Creative Skirts

A Web site to make your day

Turn on your speakers and go to: http://orbasquara.com/

So delightful in its functionality, writing and art direction. I just love.

Stop motion at its finest

I could watch this a zillion times over. Sweet song, too.

origins

I think the copy says: Though she was a tiger lady, our hero didn't have to fire a shot to floor her. After one look at his Mr Leggs slacks, she was ready to have him walk all over her. That noble styling sure soothes the savage heart! If you'd like your own doll-to-doll carpeting, hunt up a pair of these he-man Mr. Leggs slacks. Such as our new automatic wash wear blend of 65% "Dacron" and 35% rayon - incomparably wrinkle-resistant. About $12.95 at plush-carpeted stores."
"Get yourself a new pair of Mr. Leggs." 

Social change takes a while.
But with ads like this running in, I dunno, the 60's... it feels like women's liberation (or whatever) in America skyrocketed in the past 50 years.

Not making a point. I'm just sayin'.

At least 20 minutes' worth of inspiration

Miranda July. I want to be her.

When you need a brain break, take a look at one of her latest creative endeavors: a book of random submissions to creative "assignments" she and artist Harrell Fletcher gave to the world. It's what we would have ended up with if we'd have compiled all our Fenske Creative Thinking assignments.
But we didn't.

The book contains just the best of the best submissions, but there's a whole web site full of the rest, where you can also check out the assignments and conduct your own little Creative Thinking 102:
www.learningtoloveyoumore.com

I also got a kick out of Miranda's web site promoting her award-winning book of short stories.

noonebelongsheremorethanyou.com

Advertising is one giant gondola

Sometimes you find pioneers in the strangest places. Meet Alexandra Hai, Venice's first female gondolier. The city's staple tourist attraction has been around for more than 1,000 years and has only today, in 2007, 50 years after the feminist movement, accepted a woman as a face of the industry.

Sound familiar? So do the comments made by Venice's all-male gondoliers. Comments like, "it is a question of skill and not sex." I couldn't help think of Neil French when I read that line. It's amazing that I can draw a parallel between a city that is rooted in tradition and petrified of change and an industry that thrives on it.

Alexandra Hai isn't even Italian. She's German and has lived in Venice for 11 years, most of which have been spent fighting for her right to be a gondolier. For some reason, this makes me want to root for her even more; a foreigner and a woman, she has everything working against her. But, she's determined to change the face of her industry, and she looks pretty cool too. We can all learn something from her story, which just goes to show you that the boys club exists even at the most basic corporate levels.

Read the article at New York Times, May 13th

Girls go Tech

I wasn't a big fan of girlscouts. We made snowglobes and rice crispy treats. We never went camping.

I'd heard about this campaign by Kaplan Thaler and explored the website after seeing a banner ad for it on myspace.

Does anyone with a girlscout know if they're getting more techy? ... How cool would it be to go to girlscouts science camp during the summer?! I'd want to do that myself!

The Next Media Empire?

Most women who have taken any part in a wedding recently are aware of TheKnot.com.  While the site is girly-central, the woman who runs it is anything but what you'd expect.

Carley Roney says she began the site to help today's businesswoman tackle getting married. "There's a lot of money in [the wedding] industry, particularly related to the Internet.  And it is completely cluttered and disorganized.  The Web was a low-barrier domain to aggregate everything a bride needed." [interview with LadiesWhoLaunch]

Roney and her husband, David Liu, founded TheKnot.com in 1996, it has grown to be able to boast 3.2 million unique visitors each month, as well as 3,000+ new members joining each day.  And the growth didn't stop with the site:

2000   Interactive Wedding-Planning series with TODAY Show
          Complete Guide to Weddings in the Real World is published
          Ultimate Wedding Planner is published
2001   WEDDINGPAGES Magazine is launched
          Guide to Wedding Vows and Traditions is published
2002   Partnership with May Department Stores
          Book of Wedding Gowns is published
2003   Real Weddings From the Knot airs on The Oxygen Network
          sister site PromSpot.com is launched for prom preparations
          Book of Wedding Flowers is published
2004   The Knot Magazine is launched
2005   Guide for the Groom is published
          Guide for the Mother of the Bride is published
2006   Partnership with WeddingChannel.com
          sister site TheNest.com is launched for newly marrieds
          The Nest Newlywed Handbook is published

Throughout it all Roney and Lui have also raised there two children, Cairo and Havana.  Sadly, she said this to ModernMom.com on the subject of balance:

ModernMom.com: What is a typical day like for you?

