what is coming through its integration of InDesign CS4 with Flash CS4 Professional, and some new key features are precisely what I needed nine years ago.

My magazine was to be designed with all the care and quality of a print publication, delivered as a multi-page Flash file, allowing for deep interactivity in the advertising and editorial pages, with beautiful typography and excellent readability. To get even close to that though, with the software of the day, I had to make a few too many compromises and so I created it in XHTML and CSS, with embedded Flash, and published it to the Web, with a cut-down PDF version available on demand.

Nine years ago I was in regular contact with three software firms – Adobe, Macromedia and SoftPress (makers of Freeway) – and each of them was promising me that the features I needed were “coming real soon now.” Sadly, as it turned out, none of the three were even close to the mark, so I had to do it all by hand, in several different packages, taking too long, with too much effort.

It has taken Adobe’s purchase of Macromedia to give me what I wanted, at long last, and I look forward to trying out CS4 when it is available in Australia soon.

Adobe's InDesign Magazine as a Flash digital publication.

* 210,000 regular readers for an independently published digital magazine, coming out of Australia. I found it hard to believe, and am still amazed, but the techies who provided the hosting services for it around the world insisted those numbers were correct.

A rather challenging project has landed on my desk. It is confidential, so I cannot talk of specifics here, save to say that it is to do with human rights, that it will be created in sisomo – sight, sound, motion, and that the stories must be told with complete anonymity – no recognizable names, voices, faces, even places.

The project also comes with no funding attached, and given its specifics it is extremely unlikely that the traditional documentary film funding bodies will be the slightest bit interested. Human rights and other humanitarian organizations, some of them at any rate, are aware of the problem this project is about but have passed on it.

The lack of funding is not an issue – there are ways and means, and pro bono clients have provided opportunities to do brilliant, groundbreaking work in the past. The very necessary anonymity is not such a big barrier either, with a small dose of lateral thinking. The stories are amazing ones, of the “there I go but for…” kind that we can all identify with to some degree. And, they really do need to be told.

Well, I’ve never been one to refuse a challenge, so here we go!

I’ve not caught up with Saatchi & Saatchi Worldwide CEO Kevin Roberts’ blog for a little while, so it was time to do a quick scan, and I came across this inspirational post – A Job for the Future.

In it, Roberts writes about the hot careers of the future, using simpler and more direct names for them than the kind currently in use, because, he says, “The wrong job title will not lead to the right job. People are bored with yesterday’s jobs, or job titles. Change the language and you change the game.”

How right he is! Yesterday’s jobs, today’s jobs for most still, have titles that don’t truly describe, and that certainly don’t inspire, and the jobs themselves seem to be about the institutionalization of repetition instead of the search for the new, the exciting and the productive.

The hot careers of the future, according to Kevin Roberts, are:

• Storyteller
• Creative Connector
• Paradox Player
• Sisomo Magician
• Professional Optimist

That’s the job I want, now, and not off in the future sometime. And if I sound a little ambitious, then the fact is that I have already done what I describe above – anyone who wants to be an entrepreneur, or is forced to as I have been, is required to wear several hats at once.

I’d settle for Sisomo Storyteller, though. Sisomo = sight, sound, motion, and I find myself reliving, in dreams, old visions of multimedia storytelling that I had as a child but that was beyond the technology of the time. Now that technology is here.

Here’s a phrase from the post that I really like: “Where storyteller merges into mythmaker, that’s where the future lies.” YES! Myth amazes, inspires and reminds us that there still is mystery in this world. Great brand stories, such as the ones told in the books mentioned in my previous two posts, can verge on myth.

Roberts is right, too, in stating that the game can change – in fact, it must change.

Today I scoured the Sydney inner city bookstores for some of the Cyan books in their Great Brand Stories series, and found one! So they are available in Australia, or at least one title from the series at any rate.

The one I bought today is named Dyson The domestic engineer: How Dyson changed the meaning of cleaning, by Iain Carruthers, published in 2007, ISBN-13 978-1-904879-79-4, ISBN-10 1-904879-79-9

The text on the inside front flap states: “Great brand stories is a series that sets out to tell the inspiring stories of some of today’s top brands. Edited by brand expert John Simmons, the books focus on brands that have not only reaped huge profits for their owners, but also established themselves as icons of contemporary society.”

