Tiger's back

Today was Tiger's first day back since his injury...The fun is over.

Black men in advertising

from left: Geoff Edwards, Keith Cartwright, Feh Tarty, and Jimmy Smith

I've been actively following the whole advertising world for about 2 and half years or so now, and after going through Creativity magazine, reading ADWEEK, looking through award annuals, etc, it seemed as if you had to be a white guy with black framed glasses and a scruffy beard to be in advertising. So, in the February 2008 issue of Creativity (Creativity's 50 issue), where they were honoring the top creatives of the year past, I saw an illustration of a black guy and my eyes lit up. It was Geoff Edwards, former co/ECD of T.A.G. San Francisco, and now co/ECD of Fancy (San Francisco). I later found out he is also from Detroit, and actually went to high school a couple of blocks away from my house in Detroit. Since then, my eyes lit up more and more. In July, during a portfolio review at Wieden and Kennedy, NY, creative director of Brand Jordan, Keith Cartwright, critiqued my book (that was a pretty big deal to me). We also talked about the Jordan XXs that I wanted, and how he had a bunch of them. Then, Feh Tarty of Wieden and Kennedy, London got on my radar after I saw that he'll be one of the judges at the ANDY awards this year; and most recently the GCD of Gatorade, Jimmy Smith of TBWA, Los Angeles, after hearing him discuss the "G" campaign on adage.com.

If anyone is wondering why I'm blogging about this, it's because I think advertising (which has made huge leaps and bounds already) needs to continue be more diverse because it is a global language that is being spoken, and the perspectives from all races, religions, and backgrounds need to be in the conference room when working on an ad campaign.

I apologize if I'm leaving anyone off the list, which I'm sure I am; but I hope to be adding to this list more and more as time goes on.

Audi: School's Out (commercial)

I saw this commercial during the Oscars last night; Not that this is the greatest commercial, but it's rare seeing good car commercials. Usually you just see these product shots of cars driving around tight corners, or throughout the rocky mountains and a voice over saying something about winning the JD Power award and 0% for over 16 months. So I thought this was pretty cool.

Last Night with Conan O'Brien

Tonight was Conan O'Brien's last night on "Late Night". I like Conan's show a lot and I'm looking forward to the Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien. It seems like it's going to be weird with him being on tv an hour earlier (11:30pm), but I hope it still has that ridiculous, wild, random humor. So we'll see what happens and how things go when he's out west doing the Cali thing.

Above is a few of the script covers that were illustrated over the years. You can check out more of them here.

Brandon Hines

Last night Brandon Hines performed at S.O.Bs music lounge. From what I hear, it is a spot where a lot of big time artist perform before the get big time. John Legend, Lauryn Hill, and Jasmine Sullivan are a few of those people who've debuted there. I've known Brandon for about 10 years now, and it was cool seeing him kill it last night. He did a very good job, and was definitely the best out of all the acts that performed last night. Keep an eye out for him for real, I'm sure you'll like the material that he's putting out.

The color red

I was on fffound.com and saw this nice red moleskine posted. Moleskine notebooks are pretty cool to have to concept and stuff like that...but a red one? I feel like if I had a red one, I may come up with ideas to cure the common cold or cancer even. I don't know what it is about the color red, but it is very inrpiring to me. Around the holidays, I tell people to buy me red nike socks, but they never do; I always get the "I'm not gonna buy you socks for Christmas" response. But it's alright though, I'm going to get some red nike socks soon, to accompany my red moleskin.

5am Goosebumps

Wieden New York and Rupert Sanders killed it...

Coraline Dunks

Wieden and Kennedy put together a "package" for the movie Coraline that can be seen here. But below are some dunks that were digitally created for the movie; I'm not sure if they're in the movie or not, but they're pretty cool.

Balance

Balance is a tough thing to maintain. How do you balance work with your life? What if you're living your dream and working somewhere damn near 12 hours a day, but you actually like it? What should be on the top of your list of priorities?...Just curious what some of you may think.

Maybe next year

I just found out I didn't make it to the next round of the Cut and Paste thingamagig; it's alrigtht though...i understand ::sniff::