is my family's raffle curse over? i seem to be on this weird winning streak the past couple of months: the jun-jun shirt from a blog raffle; the white chocolate cheesecake from lori's tea party; and an ice age 2 movie ticket (singapore theaters only) for buying diego at takashimaya.my newest win is this lovely book called inspirability by matt pashkow (who refers to himself as pash, in the tradition of cher and madonna). i won it at the full-day workshop our department had on the art of broadcast promotions, courtesy of the promax bda roadshow.
the speaker was jeff rustia, an ultra-cool, mulleted (yes, the 80s hairdo) fil-canadian creative director. jeff runs a company called front, which -- i'm amazed -- lives entirely off branding tv networks. no dog food commercials, no corporate stationery. just pure broadcast promo.
learning about front (and the other entities like it) was such a shocker. it's like finding incontrovertible proof that the afterlife truly exists, i.e., there's actually somewhere i can go -- somewhere i can, and should, aspire to go -- after my life in this world.
grimace and the hot lolo
jeff threw trivia questions every now and again, complete with prizes, to check if we were listening (don't know if he does this for everyone, but it's certainly very pinoy). this decadent book (with its sexy, swirly designs and run-your-fingertips-over-it-every-ten-minutes faux-suede hardcover) was a prize for his final question. it wasn't a tough question, but i got it pretty much for two reasons.
one, i was wearing my bright purple sweater -- i stood out from all the people who shot to their feet to answer. the assistant made to spot the first to get up literally blurted out "i saw
two, the answer was jeremy irons. i could not have missed that for all the world. i love jeremy irons! he's equal only to sean connery on my hot lolo list. in one promo spot we viewed, he narrated a few lines of d.h. lawrence, and i could have ID'd his voice within two words in my sleep. it's so, so, sexy. shameless confession: i went through a recent phase where i listened to "be prepared" from the lion king almost every day.
conversations
anyway, the book. i leafed through it it until i fell asleep last night, and it's great. it's one of those books you can pore over for hours, read again and again, seek out when you're stuck, and suddenly toss aside to do something else because you've just gotten all fired up by something you read.
inspirability contains conversations with forty top graphic designers (none of whom my provincial self knows, of course) on what inspires them, complete with handwritten (and -doodled) survey forms and snapshots of their workspaces. i have yet to truly pore over it, but it was great to find little snippets of insight from these really talented people that resonated with me. i'll share some with you.
"... i don't need inspiration, i just need the fucking pressure."-- erik spiekermann, typographic designer/font developer
"escape forces you to shut down and get rid of all the bothersome things which have a tendency to make you kind of narrow-minded and prejudicial... and you go back to that point, a kind of open innocence where everything is meaninful and everything has a chance in your mind."
-- mike salisbury, branding expert
"i collect ephemera. [this is a beautiful, empowering new name for all the junk i have in my room and can't bear to throw away -- d.] i've got a storage room... filled with boxes and boxes of inspiration. you would have a blast looking through this stuff. it's just craziness. everything from bottles and jars, to signs, photographs and toys. i don't know what i'm going to do with it yet."
-- david schimmel, creative director
the only thing i don't like about it so far are pash's interjections. it's as if i can't absorb and react to the designers' statements, or find them brilliant, all by myself... he has to help me.
and every time i read one of his comments, i hear a distinct voice speaking them in my mind. it's kind of a cross between oprah and martin short as the bridal planner in father of the bride. do you hear it too? (emphasis mine.)
"mmm. i really like the way you just said that."
"i love it, what a great perspective."
"wow, what an interesting answer. definitely."
"i think it's absolutely true."
what inspires you me?
travel! going on a trip - whether it's to a foreign country or riding the mrt to work.
books with pictures. reading the griffin and sabine trilogy sent me into weeks and weeks of sketching, collage-making and visual journaling. reading the sandman for the very first time was a total mind-boost. and i love taschen books, which are about 90 percent images and about 10 percent text.
working with creative people. like most of my officemates are.
what inspires you?
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