On Automotive Spy Photos

Recently, I had my year anniversary at Campbell-Ewald. And for the last year, the majority of my work has been on the Chevrolet account.

Now, many people either see the Chevy account as the kiss of death, or see it as the way to make your career. I'm probably somewhere in the middle. On the plus side you get to work on an automotive account, which for a car geek like me is absolute heaven. And, on the negative side, you get to work on an automotive account, which is stressful, difficult and puts you under constant scrutiny. I enjoy the stress of working on Chevy. I believe it forced me to be a decent marketer as fast as humanly possible. And it strengthened my journalistic, research and web skills ten fold.

I now scour RSS feeds more often than I did when I was an investigative reporter, and am constantly tapping industry sources for other info. I now go directly to the consumer to figure out my audience and think we're producing stronger stories and advertising as a result.

But what I haven't figured out yet is to cater to the spy crowd. How do I leverage the Jalopniks and the AutoBlogs of the world? I know I get excited about spy photos... how do I capture that sort of enthusiasm for Chevy vehicles. That would be the theoretical golden ticket.

The audience is a powerful one... and they can be harnessed, but the big question is, how do I get around the legal ramifications of showing pre-production vehicles masked off without upsetting the balance.

On Online Persona Managment

What happens when you Google yourself? If you click that link, you'll see what came up when I did it. Thankfully, my personal Web page hits the top of the organic listings. I chalk it up to proper meta tags, title tags and clean code. I've also gone out of my way to try to properly manage my online persona.

Admittedly, as a young twenty-something in the Internet age, not everything that you'll find my name attached to is necessarily something I'd want everyone, let alone potential clients, vendors or employers to see. Now that I'm a late twenty-something, with a considerable amount of material that I either wrote in my newspaper days or that I was responsible for coding in my Web editing days, I have a nice body of work with my name attached to it.

So, when prospective employers Google my name, mostly the good stuff shows up. Sure, my foodie profiles pop close to the top, but I don't necessarily see them as detrimental to my reputation.

Lifehacker, recently posted a feature on managing your online reputation. While I think it misses out on a few social network identities that are an absolute must to grab, I think the post is informative and has a lot of good suggestions.

As a side note, I was an early adopter of Twitter, abandoned it, and have since come back. After I left, someone who I won't name, assumed my identity and did some pretty good damage. A lesson learned. I've since grabbed it back, if only to manage it. I'm still not sold on Twitter yet.

Chinese photography, Ruhe?

On the iPod: "About Her" - Malcolm McLaren

Another night, another waking flood of design ideas and research. I'm now almost convinced that ...hush... needs to go away and I need to come up with a new idea for a design shop. I've only branded two sites under the ...hush... label, and it wouldn't be that difficult to go back in and switch it up.

Right now, I'm very partial to the Ruhe Design Co. concept, but my biggest issue with that is the fact that not everyone can speak, or pronounce German words like I can (Roo – he).

I think it speaks to my design style. Very simple, calm and quiet. I don't get really crazy, I loathe using flash for anything other than video or slideshow presentations. Not to mention, it rolls off the tongue nicely if you ask me.

On a completely unrelated note, I was surfing PingMag last night and came across this interesting interview with a Chinese photoblogger.

He had a lot of interesting things to say about the evolution of the relatively tiny art scene in Shanghai and a country as large as China. As you'll see in the interview, some of the photography is quite incredible and a lot of the concepts are unique and deep.

Best part of the interview is that it seems to really focus on the fact that most Chinese artists are really trying to break the mold and not just rely on using the Maoist pop-art that dominates their culture. Many of these artists are relying on a punk mentality, pushing the edges and boundaries of traditional Chinese ideas and ideals.

It's worth the read.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have a wiki to develop. Also, I spelled Ruhe wrong originally in the post below. Thank you anonymous for pointing it out.

should i ...hush... up?

On the iPod: "Again and Again" - The Bird and the Bee

Last night I couldn't sleep. I kept digging through old records and designing on my laptop. I'm convinced that I need to properly brand ...hush... The reason I've never done so in the past is because there are already a lot of other hush things out there.

There is Hush records, which puts out some fantastic music from the likes of Kind of Like Spitting, Norfolk and Western and the ohh so popular The Decemberists. Then, there is hush restaurant in Laguna Beach, CA. And who can forget this piece of crap solo artist, or this, piece of crap rapper, who just happens to be from Detroit.

Click on that link and listen to that terrible "Miss Music," where they ruin that bad ass Mr. Mister song "Broken Wings" by sampling the whole track. I swear, if he ruins "Kyrie," I'm going to start a riot.

Now, I've always used the ellipses with my branding of ...hush... but as of now, I've been toying with the idea of re-naming, re-branding and becoming my own Limited Liability Company. So I'm curious. What are your thoughts on ...hush...? Do you think it's too much a throwback to my "indie" wannabe days. What might be a better name for my company? At this point, I think it better to re-brand and rename now. Because I'm sure I'll be a juggernaut in design in no time.

I'll be putting up those race car designs I talked about a while back, along with some potential names and logos for the new, whatever-I-might call this would be company.

Edit:



This is one idea, Ruhe Design Co.

Ruhe is the German word for peaceful. The fonts used are "The Sans Semi Light" (Capitals) 620 spacing on top, 880 on the bottom. The bottom font is Sans Semi Light normal.