CREATIVE REVIEW / MOTHER

This month we were thrilled to be profiled in Creative Review's Graduate issue. We even made the cover (That's us looking ridiculous on the left hand side).

"The September issue of CR is all about this year's graduates. We have given all our feature space over to eight eager, fresh-faced young creative types yearning to make their mark...As well as showing their work, we have also asked them about their hopes, dreams and fears about starting a career in visual communication." CR Blog




We have also been invited to exhibit our work alongside the other graduates 'Downstairs at Mother'. Below are a few snaps of us setting up, giving you a glimpse at what's instore.




Please get in touch if you would like to come and see our work. Alternatively, more about the exhibition and September Graduate issue can be found on the CR Blog.

I Love My Mum

Finally we are selling off the very last batch of our I LOVE MY MUM Tees.
If you want one grab it while you can as we have a very very limited number left.
Tees can be purchased from: jamesandjoe.bigcartel.com

Happy Christmas

Movember been and gone.

For those of you who didn't participate in 'Movember' the name might not be instantly familiar, so just think of it as Novembers' hairier sibling. To celebrate Movember (A Moustache in November) members are asked to cultivate a hairy upper lip for 30 long, whole days.

It's been an emotional journey but we must now bid farewell to our bushy cock-blocks. Right before we shaved the bad boys off we took an essential memorial picture.


Tim (Left), James (Up), Will (Right), Joe (Down)

RIP Tash.

Find out the truth behind Movember here.

Homo Promo

"Right-wing evangelical groups accuse gay people of having an agenda to promote homosexuality… What would it look like if this ridiculous idea were true? GT approached advertising agencies and asked them to work up some campaigns that would sell ‘Homosexuality’ as an unbearably appealing choice and recruit to the cause. This is what they made for us. Read what the ad creators said about the thinking behind their work in the November issue of GT."
– GT Magazine, November 2008

As friends of the GT team, we got involved in this months Homo Promo feature, below is our execution (Interview here).


– "Anything she can do..."

See all the contributors ads on the Facebook page, or read the magazine and hear the different thought processes behind each concept.

Shake like a Jelly

We'd like to say a big thanks to the lovely Marina Orlova for mentioning our YouTube account, KeirsCallahan, in her highly informative "Shake it like Jello" video.

Ever found yourself tormented by the ignorance of not knowing where the word flabbergasted comes from? Us too. But don't worry, Marina, aka HotForWords, was there to help:


"Shake it like Jello"

Sometimes it can be a bit of a chore to express exactly how you're feeling, but thanks to everyones favourite Russian philologist that struggle exists no more. Tackling a plethora exciting words and phrases each week, Marina is the #1 - most subscribed 'Guru' on YouTube. If you're yet to see the best of her oeuvre, click here to browse the words already covered.

YouTube
Official Website

Thanks also to Tim for alerting us of our long awaited mention! "Another mystery solved by your trusty HotForWords."

Bringing the creative portfolio right up to date.

This week Campaign magazine ran the feature:


Bringing the creative portfolio right up to date
by Matt Williams Campaign 11-Sep-08, 15:00

Creative graduates are now showcasing their work on the web. Creative chiefs review four online portfolios.

Guess what, we may not quite be graduates yet (1 year to go), but they were kind enough to give us a mention anyway!

Will Awdry, creative partner at Ogilvy and previously of DDB & BBH fame, nominated our site for the article.

At first we were apprehensive, we simply haven't had time to update the site for a few months. Having recently made huge changes to our print portfolio, updating the layout, adding new work, and binning a lot of old ideas, we had planned to tackle the online version next. However it seemed we had nothing to worry about, Will Awdry had given us a brilliant report.

Below is a section of the Campaign article.
The whole article can be read in the current issue of Campaign or online at www.brandrepublic.com/Campaign

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Joe Keirs and James Callaghan, unattached
Apprasied by Will Awdry creative partner, Ogilvy

Among legions of toads, Joe and James' oeuvre is a real prince. Granted, they don't leave a phone number and the telly wasn't loaded in when I saw it, but their stall is positively groaning. Some of the ideas are clever, some dangerous and some, well, plain demented.

There's a parody of the Coke "11.30am" spot for the Dairy Council. It's a little extreme.

They have tucked into a British Library brief using offal as their medium. A Photoshop, stop-frame dancing cat fronts an estate agent.

There are nice ideas for Ted Baker window displays, an exquisite homage to Eric Gill for Leeds University's visual identity and an approach to possible cottaging locations that balances serious intent with understandable provocation.

