30 years ago I was a student trying to get into the business and Dave Morris was one of my course lecturers. Today he visits the leading advertising colleges in Milan, Amsterdam and England and has luminaries such as Dave Trott singing his praises....
Creatives in Japan are currently up in arms about a new form of censorship legislation which is in the process of being approved by the authorities. The Federal Province of Tokyo has made it illegal for creative companies to portray any female...
This week, the soothsayers at BBC's weather centre promised me the dizzying heights of 22 degrees Celsius. Frankly, that would make a nice change because spring so far this year has been rubbish. If I didn't know better, I'd say that there was some...
Rishi Dastidar is a copywriter for ad agency archibald ingall stretton. When he's not doing that, he pretends he's a digital native at his blog Being Beta. When hes not doing that, he pretends he's a poet. And when he's not doing that, he sits on the...
Would you like to own Twitter? I'm not selling it or anything, so don't reach for your cheque book just yet. But if you were richer than golden syrup, I'm guessing you might be tempted. Only, here's a note of caution Twitter has yet to make a penny...
Today it has been announced that a Paddy Power advert depicting a team of blind footballers who mistake a cat for a ball during a match, has been banned. This can't come as any surprise to the bookmaking giants who are no strangers to controversy as...
A friend of mine is trying to buy his first flat, finally getting on to the property ladder in his mid-thirties. Not his fault, of course - he works like a B-word - but such is the cost of living in London. So anyway, last weekend, I accompanied this...
Getting paid to be creative is for the most part, brilliant. You get to run down the deepest rabbit holes of your imagination, retrieve the most far fetched and wildest ideas and then present them to the wider world. There are other perks such as not...
Like a lot of people in the creative industries, I feel underpaid. Unless you are fairly senior or have built an impressive range of clients for your freelance portfolio, I would almost bet that most of you think you're worth more than you currently...
Nick Warren is an adventurous sort of chap. Not only is he a sailor who's taken the Atlantic Ocean, a shipwreck and a hurricane in his stride, today he is Managing Director of the digital agency Semantic , the UK's most relaxed web studio. Hi Nick....
There is a grand tradition of animosity and grudge amongst any era's foremost artists. Just think of the squabbles between Picasso and Matisse or even Michelangelo and Leonardo. But these cultural showdowns rarely take place on the towpath of the...
A Dutch artist who goes by the name of Sander Reijgers has taken ethical fashion to the extreme by creating a series of coats and tracksuits made from recycled sex dolls. Some of the pieces feature a patchwork of body parts taken from the dolls (and...
I love my Ford Focus. I've had it for ten years almost to the day and only now is it starting to grumble for the first time with 90,000 miles on the clock. It's reliable, solid, still looks lovely (in my eyes) and takes corners like it's on rails....
Over the coming weeks I am going to sniff out some exciting creative entrepreneurs who will hopefully give you a little hope and encouragement if you are in the process of setting up your own business. I used to go to University down in Brighton and...
Do you know what Farmville is? If not, lucky you. I do, unfortunately. Long story short, it's a Facebook application where you can tend to your own virtual farm: buying crops, animals, outbuildings...and last year you could even buy fireworks for New...
In Shanghai, the talk is of one thing only. It stands 60 feet high, looks like a giant pincushion and it sways in the breeze. It's called The Seed Cathedral and we, the people of the United Kingdom, have sent it as a gift. Seed Cathedral is no...
I'm blogging this week from sunny Malta. I'm not showing off (well, maybe just a bit - I did brush shoulders with La Toya Jackson in the marina this afternoon, as it happens) but I'm mentioning that I'm in Malta because I was interested and slightly...
James Norrington is Creative Director of the brand engagement agency Avvio. Multi-talented, he's a digital designer, graphic designer, 3d designer and a dab hand at video editing. He's also a pretty impressive wind-surfer and skier. James, you...
In 1978 a poster appeared in the high streets of Britain. Placed by Saatchi & Saatchi for the Conservatives, it showed a long line of workless Britons under the line 'Labour Isn't Working'. That poster is now widely considered to have been...
There is a lot of ugly footwear on the high street these days, from high-heeled wellies to trainers with a camel toe feature; the recent developments in the realms of Average Joe shoe design have been well and truly shocking. However, few...
Last week, Michael (MD of Creativepool and my boss at least some of the time, as far as blogging is concerned) sent out an email entitled "We are not a recruitment agency!" Bold words, you might think, given that the one-liner under the email...
Theo Delaney is a multi award-winning director of advertising commercials. His work is predominantly comedy based and his love of football is a major influence on his work. He is a lifelong supporter of Tottenham Hotspur and regularly appears on The...
Who would have thought that the little black beauty with its greasy rubber keys and a power cable more sensitive than Prescott's gag reflex would still have so many fans? On Thursday, RamJam released this animated video to Richy Pitchs new single...
This creativepool blog is a great way to find out more about the people who work in the creative industries and hear how they do what they do. My plan is, every two weeks, to chat with lots of different creative people from around the world. Today...
Upon deciding that Brooklyn creative agency Labour were to be the first topic of my first Creativepool blog, you cannot begin to imagine how long I toyed with the idea of a political pun for the blog title. So long, in fact, that I was beginning to...
There may be "an app for just about anything", but have we gone a bit nuts over the iPhone? Boys with toys. A bit of a generalisation, as rhyming adages go, but one which I think is more true today than ever before. No matter how old I get (and...
As with so many wonderful things, the Meerkat was first introduced to us by Sir David Attenborough. In the 1980s documentary Meerkats United' we discovered they are not cats, they reach sexual maturity aged one and they speak' to each other. It...
I have big hands. Lumberjack hands. Hands so large they drag along the ground behind me. There are advantages to this. For example, big hands are good if you want to be a goalkeeper or play the piano. They're great for banging the table and waving...
Back in 2008 Brit Insurance and the Design Museum teamed up to bring us the Brit Insurance Design Award an international, annual award ceremony and supporting exhibition for up and coming designers in the categories of architecture, fashion,...
Making predictions in the current market is verging on the impossible. Commentators across the board have varying views on how it is going to pan out and how long the recovery is going to take. One thing that everyone agrees on is that 2009 is going...
Last night it was announced that the British Designer Samuel Wilkinson and the supporting product design company Hulger have scooped the Brit Insurance Design of the Year award with their innovative redesign of the low-energy light bulb. The award...
