The television ident

Here's a nice little BBC video article about the history of the ident, highlighting the designer of the first BBC ident, Abram Games.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-25181754

It's interesting to see in the following clip how the ident went from its original abstract whackiness, through boring globe spinning and then came out at the other end even stranger than the very first.



(If you want the animations of these idents then follow this link to the BBC site. It also features some voiceovers)

Before working on this 3D medium for the BBC, Games was a well-known advertising and poster artist. Of note are some of his wartime pieces such as this one.

Read more about Games at Wikipedia, here.

Continuous personal development and growth

Often it's hard to give yourself time to work on skills you'd like to develop. Time is precious and sometimes the courses that you want to go on to improve are just too expensive! Ok, so your company *should* give you a budget for personal development but between what companies should do and actually do there is sometimes a gulf..

So you should think about MOOC.

Sounds strange but MOOC stands for Massive Online Open Courses and the best part of this is…they're free. Learn what you want, when you want to and at no cost.

The only downside is that often you have to dig a little to find something that:

• Is of a certain quality (ahem)...
• Is aimed at your level of learning
• Doesn't advertise the author's products or services too heavily.

If you are interested then try googling for MOOCs or visit this link to check out what's available in your field of interest.

Network with confidence: you have nothing to lose! Networking with Jerome Jarre

What do kids these days know, huh? Nothing! We're more experienced, been there, done that. On top of it all young people simply don't have the get up and go of we more seasoned business folk. They just laze around all day checking facebook, playing video games and producing monosyllabic grunts when in need of food, right?

If you think like this then you should check out the following video about networking and challenging yourself to achieve your goals. Jerome Jarre is a young guy but with a lot of energy who (among other things) has made crazy videos which other young twenty somethings love. Funny, daft, irreverent.

He's also, in my opinion, an astute entrepreneur from whom we can learn. Check out this video. Give it time and you'll see (3minutes).


Conclusions: dare to do it, be bold and be creative about it. There's no point waiting for these people to come to you. You need to take the 'game' to them.

As my karate teacher (read my martial arts blog here) used to say the strength of effort is the measure of the results (he paraphrased James Allen) . Ok there's a side discussion here about effort, efficiency and results: my point is if you do NOTHING then NOTHING will happen. It's pointless sitting around all day waiting for emails to come to you if you haven't reached out in the first place. You have to be targeted, focused and smart with your efforts but this process of focusing your efforts on a goals and objectives means you're getting it done.


Focus your efforts.
Get creative.
Dare to do it...

Downloading and Converting Youtube Videos

Useful tool for downloading YouTube videos. You can also convert the videos to different formats.
Be careful with copyright issues on Youtube though! I use some videos for teaching and lecturing when network connection is not possible so downloading the video is essential

 http://www.clipconverter.cc/

How to be Creative

Although I've worked in the creative field for many years I've never really analysed the process of how to be creative. It just happens. I'm not saying I'm a natural at it as I took me many years studying in the creative arts and then being surrounded by superb, creative people from whom I learnt creative nurturing techniques. This is why I found the following video so fascinating: somebody who has studied the process carefully and rounded up the salient points into a 25 minute presentation. And to top it all the speaker in question is John Cleese which makes it informative, creative and funny! Check it out…. (but give yourself some space and time in order to do so)

Learning something in 2013 for your resolutions?

Have you thought about how technology will impact upon that learning process?

When I first started learning French, some twenty years ago I had access to a teacher during lesson time, books in the library and cassettes for listening comprehension. Some tv programmes were available but were difficult to get hold of. Maybe I could have video taped them and watched them at some other time, but let's face it, this was a faff on.

Leap forward to 2013 and we can see how learning has changed. Essa Academy is at the forefront of student interaction technology, having issued every child and teacher with an ipad. The upshot? No heavy books for the kids to lug around, instant feedback from teachers during the lessons and a reduction in the photocopying bill of some £65,000.

See the BBC video here ...

…and an older but more comprehensive video showing the school's 'enabling' ethos headed by the Principal, Showk Badat.