nuzzaci - an online journal

For the next 9 days, Willow and I are on the other side of the globe attending Adam & Jen’s wedding in Maui, Hawaii (as well as exploring the beaches). Back again on the 9th of July 2009.

A very exciting day today. A few hours ago I signed my name on a contract which ties me to the purchase of a house. The house, photo above, is very very nice and I’m sure I will bore you with many details further down the line.

This post is mainly a stamp in time. If you don’t post the day you buy a house, you really should reconsider your blog ;)

As creatives in the ad business, we know that comin up with ideas can take you away from the important thing sin life. Family. Friends. Absorbing culture. Couaching soccer. Reality TV. Sex parties.

Stealourideas.com is here to help you get back to the happines that you’ve sacrificed to work long hours in creative industries. Our blog entreis will save you the time and energy it usually takes to think og stuff, while building the credit needed to chat yourself up at award shows.

On the 12th of May the Swedish magazine, Resume, published online a short article entitled “They Will Steer Hyper Island“. The article is about a new professional board of directors, expansions, profits and it included a photo of 7 middle aged white men dressed in cheap black suite and v-necks… haven’t we all seen this “future” before?

Foto: Peter Jönsson

Many of the comments on the article raise the question ‘where are all the women?’. Fare enough, but not quite unexpected since in Sweden you get that question whenever the majority isn’t female. One comment, on the other hand, takes a wider picture and asks where are all the rest:

HyperIsland is a great school, that’s for sure. But please, don’t talk about growing and opening up to the world, and then present a board of administration composed only of 30 to 50-y.o. swedish men with 100% swedish background, because this picture tells another story, really.

For sure, it hurts to know that the board of directors for McDonalds, Costco Wholesale, FedEx and even the US Iraq Study Group all include both men and women and has a wider cultural spread than a foremost new media school in Sweden.

But that’s not my biggest issue here.
That’s not what rubs me the wrong way.

I read the article, look at that photo and wonder; where did it all go wrong?

As a former student and post lecturer, for me, in many ways, Hyper Island was the ‘crack in the wall’, the ‘lunatic’, the ‘[ones] who understand that culture and design are not about fatter wallets, but about creating a future’, the [ones who] understand that wealth is a means, not an end’ that Tibor Kalman explains in his essay ‘FUCK COMMITTEES (I believe in lunatics)‘.

In my view, Mattias Hansson, the CEO since ‘07, has failed to acknowledge the strength of Hyper Island and what led to it’s success, and is trying to mould it into something he and the corporate world can understand to at least retain it’s success on paper.

Personally, I think all of this is a massive mistake.
And it makes me sad.

There’s two sides to every coin. Source: the White House Flickr photostream.

Below are selected quotes from the article: Nine Inch Nails iPhone App Extends Reznor’s Innovative Run

Nine Inch Nails and Radiohead are so in the forefront it’s almost scary. Not just when it comes to music distribution, but digital communication — and they are music artist. I wish that people in the digital industry were as innovative and were less scared of making mistakes. The internet is a playground. So play in it.

Reznor has pioneered a new, fan-centered business model that radically breaks with the practices of the struggling music industry

“Anyone who’s an executive at a record label does not understand what the internet is, how it works, how people use it, how fans and consumers interact — no idea,” he declares. “I’m surprised they know how to use e-mail. They have built a business around selling plastic discs, and nobody wants plastic discs any more.”

“They’re in such a state of denial it’s impossible for them to understand what’s happening,” Reznor says. “As an artist, you are now the marketer.”

“I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I don’t think music should be free,” Reznor says. “But the climate is such that it’s impossible for me to change that, because the record labels have established a sense of mistrust. So everything we’ve tried to do has been from the point of view of, ‘What would I want if I were a fan? How would I want to be treated?’ Now let’s work back from that. Let’s find a way for that to make sense and monetize it.”

“I doubt I’ll ever pay someone to do a remix again,” Reznor says, “because there’s some amazing stuff just coming out of bedrooms.”

