This morning as I came out of Waterloo station there was a gang of glamorous looking women handing out what appeared to be free handbags. Of course all the female commuters crowded round trying to find out what was going on and if they were actually able to get their hands on a free handbag, which then attracted more attention.

Once my girlfriend managed to get her hands on one we quickly realised that these handbags were actually a wrap around Sex & The City ad for the Metro newspaper! Makes a change from the usual ink heavy wrap arounds that mess up your hands when you hold them.

Bon idée.

The worst thing about working in London is having to go into the filthy underground to get the tube on your commute. Seeing as the weather is getting nicer and the days are getting longer my girlfriend and I have been getting into the routine of skipping out the tube section of the journey and walking instead.

From London Waterloo (A) we can walk to our places of work (B) in central Soho in 30 minutes or less and a bit longer for the return walk to the station (C) in the evening because of a nice detour through the park. Check out the map below, or here.

As well as walking 1.6miles in the morning and 2miles in the evening we’re managing to take in the scenery of the riverside in the morning light and St James’ park towards sunset. You also begin to notice all the little things about London that you’ll inevitably miss if you’re squished into a grubby tube gasping for air beneath the arm pit of a sweaty fat man.

As a creative, it’s the people I see, things I notice and places I go that inspire the best ideas for new campaigns. Being stuck in an office all day is completely uninspiring and since walking to and from work I’ve actually noticed a significant increase in my concentration levels at work, not to mention a vast improvement in idea generation.

You can forget about the tourists too, before 9.30am they just don’t exist. You can stroll past the London Eye, Big Ben or Leicester Square without a slow walking tourist in sight.

So if you’re a creative, or even just a commuter, I urge you to ditch the train, tube or bus a few stops early and discover the brighter side of London. Oh, and bring a camera because you never know what you might see… it was only last week when I snapped this eagle perched ironically on this sign in Trafalgar Square.

If this all looks like too much work for you then you are a fat bastard and you should read my post about commutersize that’s fit for even the laziest of commuters.

On my lunch break the other day I walked round the corner from my work to Alphabet and on my way I noticed this great big mass of hair cascading down from the first floor window of a neighbouring building. It flowed diagonally across the building and re-entered the building via the front door.

When I walked over to get a better look I peered in through the window to see a shop window filled with a mass web of hair, darting from one side of the room to another. I expected it to be a pop up art gallery but there was no one inside and the door was locked.

Then suddenly as I peered through the window, with my nose pressed against the glass, a smiling face appeared behind the door! A tall, doll-, adams looking woman ushered us in and we were welcomed in to see a range of pieces and a film in the basement.

I’ll try to share a URL or at least a name for the artist amongst my pile of flyers and leaflets I seem to have collected recently.

On Tuesday I went to Yelp’s first birthday bash at Islington Metal works with my girlfriend and it was A.W.E.S.O.M.E.!

The venue is situated on a back street kinda directly behind Angel tube station (as you come out of the station take a left, then left again) and it’s made up of 3 distinctive and unique areas.

The first space was decorated like a garden party with REAL grass, benches, gnomes, live music and LOTS of booze served in English tea cups. It had a true summery Gin & Tonic or Pimms style feel, despite being indoors.

The next room had the atmosphere of Covent Garden, but without the gawping tourists (just gawping Yelpers instead). It had an open courtyard feel to it with cobbled floor, archways and a real (ish) looking tube housing a cocktail bar. Food served included spit roast pork, frozen yogurt and some sort of very tasty potato spiral things.

The last room was also very cool and had a classic English rock feel about it with framed photographs on the wall, an open bar with organic beers and a table stacked with edible treats. There was also a photo booth dishing out freebie sets of six shots and an array of funky hats to make yourself look uber cool.

All in all, Yelp has done a GREAT job at throwing a fantastic 1st birthday bash without over branding the event or throwing too much garbage down your throat.

Well done Yelp, I look forward to next year!

I’ve been commuting everyday for a while now. Each morning I get 1 bus, 1 train and 2 tubes before walking to work. It takes a while so I’ve been reading the newspapers as I travel, just like everyone else (it’s almost complusory). Despite reading The Metro in the mornings I tend to skim the Evening Standard over lunch and read the London Lite on my commute home.

Well today I’m telling them all to fuck off out my life. Why do I read them? To get news? No, I get world news whilst I’m sat on Twitter all day, and most of the time I get it before the papers do.

I once convinced myself that I read papers for creative inspiration. I even wrote a blog post about it on my previous, and now deceased, blog. But now my opinion has changed and I just don’t care who knows it (hence this very blog post).

I no longer believe original creativity can be inspired by a paper that is read by millions of other creative people. It’s more likely to come from looking at the people reading the papers themselves, or looking out the window.

So that’s what I’ll do.

