the blog of makemassair

Consistent, high quality, simple and effective branding. That easy is it? Well I decided to give it some thought and put pen to paper (I really did). This is where I went:

How digitally branded are you?

Do you have a real world presence. Is a real world presence needed anymore for creative businesses? This is something I’ve been toying with ever since I took the plunge into freelancing about a year ago. Are we seeing a spilt between digital and non digital creativity. Video editors are increasingly being overlooked in favour of graphic/web designers who “dabble” in video. Who’s responsibility is this, the clients or the creative?

How can you assess the success of a digital brand?

Having 10,000 Myspace friends or 25,000 Twitter followers; does this equate to increased value and follow-thru popularity as a creative. Are you seeing increased business or just increased exposure. Indeed, could it be having a negative impact, having crossed the line into noise/spam.

What tools are there that can help us assess this?

Is being an online focused creative working? For me, nearly all my business, clients, and exposure happens online. Occasionally I get to work with print, which these days is the old school. Is being mostly online focused restrictive? Or is the new media strong enough to support purely online creative ventures.

With the Internet (formerly the World Wide Web) you have instant (well as good as pending your ISP) access to a vast ever expanding worldwide network. But is being that big the right path to take. Do you feel swamped like a tadpole in an ocean of tadpoles? Personally I fully embrace the internet and the worldwide communication it offers.

Despite the collective global network I still remain either by choice or necessity (it varies from day to day) in a niche. Your brand, every brand, needs to come out of its niche and own than niche. Be the top of your niche. Why not straddle a few niche’s. You never know, a new avenue of interest, purpose or revenue may well open up.

This is what has been happening to me recently. As makemassair I offer a variety of linked creative disciplines and the digital brand management has seemingly evolved from my freelance work. On reflection, it’s always been there but has generally been focused inversely on personal projects. I’m guess my switch got turned on.

So this is something I’ll be delving into further. Keeping tabs on any new developments. And with the ever brooding death of Myspace hiding around the corner, it’s game time for 2010.

Ctrl Alt Shift is a documentary exploring VJ Culture.

With Interviews and Footage from

The Light Surgeons
D-Fuse
Hexstatic
VJ Anyone
Addictive TV
Vector Meldrew
and Fatamorgana

Now, I like modern art. I like chin strokey, puzzling, in depth thought provoking artwork. But, on those occasions when I go round, for example, the fantastic Tate Modern, I can’t help thinking, to at least 40% of what I see there, the following:

illustration credit: Charles Bell (1774-1842)

estefany wrote a great post back in early February for the snap2objects blog discussing what it is to be a designer. Essentially whether it’s a natural talent, or the result of hard work:

Telling you about my experience, teaching softwares like Photoshop and Illustrator for almost two years, I can say that I have seen some talented students and some that didn’t have the same luck. I don’t teach the theory of design, art history or gestalt; the students go there to learn how to use the tool, the software. The problem is some of them think that is enough to start creating logos or designing pieces. I say that is much easier to learn to use the tool than to learn to have a good aesthetic sense, because no one can teach this. What teachers at college do is to show you the right way, what should or not be done, giving you the basis. But when putting the theory into practice it’s all up to you and the lenses you’ll use to see the world.

Some people use more the right side of the brain, which is responsible for the imaginary, the emotional and the artistic matters. They surely have more ability to create, it’s easier and more natural. That’s why we can say that some people have more talent, but it doesn’t mean that other people aren’t able to produce good works. It means that they have to put more effort into working with the imagination.

You can read the rest of the article (and the insighful comments) by clicking here

Those of you that know me, know that I have a big love for Jeff Mills and he was recently interviewed in the Wire. What follows is the first page

Jeff Mills Interview by Derek Walmsley

D: Your work recently has started looking beyond the dancefloor. When did that start?

