totalcontent - the blog.: word of the week

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word of the week ‘content’ (kɑntɛnt).

Bucket... just add content

On Wednesday, the totalcontent Twitter account had a new follower called Content Unlimited. And on the very same day, I was contacted by a Chinese domain registration service enquiring whether I claimed the rights to the name ‘totalcontent’ as an international brand, or the domain names for China, India, Hong Kong and Japan.

Suddenly, it seems, our 12-year-old company name has (global) currency.

As it happens, I’m a bit conflicted about totalcontent these days. Because, as with so many words (or conjunctions of words), its context and meaning has changed. As someone who spends a good deal of time naming things for clients — we’ve come up with everything from shirts to colleges to mobile phones and a cheese — it’s perhaps something I should be more wary of… but on the other hand, there’s not a jot you can do about it.

‘Content’ has an entirely different connotation than it did a dozen years ago. I originally homed in on it because of the slight play on ‘content’ = ‘what is contained’, and ‘content = ‘peaceful happiness’. But today it tends to just mean stuff, filler, goop… if a website is a bucket, then content is the stuff you fill it with — generic pictures, words, headlines, links etc. It’s become a tag with no romance or resonance — you buy content by the yard, it fills the space, no more no less.

But clearly, this doesn’t put too many people off. Content services have come to contaminate the Internet, selling words as a commodity — off-the-shelf articles ‘optimised for SEO’, or new material ‘competitively priced’ by length or quality level. A quick Google search unearths Content Now, Star Content, Constant Content, Pure Content, Snappy Content Writing (could be snappier), Content Equals Money, Content Proz, and many, many more. Occasionally I get emails from similarly named companies offering to help out with my content. Thanks for that.

I’m not going to throw stones in the dark. For all I know, Content Equals Money may have the verbal virtuosity of Jane Austen. I’ll just observe that there’s a difference between buying a suit from Burton or Savile Row. Ours tend to fit a lot better and don’t fall apart at the seams so readily.

The word ‘copy’ is one step up from ‘content’ — functional and commercial, but at least honed and targeted. And ‘writing’, of course, implies real craft and dexterity, the ability to create light and shade, achieve emotional nuance, make people chuckle or empathise.

So all in all, the service we offer couldn’t be further removed from providing ‘content’. You’d hope that people think of our name as a kind of knowing, post-modern joke, a clever anti-name that flies in the face of the word’s current meaning. Like Andy Warhol’s Factory or Factory Records, hotbeds of creativity and originality with a wink in their nomenclature.

Next week, maybe we’ll move on to the ‘total’ bit.

word of the week – ‘strip’ (strɪ́p)

Stefan Sagmeister and Jessica Walsh... as nature intended

Stefan Sagmeister has his kit off again. This time to announce that his New York design practice is becoming Sagmeister & Walsh, with 24-year-old designer Jessica Walsh getting her name on the door and her very own naked photo alongside the great man.

Of course this bare-faced stunt prompted all kinds of barbs from the design industry… Alan Aboud tweeted “designers reaching new extreme depths in self promotion. Awful.”, Rob Ball of The Partners weighed in with “you know what would be eye-catching? Something involving Sagmeister without his cock in it #tiresome”.

What most struck me though was how grumpy Sagmeister and Walsh looked. There seemed to be no joy in the occasion, just a sense of morose resignation and even boredom. Sagmeister had left his socks on, Walsh perched on a stack of magazines, they stare straight at camera, stark miserably naked. You’re just left wondering what’s the point and what’s the fuss?

Newcastle studio onebestway on dress-down Friday

A couple of years ago I wrote a Design Week column (no innuendo intended) centred around onebestway, an eight-strong Newcastle design agency who went naked for a day on the advice of a business psychologist. Their publicity photo was more ‘Carry On Designing’ than a po-faced art piece, with strategically placed laptops, chairs and fruit bowls hiding their modesty. Mind that stapler. At least they seemed to be enjoying themselves.

There’s certainly nothing clever about taking your clothes off... I strip every day and barely give it a second thought. And it’s been done so many times and in so many contexts, that as a gesture it’s barely provocative any more. But I think the reason that Sagmeister has ruffled so many feathers this time is that designers feel they should be judged by their work rather than talent for exposure. After all, they’re supposed to drive the car, rather than pose naked on the bonnet.

word of the week – ‘ding-dong’ (dɪ́ŋ- dɒ́ŋ).

