April 2005 Archives

The inevitable finally happened: Adobe realized that no matter what it did, Flash and Dreamweaver were going to rule the web and not PDF-- even if you can embed video and who knows what else (yawn) -- SVG or GoLive so they gobbled up Macromedia like a big fatty lunch. While I welcome Adobe bringing its interface expertise to Macromedia products (always the latter's Achilles heel), they don't have a history of taking over products and riding them to greatness. (See: GoLive). The best commentary I've seen on the whole thing is by the Daringfireball.net. As usual, it's a bit harsh, but he has a great take on the corporate doublespeak that comes out of these things.

Strangely, the one application I'm going to miss is the surprisingly useful Fireworks. My ex-Trapeze colleague Bryan Rieger proselytized this app to me a few years ago, but it wasn't until I came to my current gig (where it is the standard) that I realized how awesome it is for webpage layout. It has the simplicity and speed of an Illustrator when it comes to creating objects (mostly vector), but with most the effects and bitmap capabilities of Photoshop. It's nowhere as good as either in their chosen area, but it's a brilliant hybrid (interface quirks aside). But I gather it's going to be killed, or maybe sold off to someone.

Being in the image-conscious ad business, I've been feeling the need to get some new clothes lately. It's bad enough that I show up in my ratty bike jacket every morning -- our previous president actually look embarrassed when he saw me coming in to work -- but I really get the sense at client meetings and such that I'm dressed like an intern. Actually now that I think of it, we just had an intern in and even he had newer clothes than me.

So I went down to Bloor and Yonge to do white guy fashion row (The Bay, H&M, Zara, Gap, Banana Republic, Roots. Yeah, I know, pathetic.) I'd never been into Zara or H&M before, they're the new Eurobased disposable fashion retailers -- cool stuff that is super cheap with the idea that it's really only going to last for six months anyway. They both had some interesting stuff -- Zara had a more grown up feel -- but what struck me is that their sizing is WAY smaller than the US retailers. I've always had a theory that Gap has been making their sizes more "generous" over the years to accomodate the every widening American girth, and this certainly confirmed it. At Gap I buy medium sized shirts (I'm 175 lbs) but at Zara I was squeezing into a Large. Luckily, the pants were so crazy flared that I didn't even try them on to discover what my non Fat American sizing is. Zut allors! Un-super size me!

One of our clients, a well known if stodgy retailer, really wanted to get some Flash widgets on their website -- nothing complicated, just a promotional banner and a little interactive thingy to look at prizes offered in a contest. For this client, we deliver layered PSDs, plus finished FLA and SWFs, and their own internal IT group takes on all development. But because they are bureaucratic and indecisive to a degree that makes the Canadian government -- or even the Russian government -- look nimble, the project got delivered a couple of days late while we made last minute changes in the PSDs to what would eventually be HTML text (don't get me started on this).

Today on a conference call we were informed that due to the delay, it was going to take their IT group and extra ten (ten!) days to put in the Flash. In the meantime, they're putting in the GIF back-up. I just wanted to laugh out loud. They're building the entire page, but instead of putting in a SWF, they are going to put in a GIF. Then it will take them a week and a half to replace it with a SWF.

I'm convinced this is their IT group punishing the marketing team for being annoying. Isn't there some joke about how the brain can be smart, the eyes can provide vision, but you really only need to be an asshole to be boss?

My friends in the arts, fed up with lazy reviewers who come see their shows and can't be bothered to really make any effort to write something meaningful about it -- good or bad -- have set up a blog where folks can review the reviews. Kind of a fun idea, I'll be curious to see if it generates meaningful dialogue, or just becomes a forum for bitter critically spurned artists to vent.

I must say there's a pattern with reviewers that over time they seem to become increasingly harsh and dismissive of work that doesn't measure up. Maybe you just get worn down by the crap and tired of cutting people some slack. The Globe's Ray Conlogue got that way after a time, so did Kate Taylor (although in her case, at least she put her money where her mouth was and published a novel). The latest, Kamal Al-Solaylee, just seems to resent everyone. He's by far the most mean-spiritied of them all, although luckily he doesn't really have the smarts or writing chops to be as cruel as Conlogue and Taylor could be. Robert Crew's reviews in The Star have become so lazy they appear to be almost in point form.

The Lazy Reviewer Five Paragraph Review handbook reads:

First paragraph: Mention that the play opened last night, and if feeling ambitious, define some sort of punnish theme for the review (Suggestions:"Pancake" falls flat; "My Fair Lady" Hasn't Got It, etc)

Paragraphs Two and Three: Describe the plot. This is especially easy as often this is provided in the Press Kit. Feel free to plagarize, they wouldn't have given it to you if they didn't want you to.

Paragraph Four: Quick overview of which performances you thought were good or not so good. Refer to the program if you can't remember who played who, but if you forgot it on your seat don't worry: just guess. It's not like if you get it wrong you'll have to print a correction. (Ha! Ha! Can you imagine?)

Paragraph Five: Sum up whether you thought it was well done or not. Keep it short, it's not brain surgery. Finally, if you have a bit of space mention the set.

Done! Freshen drink.

Is Canada 411 so desperate for revenue that they think this is an ad worth popping up? Geez, talk about eroding your brand as a trusted source. Then again, apparently I'm only the 1000th visitor to their enormous site. Given what they must have invested to getting it running I can see why they need the cash.

Speaking of brand erosion, I met a woman at the park the other day whose pug had a Roots doggie jacket on. "Swanky!" I said. "Nah", she replied, "Ten bucks at Costco. It's not even very good." The offshore sell-out of Roots continues.

Well it's hard to believe, but we finally got into the studio on Saturday with John and mastered the Porktrashers CD. I must say, this was where we really got to see John in his element; he really has a great ear for how to bring out the sound. One interesting technique he used to give the sound some presence and old world atmosphere was to run the digital sound through an old studio Ampex reel to reel, then back into the board. Apparently, even in this day of ProTools and who knows what else, the limits of sampling technology don't really capture the warmth and fullness of good old tape. Go figure.

Anyway, it sounds pretty good, much better than it has any right to really. Nothing to be done about my questionable songwriting, or playing -- and especially, singing -- but by golly, has there ever been an age where questionable talent can be lifted so high? After years of being the victim of this phenomenon (see: Britney) it's nice to be the beneficiary.

I went to the big Marketing Awards show last night at the Carlu, which was fun. What a beautful spot. It was also great people watching, with all the young advertising hotties and various power mongering types milling about and working the room. You feel distinctly unbeautiful and unambitious in that crowd. Thank goodness for drink tickets.

But I realized as they showed the winners' reels and print ads that there was an odd pattern: very few of the ads were for companies I'd ever heard of -- and I had only ever seen one or two them anywhere but in award show annuals.

So here's the trick to being a famous ad company: You approach a small company with an interesting product but no money, and say you'll do their ads for free if you can have creative freedom. Then you create these awesome ads that never really get seen by anyone but awards judges. Then you put all the hardware on a shelf by the reception desk to impress your other paying clients.

Now to be fair, you do have to create good ads, but let's face, taking home a Marketing Gold award statuette for your print ads for Li’l Niblets & Baby Sprouts (a small baby supply store) -- even though they were funny -- does seem suspect. Then again, I don't really expect truth in advertising, so why would I expect truth about advertising? Silly me.