Drugi jezik na kojem je dostupan ovaj članak: Bosnian
By: Ekrem Dupanović
The Best of CDs will come out of the press on Friday. This will finally conclude my seven months working on this project. And I was not the only one working on the creation of the book. I had help from a team of fifteen people (assistants, organizers, proofreader for Bosnian, translator for English, English editor, DTP operator, Art Director, reviewer …). And they all believed that it would eventually be a fantastic book. And it will. Twenty-six creative directors and 130 of their campaigns with a description of briefs, challenges, solutions, creative ideas, implementation, results and the composition of the project team who worked on the campaigns. This is not a book that you read once and then shelve it. This is a book that you will constantly read. It is, in the words of Goran Takač, a book for the nightstand or a desk in the agency. It’s an inexhaustible source of inspiration, a book that you will browse through in search of a creative idea. After all, one should learn from the best.
Half of the circulation “flew off the shelf” in the first week, and I expect that this week the entire print run of 500 copies should be sold out. Some have asked me “isn’t a book of €54 too expensive?” It’s not! Even with this price no one will get rich, including me as its author. It will be just enough to cover the costs and fees, and little something will remain for a crust of bread, but not for the butter to put on it. The book Epica Awards, which is in scope and quality similar to the book The Best of CDs, costs 80 euros. They issue it for business; we issue ours for our love of creativity. This difference of almost 30 euro is the difference between love and profit. Iva Balent says: “Never worry when you do something from your heart – it must be good.” If football players “leave their hearts on the pitch” when they play an important game, I hid and left my heart between the pages of the book The Best of CDs.
The best indicator of what kind of a book this is, is the fact that the agency Futura DDB Ljubljana ordered 50 copies of the book. People from Futura know how the final book will look like better than I do, because their Žare Kerin was the Art Director on this project, and Marjan Božić did the layout. Futura knows all about it, and that’s why they ordered 50 copies.
I’m with my collaborators recently talked about that in January, print another 500 copies of the book and give it away free to students of design and communication in Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro and Macedonia. After the clean production cost printing will be offered to sponsors to buy gifts and students out of the can learn a lot about the creative process. Now we explore the faculty and the number of students, so we then went looking for sponsors.
I discussed with my collaborators recently about printing another 500 copies in January, to give away free to students of design and communication in Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro and Macedonia. At the cost of printing and nothing more, we would offer it to sponsors to buy as gifts for students, who can learn a lot about creative process from it. Now we are researching the number of faculties and students, and when we gather all that we need to know we will start our search for sponsors.
The Best of Creative Directors is the first of a trilogy about creative people. Next book that we will hopefully do in less than seven months (because now we know how to do it), will be dedicated to the best Art Directors. The third book will be devoted to advertising photographers. I hope that by working on these two books I will not have enough material for an entire book about how a book like this is made. With this first one, I could really write an entire making-of book about how much time we spent to get the materials from the creative directors, in order to write texts about them, how much torment was endured while we waited for the campaign visuals, and then sent them back to get them in better resolution – not screenshots. We struggled to bring them in line not to write essays on campaigns, but to follow the structure that we sent them: brief, challenge, solution, creative idea and the project team. I sent materials to Žare, and he returned them to me because some images were not good enough for a book like this, structure of the campaign presentation is not the same everywhere, and a book has its own discipline. I respected each Žare’s remark because he knows how to make a world-class book – he’s the best in the business. Žare kept returning, and the story went all over again – ask for new materials, wait, lose your nerves …
When the famous Bosnian writer and academician Abdulah Sidran remarried during the war, we met in 1995 in Ankara at a conference. He told me about his Rabija from Goražde and about their great love. He told me that one day he went to buy some pipes to get gas installations set up to his house. Mortar shells were falling on Sarajevo as never before. He left Rabija at home and told her not to go out. As he ran across the bridge at Skenderija he heard someone running behind him. He turned around and saw Rabija. “Bijo dear, where are you going in this hell,” Sidran asked, and Rabija replied: “Avdo, it’s easier to die with you, than to wait for you at home.” I remembered Avdo and Rabija in this waiting of mine, eagerly hoping for Friday to come so I can see the book, take it in hand and full of jitters browse page by page looking if everything is as I hope it will be.
The first presentation of the book will take place in Zagreb, on Monday, 19 December. I know it will start at 16.00h, but I still don’t know where. I’ll know today. I will send an invitation to everyone I care for in my life. If you get it, receive it as an expression of my highest respect for you. After Zagreb, my traveling circus will move to Belgrade. And then – wherever the road takes us. Probably our first stop after that will be Banja Luka. I was very pleased with the invitation of Daliborka Predragović from Gazprom, who called me the other day and offered to arrange a promotion in Banja Luka.
Taking the responsibility to choose on my own the 26 creative directors that I present to you in the book, I took on great risk regarding making the best possible selection. I believe I did, but if I am wrong, and someone needs to be shot, shoot at me.
Now, with my associates from Media Marketing, I’m going into an even greater risk. Next week we will introduce to you all that was best in the regional communications industry last year: 5 persons of the year, 5 most successful agencies, 5 best events of the year, 5 most successful creative directors and 5 most successful campaigns. This will be your chance to shoot at me at will. Many will be dissatisfied, but only for one reason: they do not know the regional communication industry well enough. We know you best. We follow what you do every day, we write about you and your work, we go to festivals, we hang out with you in different situations. No one knows the communications industry better than Media Marketing, and because of that we dare to make this selection. This time we will announce the results only on the portal, but in early December next year we promise you a gala ceremony, at which we will celebrate individual and team successes, as selected by Media Marketing.
Best regards to all of you.
10 December 2016.