I think you’re all fucking mad. Deranged. So disengaged from reality it’s not even funny. It’s a fucking TV commercial. Nobody gives a shit.
This has come as quite a shock I can tell you. I think, I’ve come to the conclusion that the whole thing was a bit of a con. A scam. An elaborate hoax.
— Business Insider
"Linds Redding, a New Zealand-based art director who worked at BBDO and Saatchi & Saatchi, died last month at age 52 from an inoperable esophageal cancer.Redding also kept a blog, and after his passing an essay he wrote about the ad business, titled “A Short Lesson In Perspective,” has gained a new and sudden life, on the SF Egotist and on Adfreak.It will not make happy reading for the many people who knew Redding, know of his work, or anyone who works in the creative department of an ad agency."
Maybe change ad agency with architect's office? In most cases?
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Maybe change ad agency with architect's office? In most cases?
What makes you say that? honestly curious....
Well, this makes me love my job.My place of employment honestly supports my need to be a human first and and an employee second.
Too bad it took the approach of death for lucidity to strike.
I hate to break the news, but many professionals hate their profession. You won't have to look hard to find ad folks who hate advertising, lawyers law, doctors medicine, and architects architecture. Big deal.
The people I want to know are those who love their work (hi, Donna!), or who are courageous enough to leave it for something new, rather than bore the internet with their ranting.
I don't have a big agenda behind those words but I have a momentary lapse of reason perhaps. Or, maybe it is that new shiny fake vitamin corporation headquarters I see from the freeway they also published in design newspaper or maybe it is that shiny new house on the hill that benefits no one other than the hedge fund people who creatively commissioned it to an aspiring architect. Maybe that chewing gum commercial they are shooting down the street and I have to wait, in this heat, extra fifteen minutes. I don't know if it is only architecture or encompasses other creatives with whom I am surrounded by in this double the creative city who produce entertainment products for sale to the masses. I don't know.. Again, maybe it's momentary.. Maybe I am also thinking it is absolutely chilling.
Don't get me wrong: there's plenty to criticize. But, again, every field has this, though the particulars will vary.
“We start off with high hopes, then we bottle it. We realise that we’re all going to die, without really finding out the big answers. We develop all those long-winded ideas which just interpret the reality of our lives in different ways, without really extending our body of worthwhile knowledge, about the big things, the real things. Basically, we live a short disappointing life; and then we die. We fill up our lives with shite, things like careers and relationships to delude ourselves that it isn’t all totally pointless.”
― Irvine Welsh, Trainspotting
I don't think it's all pointless... but most of the day to day shite we do... yeah... fuckin' pointless...
/\ do heroin or oxycotton that will make it better.
Orhan, you've been tricked by Business Insider: this isn't news. The unfortunate Linds died his bitter death 3 years ago!
If you tell me I'm going to die in an hour, I'll drop what I'm doing and go down to the bar for a last drink.
If you tell me I'm going to die in a month, I'll take an extended trip to with my family to the coast of somewhere quiet and boring where I can watch the clouds.
If you tell me I'm going to die in 10 years, I don't think I'd change a thing. Maybe quit contributing to my 401k.
You can't spend every minute every day thinking profound things in the glowing presence of those you love. That's not life - that's predeath!
I like buildings. Good ones, bad ones, weird ones, ordinary ones. I don't kill myself getting them built, but I also don't think I'm doing something that the world is going to depend on - though I'm pleased when they get used.
I do think anyone who works expecting to leave something of lasting importance is a fool. Ozymandias. You can measure my contribution to humanity in mm of sea level rise. Maybe someday that will actually be considered a good thing - the future is quite unknowable.
it's just as valid now as was 3 years ago though, right?
never hurts to be aware of how useless what you're doing is
it is useless to cling to things, even feelings. Ozymandias reminds me of Palmira, destroyed to make some angry, but it's just attachment to bricks and mortar, God has never been to any of these temples.
Good post, midlander. I agree with it.
midlander, I am glad my 'tricked by Business Insider no news post' inspired you to write five paragraphs of heartfelt mini prose. I like what you wrote too.
That's a really bad way to feel at the end of your life. I don't think the message should be that human endeavor is in general existentially pointless, although I think he may have been feeling that. I think the takeaway is that everyone's life is of finite duration, and it's too short to waste doing things that don't make you happy. I feel badly for him, but he shouldn't be mad at the advertising world, he should be mad at himself for talking himself into staying in it for so long.
I'm really blessed. I love getting up in the morning and doing what I do. I'd do it for free.
thanks Orhan, didnt mean that to sound nasty at all. There is often value in revisiting old news. The surprising nostalgia from cleaning out piles of old magazines is very satisfying, and helps put forgotten memories of former ideas in place. Now we are learning to handle this experience on the internet.
"Maybe change ad agency with architect's office? In most cases?"
Wow, the kind of nihilism that exists today. If you don't believe your work had any value it probably didn't. I don't think that FLW or Louis Kahn had this problem.
midlander, i think the post mentions that "it has gained a new and sudden life"
I cant find the whole article for the life of me...any clues as to where it might exist?
shit, this is the only problem Frankie and Lou didn't have, god bless 'em.
Found the article. Dunno about most of you guys, but the methodology of design and production in our business has pretty much devolved to a similar level to what he mentions happened in advertising. Hence the comparison.
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