London Calling...Sweet Home, Chicago

The school finally got the quarter away application live and online, and I've made my choices.

1 - London, because it's one of the world's great cities and the agency there is very good
2 - Chicago, another good agency and if I don't get London than the cost of living difference between Europe and Chicago can be put towards my next quarter
3 - Amsterdam, mostly because none of the other options were that appealing and I don't want to stay in SF

The application process ends on Monday and then after that it's who knows how long until I find out which greenhouse I've been accepted to. There are 8 openings in London (and just about my entire quarter has applied for it), 8 in Chicago and 14 in Amsterdam.

Obviously I'd love to get to go to London (but it would lose a lot if I was going with a bunch of people from my school). As a result, I'm really high on the idea of going to Chicago. I was excited when I thought (mistakenly) there was a greenhouse in Berlin and was pumped for "beer, sausages and berliners (donuts)" but then realized that Chicago has a big German constituent so if I get that, then I will get beer, sausages and donuts - not to mention the chance to go to Wrigley Field.

Anyway, nothing more to say until I know where I'll be this summer.

Door Site done

Last Friday I finished up my Door site, after weeks of work, edits, re-thinking of creative concepts and lack of sleep.

I realize the phrase "My Door Site" means nothing to you, so I'll quickly explain - it's my student portfolio and it gets reviewed by the school to make sure that I'm not going to ruin their reputation when I show it off to agencies and ask them to let me do their work for little to no pay. Anyway, it's a big deal. It's done now and presumably getting reviewed.

My first step towards traveling the world and learning the ad game. Here's a sample of one of my non-ad related pieces (i.e. something I thought was fun to show off myself). I made it while teaching myself Flash. If it doesn't work (Blogger seems to suck at video) email me and I'll send you the file, it's short.

Time to share some stuff

It occurred to me that I haven't really written much about school, despite the fact that it's pretty much consumed my life for the last 9 months or so. The main reason being, I don't want to publish concepts and ideas I've been working on if they're not done, or even if I think they are, for fear that some talent-less hack will pick them off and run with them. It happens. Sure, those people don't last long in the business, but if someone rips off my idea, poorly, that's it, the idea is dead. I can't then re-introduce it with more polish or style because then it will look like I'm copy, imitating, or inspired by the crap work done by a hack who ripped me off.

Well anyway, as I mentioned I have been in school for 9 months (finished 3 quarters) and some of the work I've done will never be for ads (like the Shawn Michaels poster I posted in my last entry) so it's okay to show off. Plus I've been working on some things for my Door site (basically an interactive portfolio on the school's servers) which I think are pretty cool.

So anyway, here's a collection of things I've created for school.