funny that a friends of mine at apartment studios, cape town, did more or less same work for travelstart and i think a year or two before landor associates.

i would not go so far to say that mike staniford, jason little and tim warren from landor deliberately damian stephens and anne-sophie liens work, i think this is just an example that designers and artists are producing more and more and more and more stuff and to be different one just has to be very very different and not just a little bit different.

making pretty cool things for branding nowdays just does not work – it really has to be out there crazy fucking shit to grab any attention and remain memorable, theres just so much stuff being produced.

there is a tendency in my behavior to choose very particular groups with areas: internet art within art (hobby), ironman triathlon within sports (recreation) and internet design within design (career). not only these groups are marginal but this is not enough for me but i try as hard as i can to be quite disconnected from the groups themselves while i always linger around some obscure imaginary level which is neither top nor bottom, maybe closer to top actually and i reach it quick but i do not progress.

internet art is super obscure, ironman triathlon as well is a bizarre sport, and designing for internet, especially the way i imagine i should do it, is again one of the most marginal of all design trades.

i never feel comfortable, i am always nervous and frustrated by how things are… it is like constant… and stupid…

very strange all these selections.

i should have chosen to paint, play football and sell socks.

climbing social hierarchy, although often overestimated as the greatest challenge for the human brain, is super easy, if you give a fuck about it that is. to get anything done you have to care about it. and i noticed for me it is easy to climb it up to a certain point and then i get bored and do something else. i ended up with knowing a lot of people in different areas but not having my roots anywhere.

i wonder if this is a state of things for people my age, if this is same for everybody, or just me…

first of all why would i, serb i south africa, care about barack obama. there are few reasons:

it is super scary that people are so obsessed with one individual. never in the history of the humanity has one individual had such scary super organized media access to billions world wide. it really is scary. such uniformity, such design, such calculation. and most scary is that people worldwide, of course, react to it.

after having a one idiot after another (clinton who fucked up my part of the world, and than bush who fucked another part of the world) i can not really blame anyone to be in love with barack obama. he is like a fresh lemonade after 8 years of headache. few billion people have been so disappointed by past usa president’s general lack of humanity, basic education and wish to understand anything beyond temporary profits, that anyone seeming human must be super loved.

but it is dangerous that one guy is so loved.

who is this guy anyway – barack obama. all i can see is a well organize campaign. obviously great branding and advertising project. he is a natural with media and such stuff, he knows what to say and when to smile, he is likable and says the right things. above described situation makes it easy for him.

however he deals with super abstract terms like hope and good and change. these words mean nothing in reality but i can just see some branding / ad / pr guy thinking it all up, how people will react to it.

barack obama is a good marketing campaign, and unlike detergents and soft drinks, he has no competition, so he can pretty much take it as far as he wants.

but, as i was reading the latest economist, he is starting to fuck up. standards set by uncontrolled marketing and probably not possible to reach.

it is my impression that within next one or two years it will be clear that there is a big difference between his marketing and reality. after all usa presidents are usa presidents – they are politicians with very clear goals which have not changed for centuries. one should not expect a wolf to be a sheep or sheep to be a wolf.

i have nothing against politics, usa or presidents, but i am always scared by huge centralization of emotional focus on one individual. whoever controls that one individual has the power.

i have been a bit quiet.

i had some work to do for a client of mine which is going online soon. as always, working with clients for me is both hell and heaven. this is a very fresh young startup and i enjoy that very much. the client is an old friend which is awesome as well. however, i noticed the main issue with my work, or work of most design / branding / consultants i to gain authority and trust of clients.

when i was younger i thought this to be a problem of my age but than i met some old school legacy designers who had the same problem. and some superstar tough consultants as well strougled with similar issues. so i guess it is a problem of the trade. i think since people actually questions doctors and lawyers in crucial moments, they will definitely question branding consultants and strategists.

my work is 90% convincing clients just to do what my experience and instintincts tell me should be done. if i would have absolute authority (impossible) than i would work 90% less and my clients would save 90% of the money. however huge amounts of time, energy and money are spent on battling between internal authorities.

this problem was most evident in environments during my work in italy, when i worked for companies with much bigger budgets. the distortion of reality due to power struggles was amazing and i just decided this was not a healthy atmosphere for me.