As Englebert Humperdink gets cosy with the throat gargle on the eve of tomorrow’s Eurovision Song Contest, I thought I’d take a quick delve into the Netherlands’ fortunes over the years.

Like the UK, the Dutch glory days were the 1970s, notably when Teach-In scooped the top prize in 1975 with the quintessential Eurovision ditty ‘Ding-A-Dong’, and various other patriotic crooners snaffled second and third places. There have been another three Dutch winners all told, but you have to go right back to the 1950s and 1960s to sniff those out.

Some of the more curious names to represent the Netherlands include Frizzle Sizzle (1986), Mrs Einstein (1997), Mouth & MacNeal (1974), Hind (2008) and the curiously British-sounding Humphrey Campbell (1992). In latter years entries have tended to be sung in English, though personally I feel ‘Een speeldoos’ (‘A Musical’), ‘De mallemolen’ (‘The Whirligig’) and ‘Blijf zoals je bent’ (‘Stay As You Are’) have a certain authentic ring to them.

However, Teach-In’s strategy of using catchy but meaningless words clearly doesn’t always pay off… in 1967, Thérèse Steinmetz came last and managed only two points with ‘Ring-dinge-ding’.

The 2012 entry ‘You and Me’ by Joan Franka didn’t make the cut, which means the Netherlands have failed to make the Saturday night final for eight years on the trot. Still, so long as the boys in orange make it to the other Euro final, who cares?

word of the week – ‘glam’ (glǽm).

Size matters... The Sweet touted the more obvious side of Glam

Last year ‘Electric Warrior’, T-Rex’s seminal sixth album turned 40. This year ‘Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars’, Bowie’s breakthrough record hit the same milestone. So I thought I’d quickly doff my spandex cap to Glam Rock, the genre that made it OK for boys to deviate musically and sartorially… and make the odd foray into their girlfriends’ make-up bags.

Of course, not all the lads were comfortable with the Glam look. Word magazine ran a picture last month of Trevor Bolder and Woody Woodmansey from Bowie’s original backing band, looking more like Men from C&A than Spiders from Mars. They revealed that Bowie’s sideman Mick Ronson hated the clothes so much, “he packed and left for Beckenham Station”. ‘The Great’ Paul Thompson, drummer with Roxy Music, former apprentice welder at the Palmers shipyard in Jarrow, was another who had something of an allergic reaction to glitter and platforms.

While Bowie, Bolan and Roxy have stood the test of time and remain hugely credible artists, I’d like to put a quiet word in for The Sweet. Unashamedly poppy, with brazenly catchy songs written by the prolific Nicky Chinn and Mike Chapman, they scored an amazing 13 top 20 hits during the 1970s, with ‘Blockbuster’ topping the charts in 1973. Though the title of highly successful 2006 BBC time-warp series ‘Life on Mars’ nods to a Bowie song, its 1970s soundtrack, tellingly enough, was dominated by The Sweet.

With it’s rejection of hippie mores and free licence to experiment, Glam paved the way for its spiky younger sibling Punk… and for that, we a have a lot to be grateful for.

word of the week – ‘pointer’ (pɔjntər).

By George... this looks damn familiar

I’ve just been reading a book by the celebrated US art director George Lois. Lois was not only responsible for some of the most seminal ads of the 1960s and 1970s, but his extraordinary covers for Esquire magazine are now on permanent display in New York’s MoMA. The slim volume is called ‘Damn Good Advice (for people with talent!)’, and consists of a series of illustrated lessons culled from his many years in advertising and publishing.

If you’ve read Paul Arden’s ‘Whatever You Think, Think The Opposite’ and ‘It’s Not How Good You Are, It’s How Good You Want To Be’, you’ll get the gist. It’s a collection of snappy, from-the-horse’s-mouth pointers on how to be creative. In fact, the format is remarkably similar — standard paperback size, white cover with bold black type. Inside, brutally straightforward, sometimes irreverent headlines, accompanied by a couple of paragraphs of wisdom or anecdote, and a carefully chosen image that colours or juxtaposes the point being made.

The pace is staccato and relentless. You feel you’re being hit over the head with page after page of ‘damn good advice’ — ‘Make your surroundings a metaphor for who you are’, ‘Never eat shit’, ‘A trend is always a trap’, ‘Tell the Devil’s Advocate in the room to go to hell’, ‘Speak up, goddammit!’. For full effect shout rapidly in a Noo Yoik accent.