J: Well, around 2000, people were very fearful, there was Y2K, the world’s about to come to an end, and this whole kind of what-if kind of scenario, so I made an album based on that. And that was really the beginning of this period. (more…)

Bandwagons at the ready. I’ve been on Twitter properly for a only a few months (I’d been registered since May 2008, but never clicked with it) and I would say I am now quite the addict.

If you are a Twitter person then you can add me, just click their logo, and if you aren’t then why not huh?

For me, it allows me to keep bitesize tabs on friends and people I have an interest in (mostly designers, musicians and labels).

Two things that make all this information processing easier and that I would recommend would be Twitterfox for Firefox and the awesome standalone program Tweekdeck.

Twitter, currently, I feel is a marmite technology. People are either loving it and really getting into it or can’t see the point of it and are happy to stay with Facebook, or Myspace. Now whilst I still use Myspace for MANTIS radio, Facebook has become spam city and I rarely use it, other than to respond to personal messages some friends send me.

Some other people you should be following would be brapradio, midnightminustwo, MetroBoy, smashingmag and MrTweet.

Feel free to leave me your recommendations.

Awesome news. MANTIS has been featured in the dance music magazine FREEZE. It’s based in Greece and as such it’s all greek to me. Funny that. Huge love goes out to Vasilis (who is an artist I’ve played on the show quite a number of times as Fabrics) for spreading the word and for providing a translation. Here’s what the guys at FREEZE magazine had to say about us:

DVNT presents for a while now the cream of the crop in electronic music through his MANTIS radio show on Brap FM, showcasing the modern urban culture. 2 hour length shows full of unreleased tracks, guest artists and many flavors: breaks, electro, techno, dubstep, idm, ebm, trip hop, you name it. For all us, too far away from Brighton, we can always download the shows from the MANTIS myspace. Download and listen carefully…

Thanks guy.

If anyone does read this blog then you might remember a post a while back about this very subject. Anyways, this is an excellent animation explaining the finer points of the crippling disease.

Right then, branding. This is something that I’ve personally always kept an eye on with regards to myself and my hobbies/freelance work. Be that the DJing, the VJing, the shortfilm, this website, my myspace, my presentation on online forums etc… I have degree of understanding of it from my years studying Graphic Design and Art Direction & Advertising.

So anyway yea, it’s something I try to be aware of and a while ago I came across a DJ Spooky (I’m a big fan of Paul D Miller’s music and writing) podcast/interview on the CreativeXpert blog/site. It’s very interesting (not about branding thou) and have been going through podcast episodes of the many I subscribe to and had totally forgotten about the CreativeXpert podcast and noticed that the latest episodes have been on branding and how it relates to people and how they can apply (with a view towards the more freelancer creative).

Some of it is stating the obvious, but then you tend to miss the obvious don’t ya. If you’ve got a spare 20mins or are sitting on a bus sometime soon then I really recommended nabbing episode 20 and 21. It’s made me think about a few things with my online branding and confirmed some of the things I was already doing.

Be interested to hear your thoughts on the podcasts and indeed your approaches to branding.

I’m very guilty of this. I’m actually under it’s wicked spell as I type this. I have many many things I need to do and some I want to do. There is however an issue in that I procrastinate and end up on music forums, Facebook, Myspace and the like… which I’m aware of and annoyed at myself at, but not doing anything about.

So anyways, what’s the point of this little post then? Well as it happened I ranted on one of the many forums I frequent and one of the guys I have weird late night discussions with pointed me into the direction of a very helpful (if quite new-age) website/blog of a man going by the name of Steve Pavlina.

It’s a good read and gives a quick background on procrastination, it’s causes and presents a simple to implement solution. Namely breaking things down into little, easier to achieve chunks (timeboxing) as he calls it. And also to get into your head you don’t need to do things, but that you want to do things. Anyways, rather than have me ramble on, have a read yourself…

Overcoming Procrastination

Thanks to Mikey for highlighting this. Hope it’s of some use to you. I’d be interested in hearing about peoples thoughts over this.