The team posts snapshots of themselves, like strange refugees from Wet Wet Wet, but they're deeply ironic, so that's alright.

There's a Flickr section, a blog, some great YouTube picks and a shed-load ?of other stuff. The site is copyrighted and they even run a shop from it.

The assembly evidences great craft and wit. I don't like all of it and some ideas are naïvely gauche, others a little familiar.

I'm not really sure whether they know if they are designers or ad people. They clearly don't give a toss about what sort of media channel they operate in.

I was able to absorb all of this in five minutes.

Of course, I'm now eager to meet them. They've used the medium du jour to get themselves across to their audience - creative directors - in a smartly digestible way.

As it stands, their "portfolio" doesn't guarantee them a job, nor would I give up on hard-copy cousins as a result. But it does put them out there in a highly seductive competitive set.

www.JamesandJoe.co.uk

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Our good friends from the old D&AD workshop days, Eddie Fisher and Charlie Hurst also got a mention for their brilliant and ever so slightly homo erotically titled site www.eddielovescharlie.com.
Well done boys, and congrats on Kittcatt Nohr.

Barkley video

Check out this insane and beautiful video from Gnarls Barkley. Even the casting is perfect, the every couple, the you, the me, that breakup. These guys rarely disappoint with their videos, possibly because they are willing to take a risk and do something differnt.


The video reminds us of a lovely little shoot we did a little while back.

The art of commentry

Having started out enjoying the comment culture over at Jai & Wal's blog Creative in London, James and I are beginning to get a little surprised by the bitter taste of negative comments that seem to stalk many of their posts. It seems like they have an audience that deliberately go on their blog to leave scathing criticism. But Jai & Wal love it, as they still allow anonymous posting... which is great, so all opinions remain welcome.

Fortunately for James & I we don't seem to have that problem just yet. Averaging around -2 comments per post, our blog is like a silent ninja (The sexy way of saying no-one reads it). So amongst all this comment chat, we found ourselves reading an article by Toby Francis from Cracked.com. It's brilliant countdown of the top Obnoxious Internet Commentors out there.


#8. The Non-Believer

Maybe you could reply to this post as someone from the list? Or maybe not.

Blogging made easy

We've known about Google reader for a while now, but have only recently started using it to its full potential. It's a great application that will make your blog browsing that little bit easier, collecting all the new posts from your favourite blogs and putting them in one place. Simple.


Google Reader explained

As part of our university course, our year group have been encouraged to keep a blog on anything they deem of interest. It's a great collection of around 100 students recording/ remarking on things they find intriguing in the world today.

By creating a folder in your Google reader and adding these blogs you can check on all the new posts without having to visit each page individually, making it very easy to keep up to date with everyone.

So, to save you entering all 100 or so of our coursemates blog links into your Google readers, we've exported it all here for you to download. It can also be found on our right hand bar for future use. Once you have downloaded the file simply go into google reader, click on Manage subscriptions (at the bottom left), then Import/Export, and just upload the file.

Hopefully, this application can help increase the activity across our blogs and start to see their full potential by seeing what people are talking about and increasing discussion in the comment sections.

After reading this particularly boring copy, here's some eye candy:

The Illustrated Ape Arrives!

Just the other day we saw the release of our editorial debut, The Illustrated Ape "Photographers of the Urban Apocalypse" issue. As our first step into the world of magazine art-direction, it's been an absolutely amazing process. The editors, Mike Sims & Christian Pattison, gave us total freedom with the issue. + Given the opportunity to commission photographers of our choice, we were able to meet some great people – whose help we are eternally grateful for!

For those of you that aren't familiar with the publication, it's a creative showcase of "fiction, poetry, pictures, and pop." Better still, there's an About Ape section on the website where a more thorough picture is painted.


A sneak peak

Whilst our issue explores photography, Ape has previously been solely illustration based. Though our somewhat abstract headers borrow a lot from the illustrative nature of the magazine's past. On that note, we also ran a feature whereby we asked illustrators to create a photographic self portrait. So, hopefully the issue's transition to photography isn't too revolutionary.

From buttered bottoms to Ape 'tart cards', we tried to have a bit of fun with the mag, though as the "Photographers of the Urban Apocalypse" theme would suggest, the humour can be a bit dark in places. But anyway, we'd love for you to check it out – It was lots of fun to make, so hopefully it's fun to read!