The first few pages are fine, inspiring even. You’re thinking, right on, don’t compromise, fight the good fight, believe in yourself, stick it to the man. But as they keep coming (and coming) small seeds of doubt start creeping in. Firstly, it starts to become apparent that a lot of the ‘damn good advice’ is pretty self evident. Like ‘Don’t sleep your life away’, and ‘Don’t expect a creative idea to pop out of your computer’. You can’t argue with either, but most people will have worked this out for themselves. Unless they were sleeping, of course.

Arden fast rules... an adman’s wisdom

Secondly, if I took every leaf out of Lois’s book, I’m pretty sure my clients would run a mile. For example, he recalls a time when he stood on a window ledge and threatened to jump unless his poster idea was accepted. Or dropped the biggest book he could find on the floor when his boss was ignoring him. It’s the kind of ‘maverick’ behaviour that pervaded UK advertising in the 1980s, ‘crazy creative guys’ throwing more and more outrageous stunts to get noticed.

Of course be determined, confident and original. Of course stick up for your ideas and take inspiration from wherever you find it. And I tip my hat to Lois for his single-mindedness, chutzpah and towering achievement. But, I can’t help feeling that if there were 100s of creative people out there following this credo, we’d have mayhem on our hands. The point is, we’re all creative in different ways, and realising this is the first step on the path to originality.

‘Damn Good Advice’ is a damn good ad for George Lois, but you need to take it with a pinch of salt. Or as he might put it ‘You can't be creative if someone has to tell you how’.

word of the week – ‘legacy’ (ˈlegəsiː)

When I was around 17, I had the best pair of jeans. I wore them virtually every day for three years, and by the end of that time, there was more patchwork repair than original material. To this day I remember my mother compaining they ‘gave her the pip’, as she spent so much time sewing them up. Which sounded hilarious in her Dutch accent.

I remember they were Wrangler drainpipes, but I have no idea where they were bought or made. I liked the Ws stitched on to the back pockets — maybe it was a latent appreciation of typography which was to kick in properly a few years later. But the point is, I truly loved them, and they were always with me whatever I happened to be doing.

Read on...

word of the week – ‘wisenheimer’ (wajzɛnhajmər)

Frazier Crane... undisputed king of the wisenheimers

Don’t get me wrong, I’m a big fan of Twitter. It can be fun, informative, timely and even occasionally inspiring. I like the way it punctuates the day with little morsels of interest — quips, links and banter — although admittedly I’m sometimes a little too easily distracted by it.

But there’s one thing that really, really annoys me. And that’s people who use it as yet another platform for self-congratulation. Wisenheimer is an Americanism, but I was struggling to find a noun which so perfectly summed up this kind of pompous, self-regarding type. Someone who constantly has to reaffirm their greatness and superiority, who assumes the world is interested enough to want five-minute bulletins on their majestic progress. It’s the digital equivalent of the dreaded Christmas round robin letter.

At least it’s short, I hear you say. Short but incessant, death by a thousand pats on the back.

word of the week – 'flip-top’ (flɪ́p-tɑ́p)

Just been doing some research into the semiotics and visual language of packaging for a piece I’m writing for Uusi, the Nokia brand magazine. In the course of this rooting around, I came across some interesting stuff about Marlboro cigarettes.

Firstly, that these macho tabs were originally marketed at women — back in the 1950s, real men scoffed (or coughed) at filters. They came in a soft, white packet, covered in a foil wrapper with lots of feminine script lettering.

The brand was utterly transformed in 1955, when a designer called Frank Gianninoto came up with a design that had to look good on black-and-white television. The white arrow jutting into the red space at the top was simple, bold and graphic, and seemingly never went out of fashion. But it was the new-fangled flip-top box that broke the mould, contributing to the brand’s built-for-the-tough outdoors image. It became an enduring symbol of Americana, and only 20 years ago was pronounced the most valuable brand in the world.

But who’d have thought that the Marlboro man had had a sex change?

In his book ‘The Total Package’, Thomas Hine notes: “Everybody knows, intellectually at least, that great packages don’t always hold good things. But that is a truth that the best packages try to make people forget.”

word of the week – ‘higson’ (hɪ́gsə́n).

Remember the Higsons, spiky purveyors of ‘funk-punk’? Back in the 1980s, studying publishing at the London College of Printing, I was a huge fan, avidly following their progress in the NME and buying every single the day it came out.