So I’ve just come out of a folio crate with Dave Dye, Creative Directer, at DHM London. He’s very nice guy, like everyone else at the agency. When you walk into the reception it’s a buzz of activity and the compact size means the atmosphere is friendly and personal.

And what a location! Just off Carnaby Street above a really cool T-Shirt shop and down the road from the best wrap shop ever, Jumbo Eats. If I worked here I’d soon be skint (even more than I am now) and fat too.

As I sat in the reception I met and chatted to Jorian Murray (The M of DHM London) who gave me some great advice too. He guessed that I was a creative, presumably from my fluorescent t-shirt and scruffy trainers, and noticed that I was partner-less. I asked him if this was an issue for hiring creatives and he said it was not at all. He told me that being allocated to a specific role (AD or CW) was a little old fashioned and you ought to be able to mix the two skills.

Fantastic! I completely agree, in fact I wrote a post on my previous blog (now deceased) about how I can sometimes feel like I’m being forced into a specific role and not allowed to write copy if I want to. Jorian also mentioned that Dave Dye was once partnerless and feels it was the making of him.

Anyway, back to the folio crit. When chatting to Dave I asked him if I pissed him off with my incessant e-mails, phone calls and pestering. It had taken me a while to get a meeting with this busy creative and the poor girl on reception, Florence, was probably fed up of me too. He said he didn’t mind and that he remembered me from my name cropping up in his inbox frequently. Perhaps he was just being polite, but in my mind that stood as permission to pester. He he.

So Dave said he’ll speak to someone called Rachel who will get back to me about an internship or job for when I finish at We Are Social. Hello Rachel (if you’re reading this), I’m Tom.

We talked about the agency’s recent series of ads in Campaign and about the banter that followed in the press and on blogs. Some negative and some positive. In fact I wrote a blog post about them too. We also tried to work out who the anonymous, Ad Land Suit, is as he wrote a blog post about the DHM London ads too.

The Bloggiest Bloggy Blog: http://tomharvey.tumblr.com/post/203483547/dye-holloway-murray-london-have-got-these-great

Adland Suit: http://adlandsuit.blogspot.com/2009/09/come-on-now-dhm-youve-had-enough.html

W&K London: http://wklondon.typepad.com/welcome_to_optimism/2009/09/evil-plot-hatched-in-central-london.html

As I write this I’m sitting on a train from Waterloo to my stop, Twickenham. I’ve just come off the tube, for which I have a great dislike, and thought that this rant couldn’t wait until I got home.

Every day there is a mammoth struggle amongst commuters trying to get a seat on the tube or train. It’s like wildebeest trampling all over one another as they fight to cross crocodile infested rivers, except with this example it’s just a bunch of seat thirsty commuters. And this evening is no different, today is the third time this week (It’s only Tuesday) that I have seen commuters refuse to give up their seat for a child or old codger.

This pisses me off. It pisses me off because that old bugger, or child in this evenings case, does not deserve to shit their pants worrying about falling on the floor with the jerking of the train. Most Londoners have spent much of their day sat at a desk, straining only to adjust the brightness on their computer screen, and they are more than fit enough to stand for 3 stops and allow a small child the safety of a seat (apart, of course, from the millions of bacteria it must contain!).

Writing further about this just angers me more and me doing so is unlikely to change a city’s selfishness.

So that’s it. Give up your seat to someone more in need you lazy arse.

Rant, over.

So a while ago I went to a Social Media workshop at Dare Digital near Oxford Circus. It was run by NABs, the advertising charity who had told me about it. It was less of a workshop but was more of a presentation by two people, Helen from Dare and Edward from Wikijob. The room was filled with media people, most of whom had been made redundant and were looking to embrace the digital age so a lot of the stuff was a little basic and obvious to me. What it did do was highlight to me the importance of Twitter as a potential job finder.

I quickly got home and started pumping some energy into my dormant twitter profile. I changed my profile to say more about me, and the industry I want to work in, and began to follow the tweets of industry people and their companies. Of course I continued to e-mail and telephone for jobs along side this form of communication.

Within a week I had more responses from those I contacted on Twitter than a greater number of people I contacted via e-mail and telephone. Why is that? Is it because of the informality? Or due to only needing to write a 140 character reply?

Either way, I’m writing this post now after having a successful interview with Leila at We Are Social, which was arranged almost entirely through Twitter. So thank you to Helen and Edward for your advice. You had a tough audience that day (there was one woman who just couldn’t accept that Twitter might benefit her) but you can feel satisfied that your advice has helped at least one person from that group. I start as an intern at We Are Social tomorrow morning so thank you to Leila too.

If you wanna read about my interview and how I used Twitter to contact We Are Social read this blog post.

My girlfriend called Capital FM the other day to plug a bar called Aqua on Oxford Street that she’s working on in the PR agency she’s at. Great initiative.

These poems were on the wall of the breakfast room at W&K London, notice how the middle one is remarkably similar to a butter commercial out now… thieves!