i love my work and i believe i am extremely efficient at my work. however i focus on quality of projects and consider the politics to be a distraction from the project. like a samurai i dedicate myself as much as i can to the end goal of the project and i do not care much for being the most loved guy in the office.

this attitude (methodology) is both my choice and my genetic makeup. also i think it is something which makes me different and therefore interesting as a consultant. in a world where there are millions of consultants and clients can not really tell what they need to shop for first and what is the actual difference between one or the other, it is important to have my own thing. and i am lucky to have it.

so i have been enjoying and hating work for the past week.

and training.

also i quit neen but thats a long story in itself which i am not in a mood to write about now.

i discovered sasha grey and not through porn sites.

i do not actually remember how i discovered her… it was only few hours ago.

ah yeah! through her interview on tyra banks.

anyway…

in my research for my work i have played with the morality of working for politicians and porn stars. both are very controversial yet super professional and dedicated. as much as i like the motivation they poses (they are in highly competitive arenas where image is everything) i am also very opinionated about a lot of stuff and very individual as well – i do not know if i could divide my professional services with my views and where is the limit in such division.

anyway…

i found sasha grey and she seems to know what she is doing. or she has a very good team of people who all know what they are doing. she only lacks someone to do her web pr a bit better but obviously that is not her priority or maybe it is good she is still a bit hard to find online.

my impression is that she is well designed and she controls it well. she obviously hired the right people and is projecting the right kind of image to attract the right kind of people. definition of right is very loose here, whatever gives broadest results.

she started only few years ago in porn and is maybe the first porn star to make a move from porn into mainstream film with a role in soderbergh film (or not?).

ciccolina is actually one of the most successfull porn stars when it comes to transitions thanks to her marriage to jeff koons and work in italian parliament, and after her moana pozzi and many others (some maybe before her).

so sasha grey is not so very creative and not really the future of anything. she is simply now. if she was the future she would not be popular now. she is pushing the whole porn into mainstream thing few pixels further. her porn work is, i am guessing, i haven’t seen it yet, super boring just as most porn usually is. porn has to be boring anyway – no one consumes porn for entertainment but because of the sexual energy release.

but it is refreshing to see someone like sasha grey pop up from time to time. she brands herself very well in all aspects. she figured out how to act in porn, on youtube and on tyra banks etc… she is very young so she is smart for her age, or just super talented in this one ability to manipulate media for her own gain. she is interesting enough for this post.

i am not so much into porn and media to really stay up to date with everything that pops up but sasha is someone i might think of working with. partially just because today she seems popular and motivated and that is always good material, and partially because it is something new and challenging for me.

google sasha grey a bit and you might be entertained not only sexually, she produces a bit more content than just pure sex.

on these six sites i’ve had some 90 000 unique visits during october. this is not much but it was more than 15% increase over september. also none of these websites are commercial and are super niche (running in serbia, fake sarcastic news blog, triathlon in south africa, this crazy blog…). i did not have any ambitions on doing anything for the masses yet.

i also installed one more wordress website and i installed openads so i can start managing ads on some of my websites.

although i am super frustrated by some code errors i am not able to fix i am happy that i am progressing with all the web stuff. internet is much richer since ive first started and now i need to keep my eyes open all the time. there are so many things i have to be up-to-date with. its 24/7 job.

but i love it.

syd mead’s illustrations make me feel like at home, they make me remember my childhood, elementary school, playing in front of a building with other kids, no cell phones and going to the store to buy groceries for my mom. my favourite reading of that period of my life were freud, jung, clive baker, steven king and of course howard phillips lovecraft. i was so happy to learn that my, than favourite band, metallica, made a song inspired by lovecraft’s work: the call of kthullu. a book and a song i really enjoyed. this is like between 6th and 8th grade of elementary school.

the emotional reaction that syd mead created with me – i analyze it and i wish i could create this for my clients. this is absolute goal of branding. that something so silly becomes such a strong part of your life. that it becomes nostalgic. branding might be, in essence, about sadness and the loss of time.

it is good for kids like me, who grew up with so little brands, to work in branding, since we are so sensitive to it.

check out sydmead.com