And then this great silk-screen poster appeared on the LCP refectory wall. I was too law-abiding to pinch it myself, but luckily a friend of mine was more than happy to do the deed on my behalf. Just call me ‘the Don’.

Ever since then, frontman Charlie Higson has been something of a hero. He just kept popping up everywhere — producer, performer, comedy writer, Vic and Bob, Fast Show, Have I Got News For You, QI, and many more. And now my boys are huge fans of his Young James Bond and vampire books. A prolific and versatile talent.

Some 30 years later, it turns out we have a mutual friend — Andy Altmann of Why Not Associates. Earlier this week, I told Andy about my coveted poster, and he forwarded this pic on to Charlie. His response… “Wow. that’s a lovely poster – wish I had one!”

Probably the only time Charlie Higson will be envious of me.

word of the week – ‘gneiss’ (nʌɪs)

Museum piece... there's life in the old bag yet

On Wednesday, totalcontent tied a few goodies into a polka-dotted hanky and headed off to Oxford. First stop was the Ashmolean Museum where we spent a couple of happy hours among the old stones, ancient jewellery and rarely seen words like canopic and gneiss*.

Museum gift shops are almost as interesting as the endless lines of cabinets themselves. In these public funding-starved times, they play an important role in generating cash, so they really need to know their market. First they need plenty of kid-friendly stationery — colourful branded rubbers, rulers and pencils. Printed ephemera next — books, postcards, posters, and the like, featuring the museum’s greatest hits and special exhibitions.

After that you’re getting into the slightly dangerous territory of gifting — mugs, plates, scarves, key rings, puzzles and so on. Some can carry off a reproduction of a grizzled statue or detail from an Old Master… others just look contrived and tacky. Water-lily print tie anyone? Baseball cap with King Tut logo? Perhaps not.

But there was something that caught my eye in the Ashmolean shop. They’d taken a leaf out of Freitag’s book and produced a small range of up-cycled bags from the huge canvas exhibition banners that once advertised forthcoming shows. I loved the way these feature random fragments of type and imagery, each one unique and slightly weathered. And it seemed somehow appropriate that a museum should be reinterpreting the past.

*In case you’re still wondering what gneiss means, it’s a type of metamorphic rock used for ancient Egyptian statuary.

word of the week — ‘antipatico’.

Italian lesson... shared tastes, better results

So here it is, totalcontent’s very first foreign ‘word of the week’. Even if your Italian’s a bit rusty, you’ve probably figured out that antipatico* means roughly the opposite of simpatico, a word that’s become common English parlance over the past few years. I say roughly, because actually it means “unpleasant, odious, unsympathetic or crabby”. But then, if someone fits that description, it’s highly unlikely you’ll be simpatico with them.

Recently I’ve been finding that in a work context, like-mindedness is a real blessing. Of course you should be open, co-operative and respectful, whoever you’re working with. But if you share similar interests and cultural reference points, it’s a real bonus and will only make for a better working relationship. It means you can develop a deeper understanding more quickly, you’re more likely to enjoy each other’s company and be thinking along the same lines.

But if you’re antipatico, you simply won’t be ordering from the same menu.

*Thanks to Paula at Form for introducing me to the word on Wednesday.

word of the week – ‘score’ (skɔː).

From Mark Farrow to Peter Saville, two designers from the same Factory. In the light of this week’s shenanigans at the FA, I though it would be worth revisting Saville’s recent redesign of the England football shirt. If you recall, the former Creative Director of the City of Manchester took the bold step of introducing some colour to the national team’s traditionally pristine white kit.

Read on...

word of the week – haggis (ˈhagɪs).

It was Burns’ Night on Tuesday, so here are some musings on haggis.

South of the border we’re all a bit sceptical… we have a suspicion that these grungy-looking brown balls contain something vaguely intestinal. Perhaps they’re distantly related to a black pudding.

Or so we thought. In fact, haggis ignorance runs far deeper. A 2010 survey by takeaway service Just-Eat.co.uk revealed that 18% of Brits believe haggis is a small beast which roams the Highlands. Another 15% hazard that its a type of Scottish musical instrument, while 4% plump for a Harry Potter character. Some 800 of the 1,623 people interviewed were Scottish, and 14% of them had no idea what a haggis was either (oh the shame).

