Magdalena 2008

This weekend (15-17.5.) I was attending the Magdalena festival held in Maribor. It is a festival of creative communication which is addressing especially the younger creative generation (-30 years). I sent some of my recent works, even tough I knew they were not the “wining material” but I wanted some feedback from the crowd and it worked.

Otherwise was this years Magdalena a bit low level in comparison with earlier festivals. OK, the lectures were interesting and well prepared, but the program should be announced earlier and should be better organized. Perhaps that’s why there were only 400 and something works and relatively small number of participants. And there was only one creative brief (Promote use of condoms), which could also be a reason for low participation.

AND THE WORKS?

There were some great works and some really creative ideas, but I think that works on the creative brief were not nearly as good as expected. Because many of them were not following the brief, even though they were well executed. That’s why there was only one winner on the brief and only one special mention.

In other categories we have seen some really good ideas, even tough some of them didn’t even make it to the final. The jury has picked up good works, but some of them are… well who am I to judge. Instead of judging or praising the winners, here are some works. ;

AWARDS

The winners definitely had an amazing idea and a well done execution, even tough it could be done even better. But still, a big applause for Dora Budor and Maja Cule.

Among the Golden bra awards I think there could be some changes. For example the music video was not really a state of the art, and the video from Aljoša Bagola (& Nenad Cizl) for Amnesty was really in a higher league than everything else. If you want to check all the awards and finalists go to www.magdalena.org.

CONCLUSION

This years Magdalena should be something special (it was the 10th) with great lectures and amazing works. It was great, creative and inspiring but let’s hope next year it will be even better, fuller and richer with quantity and quality.

And some of my favourite works:

Another project finished

I just made the package and officially finished the work on one of my latest’s projects. It was for the company Prvi Kapital, which is a Slovenian venture fond. I made the whole identity. It was a long and quite exhausting process, but together with the client we succeeded. The client wanted a more formal and clean design and they decided the font it is now used.

I wanted to play with colors and forms. I have chosen orange and green. Orange represents the idea and green represents the capital, because the company will help the young and promising with capital. As I wanted to represent growing, I made a simple form of a tree. It grows from the idea (orange) and forms a green crown.

At first I presented them some more modern sketches, but the client wanted to implement in the logo the capital letters P in if possible K. But in the end, although it is not an award winning logo, I think we created a nice, fresh and simple identity.

 

 

Golden Victory!

… well at least from my point of view.

Yesterday was my lucky day! Why? Because I will have lunch with Ross Sutherland (chief creative director at Corbis) on wednesday.

What and why? Yes, I’m going to the Golden Drum festival in Portorož on wednesday. Thanks again to my bosses at Vobis who gave me the opportunity and means to participate. And when I got the newsletter from the festival office which encouraged everyone to select three persons to have lunch with, I immediately decided to put Ross Sutherland on the first place. Why? Because he’s from New Zealand? Or is it because he is one of the creative masterminds on the global level? Or maybe because I love photography and he happens to be one of the executives at the biggest stock photo agencies? There are many reasons… And I really am excited!

I must admit, that I would be also extremely happy to meet any of the guest “star creatives” at the Golden Drum. Hell yeah, you don’t get chances to meet the best creatives and specialists in advertising every day. And you have to use the chance to get the most of it. What exactly? I guess knowledge, experience, fresh ideas…

Well, if there’s someone in Portorož from Wednesday till Saturday, let me know and let’s have a drink (or two).

World Wide War?

UPDATE:

I was going to turn off my PC, but my Feedreader blinked and I read this article on writeweb.com. 

It’s a wrapup of Adobe MAX conference, and I great summary of the things presented by Adobe. What’s the buzz? Hell, it’s the same with Adobe and MS – all about web applications.

Yesterday I was on lunch with my coworkers. It was interesting, because I was once more talking about Adobe and it’s agressive campaigns (buy everything that’s showing at least some potential) and that Adobe is becoming more and more dominant. Perhaps, that’s why they produce so superficial software – like new Adobe CS3 which is full of cool and actually usefull stuff, but also full of bugs. Well, I’m once more going off-topic… Story told short, the debate was going about Adobe buying Virtual Ubiquity the creators of Buzzword and Adobe’s intentions of going into war or at least going for the victory on the web office front. On the Max conference 2007 Adobe presented where it’s heading in the future, and it looks like Adobe is getting hostile towards Microsoft.

