As we are moving to a new space, I led the office redesign by collaborating with Thailand based architects 'Supermachine Studio'. As a wannabe architect it was a very exciting project for me. It's a smaller space, and a conservative budget, but we have a good plan to inject some fun, energy, and youthfulness into our workplace. Actual photos to be posted upon completion.
We recently beat out two other agencies for the coveted beer brand's relaunch into the Thai market. “Carlsberg is one of the world's great beer brands and a former Lovemark of many Thai consumers. Many people have been waiting for this day,” said Joel Clement, a bangkok-based regional creative director for Saatchi & Saatchi who led the creative portion of the pitch. “Although distribution will roll out gradually, this is a very significant win for the office. As Carlsberg find their way back into the Thai market, they are a perfect partner for the agency which is undergoing a bit of a reincarnation itself.”
andy and i are just winding down a busy season of tribes (on location idea generating workshops). pics here are taken on the roof of saatchi vietnam where we just completed 3 days on carlsberg which netted a nice big regional idea with local applications. shortly after, we did a tribe for kraft/tiger biskuat in singapore for the indonesian, philippines and malaysian markets. a week later we worked on a mead johnson tribe in singapore- this generated 3 big ideas for a regional campaign. next week we're in malaysia for an ariel tribe. these are a great tool for cracking tough briefs and usually yield a lot of big integrated ideas.
i took a sabbatical during 2010 to attend the summer academy in architecture at the university of texas in austin. it was amazing. it's the top ranked public university for undergrad studies in architecture and i found out why. the program is a very intensive 5 week foray into the subject. we learned an immense amount in just a month and a half. it was a lot of work and i probably slept an average of 5 hours each night for the entire duration. but it was well worth it and one of the best adventures i have ever embarked on. i had started a blog at http://summerarchstudyaustin.blogspot.com/ but i was just to busy to update it.
my friends at adobo asked me to write a review of a sampling of work. the pieces are primarily from the araw awards which i had the pleasure of judging in manila.
to celebrate His Majesty the King's 82nd birthday, i designed and printed these t-shirts which i gave to friends, family, and co-workers.
It was such a violent fire that several big noisy red trucks from the Peterborough Fire Department had to respond to the call. Joel and his friend had been playing with matches. He was only six years old but had managed to burn down a huge swath of pine forest behind his childhood home in New Hampshire. Later that year, the elementary school where Joel was a skinny little first grader held a poster contest for the annual Fire Prevention Week. As you can deduct, he had a wonderful life experience to draw upon and that insight led him to a concept based loosely on ‘Keep matches away from children.’ The coveted first place prize, a shiny trophy of a fireman poised with hose, sits on Joel’s desk today. Out of all the countless gold, silver, and bronze Cannes Lions, Clios, and One Show Pencils he has won, it is the only advertising award he has ever kept. Neither Alex Bogusky, Jeff Goodby, nor Dan Weiden have one of those.
works in progress! one obviously needs to get a lot of crap out of their system first...
the most recent design (december 2009) in early stages of the model. i'm sure i am still many designs away from the 'one', but it's quite an amusing hobby anyway.
tired of those judges bio's in which they all claim to be the most awarded creative director in the world?
the school of visual arts presented 'the wilde years: four decades of shaping visual culture,' an exhibition that celebrates creative professionals who have graduated from the advertising and design department of sva. organised in recognition of department chair richard wilde's 40th anniversary at the college, the show featured iconic and culturally significant works by select alumni from all four decades of wilde's tenure. says richard wilde: 'i am inspired by these alumni and their accomplishments. many have become some of the most influential and creative people working in the business today.' thanks richard!
this was one of the first projects i worked on at saatchi back in 2005. it was for amnesty international's letter writing program in which ordinary people were asked to write letters to dictators and leaders around the world asking for change. the topics had personal interest to us. it was fun but intensive, and it went on to win gold at cannes.
inlingua wanted to dispel the myth that learning a foreign language was a daunting task requiring years of study. chung and i offered this solution for inlingua's rapid language program. the future star photographer jason ness (jasonness.com) and an amazing retoucher named stit in bangkok brought their talents to these ads. just picked up silver at adfest.
for wonderbra we created this series shot by the great photographer allan myles and his producer extraordinaire kate downie. we avoided all the big boob jokes (they always seem aimed at men rather than the real consumer-women) and instead used the 3D red and blue lines to suggest that wearing a wonderbra would give you more dimension and help you to stand out in a crowd. it helped us stand out with a silver lion at cannes, a gold clio, and 3 silver clios among a slew of other gold international awards. came in 10th most awarded campaign in the world by gunn report.
i love architecture. in my spare time i design and build scale models of houses that i may someday live in. i have a whole room in my condo full of these.
cu chi vietnam. fighting off the americans is not that difficult if you construct 200 km of tunnels underground as your military base. the typography plays off vietnamese script which is romanised with all sorts of accent marks. we simply (actually painstakingly) added them to our handcrafted type that was inspired by the prevalence of hand painted signage everywhere in the country. it was worth the labor as it picked up a lion at cannes and a gold at adfest.