Roney: Up at 7am. Give my babies breakfast. Babysitter arrives at 7:30. Jump in shower. All rush out the door at 8. Work is always a mad dash from meeting to meeting - while trying to steal time away to make headway on more strategic projects. If I don't have some work event or dinner, I rush to get home before my babies have their bath - 7ish so I can wash them, read books, and put them to bed. Dinner always happens after.

ModernMom.com: If you had an extra hour each day how would you spend it?

Roney: No question, with my kids. I would take it in the middle of the day, bring salami sandwiches, and take them to the playground. I love the playground, I could stay there and play chase with them for hours.

Crazy awesome images

From "Monkey Portraits," a photo project by Jill Greenberg

In this month's Creativity:
"Noted celeb portraitist Jill Greenberg has ventured well off the beaten path in her new book, Monkey Portraits...which puts monkeys in the studio as if they were people--and indeed they practically are. As Greenberg notes in the introduction, their expressions are so human and ther intelligence so obvious, 'I realized I had discovered a new subject, one perfect for social commentary. These animals' expressions allow an interpretation that can be perceived as passing judgment on the behavior of their genetic cousins.'"

She's an incredible digital enhancer. Check out her portfolio at Manipulator.com

 

A Glimpse at an Amazing Career

Tom McElligott's lengthy, but inspiring introduction of Nancy Rice at her Art Director's Hall of Fame induction.

There's a story about a copywriter who once slammed his fist through Nancy Rice's office wall in a fit of frustration. The story is true. The writer in question had just learned a painful lesson: when working with Nancy, it's best to check your ego at the door. As everyone discovers sooner or later, she will not be intimidated, cajoled, coerced, threatened, lambasted, bribed, begged, bored or even complimented into accepting an idea--hers or yours--unless and until she's convinced of its rightness and originality.

That's not to suggest that she was ever one to lose her temper or behave with anything less than grace and aplomb. On the contrary, when confronted with a bad idea she had a simple and effective solution. Nancy would sit back from her drawing board and patiently wait until her sometimes exasperated creative partner was ready to return to the hard work and, yes, fun of making great advertising.

Nancy has always had a way of keeping people honest, of getting the best from both herself and others. Sometimes when it meant serious sacrifice on her part. Sometimes, in fact, when it would have been far, far easier for her to have settled for pretty good rather that great. Compromise was just never part of her vocabulary.

She was born Nancy Coleman in 1948 in a small town on the Minnesota prairie called Clara City, where the tallest building was a grain elevator. Right square in the middle of flyover land, to modest parents of Irish/German descent in a modest home. Eighteen years later, after her family had moved to the Twin Cities, Nancy's obvious artistic gifts got her into the Minneapolis College of Art and Design--an experience she still credits with opening her eyes to a world of possibilities.

Working three jobs she paid her way through school, marrying fellow student Nick Rice in her senior year. Following graduation she landed a job at Knox Reeves, one of the Twin Cities better ad agencies. When Knox Reeves hit a bad patch and folded in 1974, it was bought by Bozell and Jacobs and Nancy stayed on.

Gradually at first and then with increasing frequency she had by now begun to turn out smart, witty and hard-to-ignore ads for a variety of clients. Tellingly, every writer she worked with seemed to get better, yet when it came time to share credit she always bent over backwards.

Soon she was winning local and even national awards and getting regular calls from headhunters. As she now remembers when looking back, she was pleasantly astonished at her own burgeoning success. Then, in 1976, she gave birth to twin girls, Erin and Kate. And suddenly life became more complicated.

