Rich Mintz  

I’m reading this profile of Carrie Brownstein, one of the two people (with Fred Armisen) behind “Portlandia,” and I find this passage about Brownstein’s earlier life is needling me:

Thinking that an office job might be a good thing to try, she did a six-month stint at Weiden+Kennedy — the modish Portland ad agency responsible for Nike’s “Just Do It” campaign. (The agency’s playcentric workplace has been spoofed on “Portlandia.”) But working at an ad agency proved alienating, she said, because of the way “the work mimics art.” She added, “Music, to me, is an earnest populist endeavor and this was a cynical populist one.”

I respect Brownstein, love her work, and know what she’s getting at, of course — anyone who’s ever been asked by a client, “Can’t you just make us one of them ‘viral videos’ and be done with it?” knows the difference between genuine art (or even honest craftsmanship) and a pig with pretty lipstick on it. But I’ve spent much of the past twenty years finding a way to be professionally successful in an agency career, while still feeling that my genuine creativity is one of the things the market is rewarding. And many of the people I work with daily, at Blue State Digital and elsewhere would say the same. And that list of people includes some of those I most admire for their genuine creative energy.

On this blog you’ve seen me struggle with formal and informal creative exercises (like The Artist’s Way program). Arguably one point of this blog is to give me a creative outlet that’s “untainted” by the market, although much of what I write about is connected to my professional life; it’s hard to separate the strands. But the richest creative encounters I’ve had in my adult life have come through my work. I’ve met people who are generative, uncompromising, and blessed with the power of vision, and not just a handful, but many of them. I’ve taken lessons from each of those traits, from each of those people, and those lessons have helped me not just in my work, but in my life.

The creativity I’ve experienced in agency people isn’t second-class. It’s real. There are people in the advertising business who are “real” creatives and yet who thrive on the pragmatism of the work, the fact that it can’t all be vision but must be vision with purpose. Just as the constraints of the sonnet form liberated Shakespeare to write some of the finest poetry in English, and the laws of physics liberated Thomas Edison to envision new devices that actually worked, in the very same way the need to sell more sneakers or generate more museum memberships or influence more voters liberates these people to build castles in the air that people want to own and live in.

It’s an eternal tension in art and indeed in craft, that between faithfulness to vision and practicality of product. But it is a tension, and even in art, being able to produce something that people want to experience matters. Otherwise, what’s the point? Some artists are happy creating for themselves; others are more motivated by the sense of fulfillment they feel when the audience loves their work, embraces it, does with it what they envisioned would be done. The first type of creativity isn’t more genuine than the second. We all have all these impulses woven together into our creative selves.

If you’re from California, you’ve certainly seen Ak-mak, the original Armenian cracker bread, still baked by the same family-owned company near Fresno. In fact, Ak-Mak has had national distribution for a long time (it’s widely available here in New York), but when I was a child, it was perceived as, and probably still was, something regional.

Whole-grain before that was trendy (actually, I guess it was after it was first trendy, then stopped being trendy, but before it was trendy again), made of 7 ingredients — the most obscure of which is sesame seeds — Ak-mak looks, tastes, and is the same as it was in 1972 when my grandmother used to buy it by the caseload at the Bargain Circus on La Brea Avenue. (Sidebar: images of La Brea then and now.)

Among the aspects of Ak-mak that haven’t changed are its packaging, which looks materially identical to what it looked like a generation ago. The logo and typeface haven’t changed, and the cover sports a product photo in a style I think of as “High Maxwell House Hagaddah.” I wouldn’t be surprised if the pictured Ak-mak crackers were baked in 1963.

The box I’m holding has a 1995 copyright date, but I doubt anything changed at that time beyond the new Nutrition Facts box and the Food Pyramid graphic.

But why change? Everyone knows what the product is; the packaging is instantly recognizable at 50 paces; you know what’s inside, and you know you love it. Besides, the world needs more sunshine yellow and bright teal blue, doesn’t it?

Today was Yellow Pages Day in Manhattan — that public holiday of long standing in which elves scurry about throughout the night and into the wee hours of the morning, depositing identical yellow books, shrinkwrapped in groups of six, on doorsteps throughout the land.

I passed several of these parcels, unwanted and unloved, on my walk from the subway to work this morning. I even momentarily fingered a copy of the 2010-2011 Yellow Book, thinking “I should take this home, maybe I’ll need it.” Then I stopped myself. For what? What could possibly be in that book that I can’t find more quickly, search for more effectively, evaluate more usefully online? I set it down, walked into the office… and found a copy of the 2010-2011 Yellow Book already sitting in the office recycling bin.

