Our Space

In celebration of April (both Poetry Appreciation Month and Jazz Appreciation Month), a poem by my favorite contemporary poet, which mentions jazz:

I Chop Some Parsley While Listening To Art Blakey's Version Of "Three Blind Mice"

And I start wondering how they came to be blind.
If it was congenital, they could be brothers and sister,
and I think of the poor mother
brooding over her sightless young triplets.

Or was it a common accident, all three caught
in a searing explosion, a firework perhaps?
If not,
if each came to his or her blindness separately,

how did they ever manage to find one another?
Would it not be difficult for a blind mouse
to locate even one fellow mouse with vision
let alone two other blind ones?

And how, in their tiny darkness,
could they possibly have run after a farmer's wife
or anyone else's wife for that matter?
Not to mention why.

Just so she could cut off their tails
with a carving knife, is the cynic's answer,
but the thought of them without eyes
and now without tails to trail through the moist grass

or slip around the corner of a baseboard
has the cynic who always lounges within me
up off his couch and at the window
trying to hide the rising softness that he feels.

By now I am on to dicing an onion
which might account for the wet stinging
in my own eyes, though Freddie Hubbard's
mournful trumpet on "Blue Moon,"

which happens to be the next cut,
cannot be said to be making matters any better. 

                                                -Billy Collins

A friend of mine is a digital media producer and photographer at Genuine Interactive in Boston, and she shared this with me. They believe this experience is unique on the web. Using a blend of video, embedded rich media, more video, photographs, tagging, and text to tell stories, this is a user-directed immersion into the Andover educational experience.

Try to take a few minutes with this.

A reminder that people – children and adults alike – respond not just to free stuff but also to FUN. Whether it’s a proposal to the IRS to help them convince people to pay their taxes, or a healthcare client trying to convince a salesforce that they really CAN add a product to their bag, FUN can play an important role in persuasion.      

Making Good Citizenship Fun

While experiencing this thought-provoking exhibition by Spanish mixed-media artist Antoni Muntadas at the Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid last week, I found several ideas that are applicable to our clients and their audiences. Here’s one:

Using media, technology, performance art and installations, Muntadas explores the various ways we send and receive information, and examines communications channels to uncover how they are used to both disseminate and restrict ideas.

Read More HERE.

Check out this PSA written and produced by our team at AJ - including the visual identity for the 9/11 National Day of Service and Remembrance.

The Sharpie, long the essential tool of production coordinators everywhere, is experiencing a cool brand boost: a new campaign by the Chicago office of Draft encourages artistic expression by young people, culminating in a competition that will play out on YouTube’s home page on August 27^th.

Read the NY Times article here:

Sharpie’s new web page launched today, and is easily the most colorful thing on the web,