So for the higher-quality offerings, Reznor turned to BitTorrent — “the domain of pirates,” he acknowledges, “but it’s also a great technology that is free.” Pirates are no longer the enemy anyway: “Our battle is against download costs.”

“One of the biggest wake-up calls of my career was when I saw a record contract,” he says. “I said, ‘Wait — you sell it for $18.98 and I make 80 cents? And I have to pay you back the money you lent me to make it and then you own it? Who the fuck made that rule? Oh! The record labels made it because artists are dumb and they’ll sign anything’ — like I did.”

If the labels had tried to connect with fans online instead of dragging them into court, he figures, the music industry wouldn’t be collapsing today. But no matter; he’s moved on.

“My quest in life now is to surround myself with smart, innovative people,” he says, “instead of the gangster types who have exploited artists over the years.”

The whole article: Nine Inch Nails iPhone App Extends Reznor’s Innovative Run

Those of you who follow my bookmarks might already have read the essay FUCK COMMITTEES (I believe in lunatics) by Tibor Kalman. I stumbled upon in a couple of days ago one on the SELL! SELL! blog.

In many ways it feels like a follow up in my A few words from Paul Rand; the politics of design post. So, I kept the format.

The essay was written over a decade ago, in 1998, and is still very relevant today. Mr Kalman passed away a year later, aged 50, of non-Hodgkin lymphomas, a type of cancer derived from lymphocytes, a type of white blood cell.

FUCK COMMITTEES
(I believe in lunatics)

It’s about the struggle between individuals with jagged passion in their work and today’s faceless corporate committees, which claim to understand the needs of the mass audience, and are removing the idiosyncrasies, polishing the jags, creating a thought-free, passion-free, cultural mush that will not be hated nor loved by anyone. By now, virtually all media, architecture, product and graphic design have been freed from ideas, individual passion, and have been relegated to a role of corporate servitude, carrying out corporate strategies and increasing stock prices. Creative people are now working for the bottom line.

Magazine editors have lost their editorial independence, and work for committees of publishers (who work for committees of advertisers). TV scripts are vetted by producers, advertisers, lawyers, research specialists, layers and layers of paid executives who determine whether the scripts are dumb enough to amuse what they call the ‘lowest common denominator’. Film studios out films in front of focus groups to determine whether an ending will please target audiences. All cars look the same. Architectural decisions are made by accountants. Ads are stupid. Theater is dead.

Corporations have become the sole arbiters of cultural ideas and taste in America. Our culture is corporate culture.

Culture used to be the opposite of commerce, not a fast track to ‘content’- derived riches. Not so long ago captains of industry (no angels in the way they acquired wealth) thought that part of their responsibility was to use their millions to support culture. Carnegie built libraries, Rockefeller built art museums, Ford created his global foundation. What do we now get from our billionaires? Gates? Or Eisner? Or Redstone? Sales pitches. Junk mail. Meanwhile, creative people have their work reduced to ‘content’ or ‘intellectual property’. Magazines and films become ‘delivery systems’ for product messages.

But to be fair, the above is only 99 percent true.

I offer a modest solution: Find the cracks in the wall. There are a very few lunatic entrepreneurs who will understand that culture and design are not about fatter wallets, but about creating a future. They will understand that wealth is means, not an end. Under other circumstances they may have turned out to be like you, creative lunatics. Believe me, they’re there and when you find them, treat them well and use their money to change the world.

Tibor Kalman
New York
June 1998

Wicked.

‘When I am big’ is a photo project by photographer Emilie Fjola Sandy and graphic designer Kamilla Weinhardt, where they capturing the childhood dreams of people shot in their grown up work places.

I love it. Simple. Brilliant idea. Love the results, too.

Above photo is of Nicolas Roope.
Mr Roope, in many ways you are a farmer ;)

I think my childhood professional dream was fireman. I will need to ask my mom to confirm, but it’s at least the one I can remember.

I just peeled 7 lemons for our home made limoncello. Something I wished I could do every sunday evening. If you have some spare 95% alcohol at home I suggest you go over to Willow’s ‘how to make limoncello’ guide and make yourself some, too. It’s magic.