A flavour to savour... if you’ve got the stomach for it

In fact, the venerated haggis is a concoction of sheep’s heart, liver and lungs minced with onions, oatmeal, suet and spices, all stuffed into a sheep stomach. As the 2001 English edition of the Larousse Gastronomique puts it, “Although its description is not immediately appealing, haggis has an excellent nutty texture and delicious savoury flavour”.

And it is utterly Scottish — unlike a few other national icons we could mention.

I researched and wrote the following for the 2009 Royal Mail Year Book, and it appeared in a celebratory chapter on Burns (although the last sentence didn’t make the final edit):

THE REAL MCCOY?
There’s nothing more Scottish than whisky, is there? It’s called Scotch, after all. Actually, whisky was originally invented in China, and was distilled by 15^th-century Irish monks before finding its way to Scotland some 100 years later.
And get this… kilts, tartans and bagpipes may not be entirely Scottish either. There’s some evidence that kilts originated in Ireland. Tartan cloth was unearthed in Hallstatt, upper Austria, some of which date to 1200 BC, while 3000-year-old tartan-wearing mummies were found in a Chinese desert. Some historians believe the first bagpipes came from Sumaria.
Recent genetic studies show that the mutation for red hair may have originated in Central Asia too.

word of the week – ‘stealth’ (stɛlθ).

It’s a strange time for luxury brands. Of course they want to be seen out and about as usual, but flaunting it too brazenly could be deemed bad taste in these straitened times. Hence the notion of ‘stealth wealth’, a phrase I came across for the first time this week working for (you guessed it) a luxury brand.

It’s the idea that you’re so utterly comfortable in your millionaire skin that you’re happy to draw a discreet veil over what you’re worth. With your mahogany tan and slightly grizzled sideburns, you dress down in pastel polo shirt, pressed chinos and artfully distressed deck shoes. You may eschew San Tropez, Costa Smeralda, and the other more flashy-trashy Euro hotspots, but you still find a way to quietly enjoy the finer things in life.

Plane sailing... may you be stealthy, weathly and wise

Oddly, the word ‘stealth’ also cropped up on BBC2’s ‘Stargazing Live’, the astronomy programme fronted by the rather unlikely double act of pop-star-turned-professor Brian Cox and physicist-turned-comedian Dara O’Briain. Cox observed that UFO sightings suddenly changed from the traditional flying-saucer shape to triangular after the US military’s introduction of the Stealth Bomber in 1997. But I was probably more intrigued by the thought that they might actually have a Pentagon employee responsible for naming. Or perhaps they draft in the Central Naming Agency (CNA)? Whatever, hat’s off... it’s brilliant.

There’s something wonderfully onomatopoeic and sneaky about the word. It’s redolent of underhandedness and skulduggery. Maybe it’s because the first five letters spell ‘steal’, and you almost seem to be telling someone to ‘shhh!’ when you say it.

Well, probably time to make a stealthy exit.

word of the week – ‘railroad’ (reɪlrəʊd).

Great news, HS2, the new £32m high-speed railway is going full-steam ahead. There’s nothing like progress, I always say. No one can ever call me a NIMBY again, because, whether I want it or not, it’s going literally right through my back yard — about 500 metres away, in fact. It’ll be great… whenever I’m dozing off, editing some turgid copy, a proud symbol of 21-st century Britain will zip past and wake me from my stupor. And regular too, every four minutes, I’ve been told. Just think of the productivity, the positive effect on the GDP.

I’ll cheer and wave when the Birmingham fat cats purr by in a flash of wheels and steel. I may even hoist my best red knickers on a stick like Jenny Agutter in the Railway Children. And I’ll do the same when London mob crash past the other way — although I have a feeling that won’t be quite so often.

A consultation paper of 55,000 people almost unanimously disagreed with everything about the new line. But what do they know? — this will make Britain great again. Though perhaps there’ll be a few less furry creatures and green bits than we used to have.

We’ve been railroaded, no question.

Train drain... not so much a white knight as a white elephant

word of the week – ‘denude’ (dɪˈnjuːd).

It’s Epiphany, 6 January. The day when all the Christmas decs are consigned to their dark cubbyholes for another year. Free from the gaudy glare of glitter and gew-gaws, rooms are stripped back once more to their bare minimalist bones. Trees, sad and sparse, wait to join the pile-up at the local tip. Cards are shuffled away. The last vestiges of the old year are laid reverentially to rest. Denuded, stark naked once more, we face forward and step gingerly, but properly, into the New Year.

Fir dues... it’s that time of year every Christmas tree dreads