With guest star Olive Oil:
"Imported from Italy" only has to have been bottled there, usually using olives from Greece, Spain or Turkey.
"100 pure olive oil" is the lowest grade available.
"Made from refined olive oils" means taste and acidity were chemically produced.
"From hand-picked olives" suggests that it’s been done with care – tree shaking machines actually do a better job.
There’s a growing trend in the London and New York for art scene. Art collectors are making calculated gambles on buying the entire collections of young artists, hoping that one of them will be a big success and make them a tidy profit. Some think the effect on the quality of art is terrible, as too many young artists are being blinded by early success and losing the skill for self criticism. Not only is there a glut of average work, we may be missing out on something truly exceptional.
Reminds me an old boss who never promoted people unless they were virtually doing the next job up already. Or they way my Dad never let me win at tennis (he was such a bad loser he stopped playing when I began to beat him).
There was a fascinating discussion Radio 4 about how intellectually gifted children in the UK may get a raw deal. Apparently far more money and time is spent on the not so gifted. Schools in the Uk have classes of mixed abilities where they can’t move on until everyone gets the hang of what you’re doing now. The debate over segregating kids has been going far a long time, but is it really fair to force kids of different mental abilities together in classes when only the good footballers get into the school team? Or the best looking girls get the pick of the boys?
There’s a lot of attention paid to how kids get bullied for being too fat or too thin, but little about how they’re singled out for liking learning. I’m not talking about the stereotypical nerd, but kids who are afraid to put their hands up and admit they know the answer. Why has it got so bad? How did we get to a culture that ridicules people that like to think?
Open to Everyone has posted Friday’s cover of the Independent.
I’m sure you’ve heard of Howies and their wonderfully rich, authentic, human tone of voice that transforms a mail order clothing company into a movement. While,the catalogue and the website are great, it’s the detail that brings it alive. When your jeans arrive, everything from the wrapping to the label inside, add up to pair of jeans you want to love so much, nothing will make them anything other than perfect.
I like working in a smaller place ‘Up North’. While it’s true that you sometimes lose out on clients that like the comfort of huge international networks, and ‘London’, theres a lot to be said for working with a smaller bunch of nice people.
1. You get to be media neutral. There’s not enough people to specialise , so you get used to having an idea first, instead of fitting into a pre-selected media.
2. You get the chance to make more mistakes. With less hierarchy, you get to try more things quicker, which means you learn fast, even though it’s scary sometimes.
3. You make each other better. Working with the same group of people more makes you closer, espescially when people where I live tend to be more honest and open.You share more things and trust them enough to say the unsayable- so you can help each other to avoid doing something really dumb, or stumble accross something really great.
4. Clients trust you more. They can see that the team’s close and sparks off each other- they begin to like joining in. Next thing you know, you can tell them their brief doesn’t make sense, and they can show you how little you really know about their business.
5. Less corporate culture, and the need to be what other people think you should be, means you can work in your own way. It also means learning to respect that other people want to do this too. Perversly less people around means more variation – you learn more from fewer people that are allowed to be different to each other.
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Every client relationship is different, but you won’t find many like this one. The budget’s tight, we need models to humiliate themselves in ill fitting 80’s gear. "No problem we’ll do it" (a bit too readilly by the way). With them it’s not a job, it’s simply what they do. There are no suppliers, just friends who help out.
Class.