Adobe gained a lot by buying Macromedia – they almost formed a monopoly on the web design and design per se front. Corel is battling hard, but, Adobe won because they successfully packed a great deal into their Creative Suite CS3. They can guarantee compatibility between it’s software, which is great and is one of the main reasons why Adobe is so popular. And hell yeah, that’s why I use it. With Adobe Share , Adobe Media Player and other annoucements Adobe is looking to hammer especially Microsoft. But is THE BIG one just going to stand and watch? Hell no!

ANSWER WITH STYLE

Old boy Microsoft is still the biggest player in the worldwide software industry. It’s money makers are OS Windows and MS Office, which is still the leading steed in its branch. MS is also very strong in other fields (web applications, server technologies, media support…), but Bill’s company has not shown any interest in hitting Adobe on Adobes home field – design. Well, at least not ’till now. Microsoft is surprising us all in past few months with announcements about new applications and constant inovations. Besides long awaited Silverlight (rival of Adobe Flash) they presented Office Live Workspace and Microsoft Expression, which amazed me the most.

MS EXPRESSION

Expression, the rival to Adobe CS3? Hm, I would like an answer to that, and I would like to find it out myself. That’s why I downloaded the trial version of MS Expression Blend and MS Expression Design. MS Expression Design is going to compete with Adobe Illustrator and the ones alike, because it is a vector based graphic software. I can’t write anything concrete yet, because I installed it this morning and have been “playing” and testing it for only 5 hours. I most admit, that I use Photoshop much more than Illustrator, and therefore it is harder to pinpoint the difference between MS and Adobe. What I like about Expression Design is that it is slick, intuitive, isn’t packed with bunch of features which you don’t need and is not THAT different than for example Illustrator. Yeah, sometimes it is good to come out with something totally new, but not here, and thank god that MS didn’t try to reinvent the wheel. And one thing I noted and is very important: Expression works much faster than Adobe CS3 applications. Sorry Adobe, but…

So, for now, I must admit (though I’m not a MS fan); Expression Design looks and feels good. The biggest problem seems to be the compatibility, because you can’t open the files in Illustrator or in another third party software. Yes, soooo Microsoft.

But, if Expression Design is nothing special, I think MS hit the jackpot with Expression Blend and Web. With Blend, they compete with Adobe’s upcoming Thermo application. And Web has its rival in Adobe Dreamweaver (former Macromedia). I tried MS Expression Blend, because it impresed me, when I read that it enables creating web based applications without any coding! Yes, I hate coding (but have the deepest respect for it and therefore deeply respect all programmers) and that’s why Blend and Thermo are like Christmas for me. And here, I think MS has a slight advantage of Adobe, because of all the support and experience in stuff like server technologies, data bases, coding etc. Anyway, what is BLEND actually about? Well the MS page says Blend is: “… the professional design tool to create engaging web-connected experiences for Windows.” All I can add is, that it’s easy to learn and you can produce amazing results in no time. And almost without coding And NO, with easy to learn I don’t mean I’ve learned it already.

STILL TESTING

Again, I managed to post a totally confused article, with no real conclusion, or? I tried to point out, that there’s some great software waiting for us to try it out. Ok, and I pointed out a war between MS and Adobe. I’m still testing the new MS Expression Studio package, but for now I must admit that the future does look very bright for both; MS and Adobe. Hell, Adobe presented some of the coolest stuff and is going really big. But, Microsoft, is already the biggest. And with aditions like Expression and Silverlight, they are fighting harsh.

I can hardly wait for the report from MS reMIX which will take place in Boston (US) on 8-9.10.’07. I bet that MS is going to bring some new players on the “war front”. But then again, Adobe is prepairing the European AdobeMax conference in Barcelon (15-18.10). So, we’ll see… I challenge everyone to post your own opinion about it. Be a part of the war