Thanks Tom Myers for the pumpkin.

Spin. Those in the advertising and marketing world should be no stranger to it. It first seemed to enter the public conscience with Alistair Campbell, PM Tony Blair’s very own ‘Spin Doctor’. That Max Clifford chap had something to do with it all too. There’s no situation so bad these men can’t turn it into something good with a bit of positive spin.

Sadly Max and Big Al (to his mates) are currently out of the office, and the only spin I can think of to put on our two silver awards at Friday night’s Roses Design Awards comes from the popular playground rhyme:

“First the worst, second the best.”

As memory serves the lyrics make no mention of nominations and how they sit in this ranking system.

One Silver was for the A-Z books for The University of the Arts, London.

The other silver was for our own website, which you shouldn’t really need to see an image of. Click the button marked ‘WORK’ in the top right corner of this page.

Still it was a good night, and congratulations to everyone from Manchester who managed to survive the two hour train journey to Nottingham without dying from asphyxiation.

And congratulations to Uniform for collecting Design Team of the Year and True North for picking up the Grand Prix. (Bad choice of words, there, perhaps.)

I’m somewhat disappointed with the title of this post. I think I’ll change it later – feel free to share any suggestions.

But anyway.

This has just been sent around the office, which is quite… erm…. nice? Obviously lots of skill and effort were involved, but the skeptic in me still says they’ve added a lot of stuff in post. It’s too clean, too professional, too perfect.

Unlike with AKQA’s microwave version that was done last Christmas.

The first one feels like it was done by a load of highly intelligent professionals who spent several months putting it all together. It feels like it lives in adland. The second one feels like it was done by a couple of mates who were having a bit of a laugh one afternoon. It feels more achievable and more human. Don’t get me wrong: the Vodafone spot is… ermmm… nice, but I know which one I’d rather have done.

Kids are great, aren’t they? They do great things, and say great stuff and eat great food like Frosties.

Well actually, no, they’re not. They can be a right pain in the backside sometimes. Just this last weekend I spent an hour and a half doing the voices for my 3-year-old daughter’s 200-odd teddy bears, each one of which had to visit the doctor with the same ailment (sore knee) that resulted from the same accident (fell in hole in street) and needed the same treatment (some pills, a plaster and no exercise for 3 weeks).

After that I was held at gun point until I joined in with some sort of dance routine from Lazy Town. I don’t want to be Sporticus. I don’t look anything like him. I haven’t got a moustache, for one.

I don’t really know where I’m going with all this, except to say that having kids at least gives you the excuse to buy Anorak Magazine, a beautiful publication put together by Cathy Olmedillas and Rob Lowe. This Rob Lowe, not that one.

It’s filled with some superb illustrations and there’s no sign of Robbie Rotten or The Quizzator or The Numberjacks or Mr-Frickin’-Tumble. And no, there’s no free gift on the cover either. But it’s not just the illustrations that are beautiful – the writing’s brilliant too, including reviews by kids and stories called “The Story of the Three-Eyed Dog Who Landed Back On Earth”, “How Mr Toast Spent His Summer” and “Raymondo: The Depressed Rainbow”.

If you’re a) super-talented, b) a student, and c) quick, then you’ll also be able to enter their competition to design a cover. Deadline is the 30th October.

Anorak Magazine is available quarterly in Borders stores and selected shops around the country. Or you can buy a subscription online for a more than reasonable price. It’s described as ‘The Happy Mag for Kids.’ I’d have to agree. (And no, I’m not on commission for writing this.)

This is a picture of Dave Trott.

Yesterday I went to his talk at Malmaison.

Those of you who weren’t there missed out.

You didn’t just miss out on butternut squash soup.

And sandwiches cut into triangles.

You missed out on Dave’s wisdom.

You missed out big time.

It was simple.

It was inspiring.

It was so good I even asked two questions.

I never ask questions.

At the end I was almost angry that only 25 people showed up.

What a waste.

Here are a few things I wrote down.

It doesn’t sound like rocket science.

That’s because it isn’t rocket science.

Everything comes from Persuasion, Communication & Impact.

Start with a persuasive argument.

And communicate it in an impactful way.

Complexity is a weakness.

