What I want from your design portfolio

Executive creative director of DDB London Jeremy Craigen tells Media Circus what he wants to see from your book

I’ve been trying to tell students they have to make the life easier for whoever looks at their work. I’ve seen a few books where they have their briefs written out in full, and to be honest I don’t have the time for that. So make my life as easy as possible please. I want to be able to flip through someone’s work and just say “yep”. Make my life easy and I’m on your side.

George Romero - laying down the law of gore

Father of the zombie genre George Romero on going back to basics, Shawn of the Dead and 'happening' upon violence

What inspired you to experiment with DV cameras and digital media for Diary of the Dead?

During the post-production on Land of the Dead, I'd been watching Iraq on the 24/7 news and seen this incredible, ballooning growth of alternate media. Youtube and so on — all of a sudden we're all electronically connected to one another. I found that as the spin to put on Diary Of The Dead, so I sat down and reworked the script to what it is now. I just wanted to get back into the saddle, and there was also a big part of me that wanted to go back and really do something under the radar.

How to write a novel

Tim Dowling's tips on resisting the allure of banjos, toast and YouTube

Writing a novel must be one of the easiest things to avoid doing in the world - chances are no one has asked you to do it, and no one will care if you don't. As soon as you start, almost every other activity in the world seems preferable. Distractions come in every shape, but these are, to my mind, the top five.

Fashion magazines: who's who

Who really has the youngest readers, the most ads and the blandest tagline?

For the uninitiated, the world of fashion journalism can seem strange and impenetrable. To help us learn our Cosmos from our Vogues, here's Media Circus' resident fashionista, Pamela Ip with the lowdown on six of the top magazines.

American journalism - conquering the final frontier

Reporter and Columbia School of Journalism graduate Lionel Laurent explains what goes on inside the head of an American journalist

Believe it or not, American journalism isn’t what you think it is. After years of Bill O’Reilly’s tub-thumping and Michael Moore’s broad-brush theories, we seem to have settled on the notion that U.S. news is led by partisan loons while British journalism is sober, respectable and balanced. Not so.

Advertising - a broken industry

Adland supremo Paul Loosely sizes up the huge schisms in today's advertising industry

"A house divided against itself cannot stand", Honest Abe said that. If one studies the news it would appear that in the house of ads a schism is in real evidence.  On one side the bean counters; the suits the media moguls and the finance directors are waxing long, hard and more or less exclusively about margins, fees, discounts and lower costs. 

In the other room we are led to believe the creatives; writers, art directors, CDs are obsessed with recognition and a world of awards and gongs and rankings. One cannot help but harbor the gnawing suspicion that each party seam to be retreating behind their own walls, living in their own goldfish bowls convinced neither needs the other. 

The world's most stylish newspapers

Six of the nicest looking papers from across the world

For the second time in three years the Guardian has been voted the best designed newspaper in the world. Judges praised it for its "masterly control of content", something all newspapers no doubt aspire to.

Here are six others, some more familiar than others, which get the job (reporting the news) done in style:

Job cuts at NYT for the best?

A lot of noise is being made about plans to cut hundreds of editorial jobs at the New York Times. It's always sad to see grand old institution like the Times fall victim to base fads like "profitability" but it could prove beneficial. Two recent Times articles, a breathless endorsement of the semi-colon and a hard-hitting investigation on why children fear auto-flush toilets, hint that maybe the Old Grey Lady could lose a little fat. In any case she'll have to be in good shape to outrun the bloodthirsty, Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal (metaphor over).

Prize turkeys sweep the Oscars

From the First Post: Successful, good films are a thing of the past

This year's crop of Oscar-nominated films are all the things that delight film critics; dark, inventive, challenging and unusually brutal. One thing they aren't, however, is popular. Out of the 10 highest grossing films of 2007, only the Pixar animated comedy Ratatouille appears on any of the shortlists for the major Oscars.

To put the problem in perspective, last year's best picture winner, The Departed, took more than $100m at the box office before the Oscar nominations were even announced. This year, in the same three months between release and nomination, the Coen Brothers' gore-soaked No Country for Old Men (right) - up for best picture and best director at the Oscars on February 24 - made less than half of that, only $44m.

Roger Ebert can give There Will be Blood as many thumbs up as he likes - cinema goers don't want to go and see it.

Read the full article at The First Post

Indexed: Life on small cards

 

Indexed is created by Jessica Hagy. The Indexed book will be in stores early 2008 See previous Indexed

Adland: Obama’s triumph of style

A new film has handed Obama credibility and momentum, says Patrick Collister

'When you have the mo, you go.' That's what Josh Lyman said in one of the episodes of The West Wing and right now, in the fight for presidential nomination, momentum is most definitely with Barack Obama.

This video of a song written by will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas and directed by Jesse Dylan, son of Bob, is further evidence that Hillary Clinton is falling off the pace.

Continue reading at THE FIRST POST

Guardian employs 'hipster', pays the price

"Meet Max Gogarty - 19, from north London, spends his money on food, booze and skinny jeans, writes for Skins in his spare time. He's off to India and Thailand to have a good time, and you can join him in his weekly blog."

So starts a new travel blog on the Guardian website. Unfortunately for Max discerning Guardian readers quickly identified him as the son of one of the paper's travel writers Paul Gogarty. According to the readers' comments section they also identified him as a "Nathan Barleyesque daddy's boy" and a "public school boy with a penchant for stubble". In fact the torrent of abuse was so cruel, so relentless, that moderators eventually closed the comments section entirely.

We at Media Circus wish Max the best of luck and look forward to following his suspiciously quick ascent to the top of the media food chain.

Anti-syphilis ads from the 1940s

Fantastic ads for a not-so fantastic disease

Back in the 1940s syphilis was still a physically crippling and socially stigmatising problem. On the bright side a lot of the public service posters designed to warn people about it were fantastic examples of modernist illustration. Here are six of the best:

'Journalism is at an all time low' - Nick Davies

Guardian journalist and author of Flat Earth News, Nick Davies has answered his critics who say his book paints an unrealistically negative image of modern journalism. Davies claims that not only are 80 per cent of news stories based on PR handouts or agency reports, journalists are also expected to fill three times as many pages as 20 years ago. Finally he says that a reliance on unnamed sources, semi-illegal activities and heresay has taken away any integrity the profession might have had.

Former editor of the Guardian Peter Preston wrote a piece last Saturday saying Davies' views were incorrect and also hypocritical. According to Preston there has never been a 'golden age' of journalism and Davies had no right to attack the use of unnamed sources as he used them himself.

This week on The First Post Davies answers his critics.

Modern journalism: no time for the truth

Mitt Roomey?

The Sunday Times unwittingly invents a new presidential candidate

Last week's Sunday Times ran a long piece about former presidential candidate Mitt Romney but managed to spell his surname 'Roomey' on every mention of the former Michigan governor. Evidently somebody had been slightly trigger happy with the spellchecker's 'auto-correct' function. We have to hold it together people. If we give the machines free run of our responsibilities it's only a small step until they become sentient and rebel entirely.

I'll be in my bunker.