Looking past the distant star.

Over the weekend I discovered a book (unfortunately it’s only available in German) about stuff we don’t know; that means to say; we know that they’re there, we either don’t know why or how these things works. The book is called “Lexikon des Unwissens. Worauf es bisher keine Antwort gibt”. It’s about stuff we don’t have answers for yet.

What I like about the book is that, whilst reading it, my head whirls and I try to find the answers only to stumble and fall. It’s really good fun. The authors compare finding things we don’t know about to discovering a distant star only when you look slightly past it. If you look straight at it the chances are you won’t see it at all.

For me, this is a magically little thing and one that gets me really excited. I’ve always like to think about gaps in between or missing links but I really like the idea of looking past something in order to see it – or to, at least, have a look at it in a slightly different way.

I talked briefly yesterday about Wieden & Kennedy’s objective number 9, but today I’ve spotted another post that I would like you to have a look at. They are vaguely related.

Richard Huntington has had a good look at the UK advertising industry and the sorry state it’s in. What’s interesting is that the comments quickly spiral down into the usual “network agencies are evil – planners can’t be creative” argument when faced with the question; what now? When will the next creative visionary come and who should it be? Will there be a planner or a creative on parading into London waving an olive branch and riding on the back of a clapped out donkey? It’s the kind of discussion you’ve seen a lot of over the last year or so and it’s disappointing that an industry that is supposed to solve problems creatively is so rubbish at sorting itself out.

The solution is a distant star, you can see it only if you look just past it. I can see it. Can you?