The original Mad Men!

I was fortunate to be given a pair of tickets to the D&AD talk at The Mermaid Theatre in London. Just to  listen to one of the speakers would have been enough but on this occasion there was three legends.

Bob Gill, Sir Alan Parker and Lord David Putnam made a fascinating trio of speakers. There are always going to be preconceptions when you hear certain people and you think you know what they have done or achieved but in this case it was a complete eye opener.

I knew some of the background to Bob Gill from his associations with Alan Fletcher and also some of his previous books. With regards to Alan Parker and David Putnam it was solely down to their film collaborations like Midnight Express and Alan Parker with the fantastic film, The Commitments but I knew nothing of their previous existence in the advertising world.

Normally on these occasions I end up writing loads of notes to digest later but I found them too interesting to be looking down scribbling away. The first thing that strikes you is that they seem very comfortable with themselves and there is a genuine fondness for each other and their shared experiences.

The one problem that sort of annoyed me in the beginning, was that the interviewer kept steering the direction back to the early days of D&AD and the importance of the annual. I know that this was a D&AD event but there were a few occasions when you felt it stuttered the natural flow of conversation. I have said previously about the obsession with trying to get into the annual and not quite understanding why it is so important. The fact is that even in the early 60's, they said that it was everything to be in the book because it opened more doors and gave an agency or an individual a lot more credibility. Partner this with a recent fact that nearly 80% of students that manage to be accepted into the annual find a placement or a full time job straight from University. So, I don't think I have given D&AD enough credit for what they achieve and how important their place is in the industry. So basically, I will be using my last chance next year to get a few entries in!

In the early days, the UK were trying to compete with the big American agencies that dominated the advertising world back then. They were more creative and a lot more organised. Bob Gill commented that when he came from America to his first job in the UK, it took them nearly a year just to get a phone installed. We were so disorganised that we had no chance of putting together successful campaigns. In advertising they have very clear divisions with Copywriters, Art Directors, Account Executives and they never seemed to work together but were each given there own little space to work in and very rarely did they sit around a table and discuss an account.

Alan Parker talked about his early days as a Copywriter and the pressures involved with working to tight deadlines. I got the impression that he is still fond of those days even though he confessed that the first agency he worked for was rubbish. It wasn't until he worked at CDP (Collet Dickinson Pearce) that they started producing some great work. Plus it was only then that the Copywriter started working with an Art Director and then what they produced was then sold to the client by the Account Executives. There was a couple of lovely quotes from Alan Parker on his copy writing days. The first was anecdotal about him being to short to be a copywriter:

" They thought I was a bit too short to be a copywriter, so they put cow gum tins on my shoes!"

I think we take for granted these associated strap lines with advertising sometimes and forget how much crafting goes into the process. Copywriters are still an important piece of the advertising package and can still command great respect for the more experienced. Another nice comment from Alan was:

"Every line is a paragraph, every paragraph is a thought"


Words can be more powerful than images sometimes and made me think a lot more about occasions when I have just written something down to fill a space and not crafted it properly.


David Putnam had some great anecdotes from the early days when he was an Account Executive and trying to sell an ad to a client. If they had a strict deadline sometimes and they were not totally convinced by the imagery, they had a couple of tricks up their sleeve to get the job signed off on time.
The first was making the logo too small on purpose so the client would see that straight away and say they wanted it bigger, it was too small, it was out of proportion etc. So they would steer the conversation to being all about the logo so they didn't notice the rest of the ad so much and then get them to sign off on the job, promising to address the logo problems. Then it was a case of a quick change and the ad went straight to press. Another common thing at the time was to spell a word wrong which again would take their attention from the poorer part of the ad.


There is a lot more that i could write about their backgrounds and achievements but on this occasion, it is about the evening in question so will save that for a possible future piece.

For me and I suspect a lot of the other students in the room, the highlight was hearing Bob Gill speak. The man has a captivating personality and I could have listened to him for hours.

I think that he should be a required lecturer to design students everywhere as his enthusiasm and knowledge is gold dust. He still teaches today and he talked about how students approach a brief and what they commonly do wrong. The first was spending way too long polishing a bad idea. The best way to approach a brief is to get as many ideas down on paper as quickly as possible, look at every solution in quick succession. Only when you have the best idea do you then start working on the computer. Too many students go straight to the screen before they have a good idea. One great phrase he used was with regards to the finished idea on screen. Where we would say polishing the design or finishing the details, he says the final 'tickling' of the design. It's a lovely phrase that I think should be used by every designer.

"Have you finished that design yet?"


"Nearly, I am just doing a bit of tickling!"

It may sound like stating the obvious but with me especially, I tend to jump to the conclusion too soon without expressing the ideas more. It never tires hearing someone say this as eventually it will sink in, hopefully sooner than later. It's about having confidence in your own abilities to know when something is as best as you can do and also spending as mush time as you can to get the perfect solution.

The highlight of the night was listening to Gill describe how to approach a brief.

"How to get a good idea? Forget every image that comes to mind and go to the source"

The example he used was designing a logo for a dry cleaners. We all know what the supposed logo might look like and what imagery we might use but the best thing you can do is to actually go and visit a dry cleaners. Sit in there if you can and watch what happens, who comes in, what the process is, what do they use, how is it done, talk to the staff. Then and only then do you start to get a real sense of what you are trying to achieve. He said that if you followed this process properly, I promise you that you will end up with a good original piece of design that 99% of designers couldn't produce.

It is easy for older creatives to be quite dismissive of technology and the age of computers but with regards to design they are right. having the fastest and best software will not make you into a good designer. If the idea is rubbish, the finished piece can never be polished up enough.

Overall, the night was over too soon as it lasted for only 80 minutes and I felt that if they had structured the interviews better, you wouldn't have come away feeling slightly cheated. I thought that the interviewer could have pushed them on certain points and got them to discuss in more detail some aspects. It isn't very often you get the chance to have three great creatives in the same room and they could have taken more advantage. But, saying that I am glad I made the effort to go as hearing Bob Gill alone was inspiring. So, to finish on another quote:

Gill: "Unless you're sure an idea is outstanding, put it down soon, it will make it easier to throw away"

Parker: "Going to the pub helps too!"