Simplicity is powerful.

We cannot afford to be subjective.

We must be objective.

Creativity happens in the overlap of disciplines.

Creative is not a noun.

Art Directors/ designers are like the pilots of an airplane.

But copywriters are the navigators.

All the real work is done by the writers.

We just let the ADs/ designers/ stylists take all the glory.

Clients need to reduce their brand to a single point.

Agencies need to amplify from that single point.

Dave’s wife is not very good at making tea.

It’s better to be interesting and wrong.

Than be boring and right.

There was plenty more.

And a heap of diagrams.

That I’m not going to go into here.

But the good news is that you can find all Dave’s wisdom on his blog.

It’s full of beautiful insight.

It’s full of football analogies too.

And it’s always written in lots of short sentences.

Like this.

So it’s really easy to read.

Thanks Dave.

(Dave is THE most popular name in advertising. Although I have no FACTS to back this up with.)

Here are the Top 10 Facts about The Liverpool Design Symposium according to the September edition of Design Symposium Magazine, available from all good news agents:

1) The Liverpool Design Symposium takes place on Wednesday 4th November.

2) The Liverpool Design Symposium is in Liverpool.

3) The Liverpool Design Symposium includes talks from Ian Thompson, Andy Chambers, Deborah Dawton, and Peter Mills.

4)  The Liverpool Design Symposium will also feature a D&AD President’s Lecture by Michael Wolff. Tickets can be purchased here.

5) The Liverpool Design Symposium’s website can be found here.

6) The Liverpool Design Symposium takes place in the LJMU Art & Design Academy.

7) The Liverpool Design Symposium has 27 letters. That’s one more than the alphabet.

8) The Liverpool Design Symposium doesn’t really rhyme with anything, making it almost completely useless in a limerick.

9) The Liverpool Design Symposium is the only time of year that Tamsin Valentino ever contacts me, to check that we’re putting something up on the blog about it. Not even a Christmas card.

10) The Liverpool Design Symposium is brought to you in association with Liverpool John Moore University, D&AD, dba, The Drum, Merseyside ACME, Design Initiative, Liverpool Design Festival, Uniform, Smiling Wolf, Black & Ginger, the letter F and the number 8.

I’m sure a fair few people who read this blog are also familiar with Ben Kay’s blog – If This Is A Blog Then What’s Christmas. So you may have already seen Rory Sutherland’s talk from TED. If you haven’t you really should – it might be a tad longer than your average YouTube clip but it’s also a million times more insightful.

But if you really can’t be bothered, you could at least take a look at the work he references in his talk (about the perception of value.) It’s by Ogilvy Canada and won a heap of awards last  year.

Also has its own website.

Wrong, wrong wrong… but somehow so very right. Dead fly photos from Swedish photographer Magnus Muhr.

More here. Worth looking at the rest of his work too. Thanks Myers (T).

After doing a Slightly-Longer-Than-60-Minute-Makeover at Umbro’s offices we’ve started to turn our attention to our own building. Sadly since we moved in three years ago we haven’t really done that much to it apart from putting up some shelves and painting a depressing picture of a crazy man in the kitchen. Which isn’t what I want when I’m tucking into my Fruit ‘n’ Fiber.

But things are now starting to change, and this finally went up on Friday:

The piece adheres to the fourth rule of design: Small things look really good when they are made really big.

We’ll run you through rules one to three at a later date.

(That’s MD Chris and Finance Director Paul behind the glass – two men who would be very useful in an emergency. Unless it was an emergency involving dinosaurs or rabid dogs with lasers.)

A friend of mine showed me this last weekend and I was convinced it was a fake. Like the flying penguins and the really crap one Stephen Fry did about the shark-whale-shark thing. It seems like it’s been dreamed up in a creative department somewhere, but if it is genuine, then it’s a pretty amazing reflection of the world we live in.

Of course when I was a child there was no such thing as deforestation, so Lyre birds didn’t know how to make chainsaw noises. They did, however, do a pretty nifty impression of bears defecating.

ps – if you’re thinking of going to see Ricky Gervais’s new movie The Invention of Lying, don’t. Well, you can if you want, but you’d really be better off giving the money to a nice charity.