I look forward to reading Dyson shortly. And, good one, John! Thank you for editing this innovative series of books.

Here, then, is the list of Great Brand Stories books that I know about so far.

• Adidas All Day I Dream About Sport: The story of the adidas brand, by Conrad Brunner [I have a personal interest in reading this book - adidas was a client of mine when I worked in the UK.]
• Arsenal Winning Together: The story of the Arsenal brand, by John Simmons & Matt Simmons
• Banyan Tree A Brand Born of Romance, by Andy Milligan
• Beckham The Story of How Brand Beckham was Built, by Andy Milligan
• Dyson The domestic engineer: How Dyson changed the meaning of cleaning, by Iain Carruthers
• eBay The Story of a Brand that Taught Millions of People to Trust One Another, by Elen Lewis
• Google Search Me: The surprising success of Google, by Neil Taylor
• Guinness Guinness is Guinness: The colorful story of a black and white brand, by Mark Griffiths
• Harry Potter Wizard!: Harry Potter’s magic brand, by Stephen Brown
• Ikea A Brand for All the People, by Elen Lewis
• Innocent Building a Brand from Nothing but Fruit, by John Simmons
• Premium Bonds Nice Little Ernie: A 21st Century National Treasure, by Mark Griffiths
• Scotch Whisky Creative Fire: The story of Scotland’s greatest export, by Stuart Delves
• Starbucks My Sister’s a Barista: How they made Starbucks a home away from home, by John Simmons
• United States Brand America: The mother of all brands, by Simon Anholt & Jeremy Hildreth

I had a rather promising meeting yesterday where the subject of creative writing in business came up. What we know as business writing, aka pr, aka marketing communications, aka marcomms can be pretty dire, dry and formulaic stuff, whereas creative writing in business – telling great stories about businesses – is a whole other kettle of fish.

The manager I was meeting with produced a printed copy of my 9 Lessons from “Black+White” e-book and asked me if I could do something like that for her organization. She hadn’t got the e-book from this website – it had been given to her. Amazing how these things go viral.

I first began thinking about the crying need for great creative writing for business – as opposed to reporting, marcomms or advertising copywriting – well over a decade ago, when I was freelancing for the major Australian business magazines and newspapers, but everyone I spoke to about my ideas thought I was nuts. I knew I wasn’t, of course, but nothing came of it then.

Even now, though, it seems, few if any people I speak to about it here in Australia know what I am talking about. That’s kind of like Black+White all over again. So, clearly, I shall have to articulate all this much better.

Luckily there are some people who do understand the concepts underlying creative business writing, and the reasons for it, and its enormous value. John Simmons, formerly of Interbrand, was one of the first to write about these same ideas. He has written three terrific books on the subject:

• We, me, them and it
• The Invisible Grail
• Dark Angels

John also wrote these:

• My Sister’s a Barista: How They Made Starbucks a Home Away from Home
• Innocent: Building a Brand from Nothing but Fruit
  

John edited or co-edited these:

• Common Ground: Around Britain in 30 Writers
• From Here to Here: Stories Inspired by London’s Circle Line
• The Bard & Co: Shakespeare’s Role in Modern Business
  

Cyan Books in the UK publishes a large number of books telling the story of specific brands – I wish their books were easy to find here. Look for their Great Brand Stories and Great Asian Brands series.

And, here are links to three important organizations John is a part of:

• 26
• Dark Angels
• TheWriter

I shall write more about this topic soon. But meantime, John said this to me the other day: “All I can say is keep plugging away – there’s great value in persistence.” Indeed!

I’ve just received the following from a friend who works at Canon in Australia.

Renowned (Pulitzer Prize-winning) photographer Vincent Laforet got his hands on a pre-production 5D Mk II, and here’s the result:

http://www.usa.canon.com/dlc/controller?act=GetArticleAct&articleID=2086

The behind the scenes video is here:
http://blog.vincentlaforet.com/2008/09/23/behind-the-scenes-video/

This changes everything in video and stills photography. You’ll see why.