Like the landline that it once existed to serve, the Yellow Pages is on its way out. Even nine years ago (!), when I was trying to promote my fledgling bookstore, the ad salespeople were already desperate. (I didn’t bite. What they were charging was ridiculous, and even in 2002 the Yellow Pages already felt “over.”) Now they must be apoplectic from the stench of their own imminent obsolescence. This is a business that still exists only because certain parties (ad salespeople, printing companies, certain types of traditional businesses and conservative businesspeople) are locked in a cycle of mutual addiction and denial, reinforced by a dollop of voodoo and magical thinking. Of all the types of advertising your small business could possibly pay for in the current environment, the Yellow Pages must be one of the least trackable, and it’s certainly one of the least nimble.

Which is why you saw things like this on the street today in Manhattan:

The first three photos above were taken about 7pm, roughly 15 hours after the elves made the last of their deliveries. That last photo was taken at midnight (approaching 24 hours after dropoff) in the lobby of an apartment building. I repeat: in almost 24 hours, nobody in this 10-unit apartment building took a copy. To the constituency allegedly intended to consume it (whose consumption of it is the product being sold to advertisers), this product is literally worth nothing. Why is this thing still being produced again?

Been hacking around on this blog for 3 or 4 hours now, and I’ve discovered a few things:

1. I remember more PHP than I thought. When I dug into the theme files to make a few UI changes, just by examining the context, grepping in the theme directory, and combining some simple trial and error with light Googling, I was able to figure it all out. I cleaned up half a dozen small things that had been bugging me for ages, and uncovered a few more to deal with later.
2. WordPress functions seem well thought-out and well-documented.
3. Boy, do I need some CSS training. Trial and error works, but it’s not the most efficient way to figure out what the hell is going on.

I also had some fun at ColourLovers.com, browsing other people’s palettes and experimenting on my own.

… right there in the left sidebar. Have at it. I also cleaned up the sidebar, and added “Reading Now” at the top.

I try not to write too too many posts of the “wow, isn’t (blank) amazing” variety, but allow me this one.  “Freedom Is Wireless,” the current TV ad from CTIA, the Wireless Association — the industry trade group of wireless telecommunications companies — is really, really good.

It’s incredible to me that only three or four years ago, I was still waiting out my 2-year contract on a Nokia e62, a smartphone only in name, with a slow and unrewarding email client and a temperamental browser, really best suited for, you know, “talking on the phone” (remember that?).  (Although before that I had a Sidekick, just like Paris Hilton! Remember her?) I could not wait to get free of that device — which, ironically, I acquired in the first place because tech-savvy friends of mine told me I’d love it. Some friends. (Guys, if you’re reading this — I forgive you.)

Now I have the whole Internet in my pocket: the Web, Twitter, Foursquare, maps to everywhere, document readers, and so forth.  The screen is small, but it works. And in another device a little smaller than a magazine, which I can tuck under my arm and carry everywhere, I have a full-screen experience, including data entry and manipulation ability that’s more than adequate for light tasks, even over an extended period.  And it’s all so purty!

Last weekend I had my first experience in ages (how long? 3 years? longer?) of going away overnight, with some serious business obligations to take care of, and leaving the laptop at home.  The iPad was more than adequate (much improved by the Macally BOOKSTAND case, which I can’t believe I’ve only owned for 8 days).  The quantity of “mobile Internet” I’ve consumed in a month or so on the iPad vastly exceeds the quantity I consumed in two years on the Nokia e62, and the user experience is vastly more rewarding. And, except when I’m in Canada (which is a conversation for another day), I almost never need to keep track of how much data I’m using.

So thanks, CTIA and your member companies, for making all this possible.  I realize you’re gigantic faceless corporations, but thanks anyway — this revolution wouldn’t be happening without you.

Hat tip: Michael Rose.

YouTube – CTIA: Freedom is Wireless

If I love a software product so much that I’m willing to spend $25 on the company’s promotional merchandise, even though their free product version is perfectly adequate, I feel I should say something.

That product is Evernote, and you should go download it right now on every device you own. More about why in a future post; in the meantime I’ve got to go finish purchasing my “I (Evernote) NY” T-shirt and my “I’m not being rude, I’m taking notes in Evernote” laptop stickers.

This Nicorette ad attempts to sell you Nicorette lozenges by suggesting that if you take them, you can wrestle your nicotine cravings to the ground, even though they’re as powerful as a shark.

Unfortunately, there’s a disclaimer on the screen: “Dramatization. Craving relief in 5 minutes.”

Okay, first, “dramatization”? Is that really necessary? The guy is wrestling a shark with his bare hands. If you need to be reminded not to try this at home, you deserve to be eaten by a shark.

And second, doesn’t a shark take a lot less than 5 minutes to chew your arm off?