Never one to shirk responsibilities, Nancy approached motherhood with the same exacting standards she practiced in advertising. This at a time when her career was just beginning to take off. Soon she faced a different kind of Sophie's choice--one that many American career women face--not of choosing between her children, but between her children and her very promising career.

In addition to all that advertising demanded, there was now Montessori, girl scouts, softball, school conferences, music lessons, dance lessons, trips to the mall, the museum, the dentist, the doctor--a veritable nonstop juggling act requiring that Nancy burn the candle at both ends.

Amazingly, she made it all work. Somehow the kids didn't suffer and the work didn't suffer. If she needed to leave work early to attend a teacher conference, she later burned the midnight oil. If she couldn't make it into the agency for a Sunday meeting, she'd come in at the crack of dawn on Monday to get up to speed. If she had to attend a sudden client meeting out of town, she'd somehow convince her sitter to stay the night.

Understandably, it was the kind of performance that boggled the minds of her colleagues. How did she do it? they wanted to know. What, exactly was her secret? After all, this was no ordinary career path she was on. The woman was nearing the very pinnacle of success. And not even a nanny to help out? Did she ever sleep? And just look at those kids, they're so incredibly normal!

Then in 1981, with Kate and Erin barely in kindergarten, Nancy raised the ante even further when she left Bozell and Jacobs to become a founding partner in Fallon McElligott Rice, an agency that from opening day had its eye on the brass ring. Within a year both she and the agency were fast becoming famous. Her by now widely lauded campaign for The Episcopal Church was quickly followed by brilliant campaigns for Rolling Stone, ITT Life Insurance, The Wall Street Journal and others.

As her work grew better and better the honors flowed in from around the country and the world. Awards, of course, but literally dozens of them. Plus a growing pile of newspaper and magazine stories. Speaking engagements. Judging. The New York Art Director's Club Art Director of the Year Award. And on and on.

Nancy was on a roll.

With typical fearlessness she continued to amaze, opening Rice & Rice in Minneapolis with her husband in 1985. In 1986 she was featured in Esquire magazine's "Esquire Register" of people under 40 who were changing the nation. In 1992 she joined DDB/Needham in Chicago as a Senior Vice President. In 1997 she was included in the British Design and Art Direction Book of the best art directors in the world (an honor accorded only six Americans). Early in 1999 she moved to Ogilvy & Mather/Chicago as a Managing Partner. And later that year she returned to Minneapolis as a Senior Vice President at BBDO.

In 2001, in a move that surprised some, she left the agency world for academia, becoming Worldwide Creative Director of the well-regarded Miami Ad School. And then in 2003--in a move that Nancy describes as "coming full circle"--she returned to her alma mater, the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, both to teach and help restructure the school's advertising degree curriculum.

All the while--throughout the years of her meteoric rise--Nancy continued to raise her two daughters with the sort of hands on love and attention that many stay-at-home parents would find daunting. And it wasn't as if life was getting any less complicated. There were, of course, the inevitable career ups and downs. Then in 1990 she was diagnosed with cancer and began a life and death battle she eventually won. And in 1992 her marriage ended.

Nancy likes to quote the actress Ruth Gordon: "In order to be somebody, you must last." Despite obstacles, she's done that and much more. Looking back at the breathtaking body of her work in advertising is nothing short of inspiring. But looking at her daughters Kate and Erin, now both successful fine artists with their own lives and families, may be even more inspiring.

There's another quote, this one from the self-effacing, down-to-earth, no-hidden-agenda Nancy herself: "What you see is what you get." What you get from Nancy Rice has never been less than extraordinary.

"About Competition"

a poem by Charles Bukowski
from the "Sifting Through the Madness for the Word, the Line the Way"

about competition

the higher you climb
the greater the pressure.

those who manage
to endure
learn
that the distance
between
the top
and
the bottom
is
obscenely
great.

and those who
succeed
know
this secret:
there isn't
one.