If you're passing a Borders, Magma, or perhaps a Modern Tate - you should be able to see the mag (There's a full list of stockists on the site). Alternatively you might even want to purchase something online/ from the ape back-catalogue, try the Ape Shop if so.

"Photographers of the Urban Apocalypse" preview – Click to enlarge:

Who would play you, in your life story?

I think Alfonso Ribeiro aka Carlton, would have to play Joe.

Stu

We are soon to be releasing a whole new range of shirts.
To make sure everything goes to plan, and we still have time to do all the other things we do, we have enlisted the help of a man named Stu.

So if you would like to know anything about our T-Shirts, Stu wants to hear from you.

You can reach him on stu@jamesandjoe.co.uk

I Love Family Living

Who would have thought James & Joe would be making family life in Sweden that little bit sweater. The absolutely lovely Swedish magazine "Family Living" loved our T-Shirt so much they did a little feature on it. If you are lucky enough to speak Swedish and would like to see a large version on the page CLICK HERE.

The very kind and beautiful Isabelle Halling contacted us about the T-Shirt a little while back and asked about adding it to her regular column. Not only does Isabelle write for "Family Living", host a interior decorating show on TV, and write an online blog, she has also recently become a mother. Well done Isabelle. As soon as we have baby Tees made one will be flying your way.

Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs

We first made friends with the Totally Enormous (and pretty sexy) Extinct Dinosaurs way back when they contributed to the Tate Tracks event, responding to a Dieter Roth canvas with their usual magic/Dino-fuzz. We've since shared many a pina colada in their company. Listening to them the other night, we came home and drew a portrait of them (Above).

Illustration Magazine

This Spring we've been featured in everyones favourite Illustration Magazine called 'Illustration Magazine'. Here's a scan...



The magazine has a focus on famous illustrators of the past, though, as shown with us, they are keen to explore newer material too. They said: "We wanted to explore children’s book illustrators alongside those who work on adult novels and classics - or even political manifestos and train timetables. We wanted to consider the humorous, the serious, the sinister and the surreal."

Thanks for having us 'Illustration Magazine.' Look forward to seeing you again soon : )

Kyna and Jennie's Banned Ads

Recently there has been controversy over the stunningly beautiful GHD ad TBWA/Manchester created around christmas.

"The complaints particularly highlighted the use of the phrase from the Lord's Prayer and the depiction of the letter "t" as a cross in "thy".
The ASA said that while previous ghd campaigns did not "mock" faith or belief, the new ads went further with the women appearing to be praying while being erotic."(guardian.co.uk article)

Kyna and Jennie were working on these ads when we were at TBWA, we vividly remember the day some of the models popped in for a casting session. We are positive the girls didn't set out to offend anyone, so it's weird for us to see so much negativity surrounding the ads.


However this isn't the first time Kyna and her partner have attracted the attention of the Advertising Standards Authority.
They also wrote the banned Original source ad featuring a naked woman in a sexual pose who "appeared" to be under 16, we are pretty sure she wasn't 16 but it still got the chop (Read more here).

Its odd that two of the sweetest, friendliest girls could be getting so many people all hot and bothered.
We wish them both all the best for the future, hopefully we'll get a chance to grab a beer with them and the other TBWAers next time we're back up north.

To see Kyna and the other guys at TBWA/Manchester in all their glory check out our 2007 christmas card.

Untitled

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Untitled is the title of this

Untitled isn't a title it's what it is

Untitled is when the title's amiss

Untitled is a title that takes the piss




- by James & Joe

Our GT feature

This month we've been lucky enough to have GT magazine feature an article on us. Given the opportunity to occupy such a space, we wondered what exactly we could fill it with. Here's an extract from the interview on our choice of imagery:

"We’re constantly shocked by the many stories we hear of students in the Leeds University Library. When you get a horde of young and over worked students in one enclosed area things are bound to happen, if only to relieve a little tension. For these reasons we thought it a fun setting to explore, we’ll call it our way of saying thanks for the times librarians choose to turn a blind eye."

Love, Love, Love, Love, Love, Love!

We love you, we really do.
We thought firstly we would share with you this stunning heart designed by the amazingly talented Marian Bantjes. Please spend a while browsing her stunning work, imagine if all type was this luxurious.

Secondly, it wouldn't be a James & Joe Valentines post without a reference to our intimate relationship with classic love songs. The piece Joe likes to belt out from his Valentines morning shower and the one James loves to be woken up by:
Whitney Houston - I Will Always Love You (...How true)

Happy Valentines day.