"Remember as far as anyone knows, we're a nice little family...“

A while ago I wrote this post about "Me As A Simpson“ and asked you to send me your little character. Six of the ten people who actually read this blog did and that's what came out of it:

(For those of you who are wondering how come "The Zimmpsons“? - well, it has something to do with my last name...)

If I'm still missing yours - make one and give it to me! Cheers...

Flood Crisis Hits Central London! Sort Of...

After seeing all those terrible pictures in the last couple of days of parts of England being flooded really badly, I've now had my own little flood crisis. Yesterday. At this point I can say that mine had nothing to do with global warming, though:
Apparently some pipe in the bathroom of the flat above our kitchen burst - somehow unnoticed - while some guys were doing maintenance work up there. So by the time I came back home, we had the kitchen completely flooded, with the water yet coming down the hallway...
And although that looked really pretty bad, it was this waterfall shooting down one of the ceiling lights that intrigued me most: I could have literally taken a shower under there. The rest of the roof was just raining cats and dogs... So - concerning the amount of water coming out of it - I actually expected some sort of an aquarium where once used to be the above flat...But instead of a freak wave, this maintenance guy opened up the door, smiling. Smiling!?!...until I showed him the mess in our kitchen...
As you can imagine, it did take him and me quite a while to clean it all up and while doing that, I kept asking him whether the electricity in the kitchen (especially that "sprinkler-ceiling-light“) was alright after all and if the roof was going to survive its flooding??! He gave me that "ahh-girl-what-do-you-know-look“, said I shouldn't worry and off he went, pretty much leaving me behind. And so as I just stood there, looking at this crack running across the ceiling, trying to decide whether he was right and I was just a wimp, or... the roof finally decided to come down. It completely collapsed... so that at the end of the day we had...

a big hole in the ceiling,

and another mess on the floor.

Luckily no one was hurt. So don't you worry...

Are You Using Your Crayons Right...?

After just wondering around in Soho with my new friend Lauren for quite a while last night, I came back home, turned on the telly and was really surprised to see, that they were showing a movie I actually never would have expected to be on TV (in Germany it didn´t even make it to the theaters I think). It´s called "Waking Life“ and it´s completely different to all others movies I´ve seen in my entire life. It´s a really philosophical movie, containing great dialogues. For some though, it might become quite a hassle to watch at some point, as it changes it´s illustrational style various times throughout the film. I think you either love it or you hate it. I fell in love with it the first time I watched it when it came out in 2001. It was directed by Richard Linklater and it was shot like a real movie, before it was turned into an animation. It´s basically about a man who shuffles through a dream, meeting various people discussing the meanings and purposes of life and the universe. I found a pretty good quote which describes it even better:

"Dreams. What are they? An escape from reality or reality itself? Waking Life follows the dream(s) of one man and his attempt to find and discern the absolute difference between waking life and the dreamworld. While trying to figure out a way to wake up, he runs into many people on his way; some of which offer one sentence asides on life, others delving deeply into existential questions and life's mysteries. We become the main character. It becomes our dream and our questions being asked and answered. Can we control our dreams? What are they telling us about life? About death? About ourselves and where we come from and where we are going? The film does not answer all these for us. Instead, it inspires us to ask the questions and find the answers ourselves.“

Written by Jeff Mellinger.

I think the artwork is amazing and so is the idea of constantly varying animation styles. In addition it´s got numerous great wisdoms and quotes in it. Such as:

"...it's like you come onto this planet with a crayon box. Now you may get the eight pack, you may get the sixteen pack, but it's all in what you do with the crayons, the colors that you're given...“

Now, I´m all worried about if I´m using my pack of crayons right...?! Anyways, if you haven´t seen it yet, I´d suggest you do.

New Wallpaper Added.

Download this one and some more on www.toosmalltobebig.com.
They are available in two different sizes according to your resolution:
regular (1024 x 768) or cinema (1680 x 1050). Many thanks!

Me As A Simpson.

For everyone who is - just like me - a big big Simpsons fan and can´t wait to finally see their movie, take a look at their website to shorten the waiting time. They have loads of really nice entertaining stuff on there, such as creating your own Simpsons Avatar. Make your own and send it to me, if you like. Here is mine:

New! Neu! Noueau! Nuevo!

The great thing about moving to another country is that everything is new! New language, new people, new food, new problems, new stupid TV shows, etc. Even a supermarket becomes exciting again: I could spend hours and hours in just one Tesco looking at all the new products not knowing which one to get first...best I would like to try them all at once. Or the tube: at home I did not like to take the tube at all, since it´s always packed, it´s dark, it´s incredibly hot in there and it doesn´t smell nice. Same over here, but hey it´s new...so taking the tube is in fact great again...Yesterday I spend ages on the TalkTalk broadband helpline, but instead of getting pissed off I just listen to a new waiting line music, new recurring announcements and it didn´t bother me at all. It was great! It was new! I wonder how long that will last...

7 Days Later: Hello London!

So saying goodbye to everyone at home made me cry during the whole flight to London and the whole train ride from Gatwick to Victoria Station...and I found out: if you only cry enough you can actually get free drinks on a Germanwings flight and on the Gatwick Express :)...
Then I finally reached my new home, met my new flatmates and was sooo happy to be in London eventually (after sleeping and living on my brother´s sofa for the past two weeks). My first week consisted more or less in looking for a Tesco, getting lost, looking for an Argos, getting lost, looking for my flat and getting lost again...so now I know my new area pretty well (including every single backstreet).
For my first weekend here my best mate Fred came over for a visit and together we had a great time: We went to see The Orange Lights at the Barfly in Camden. They were brilliant and at least as brilliant as them was one of their support acts, a guy called Yoav. It was just him and his guitar. Oh well, you might think, just another singer-songwriter like there´s loads of ´em...but this guy did really really cool stuff with his guitar: first he used it as some sort of a percussion drum and sampled live what he´d just drummed, then sung some tunes into his microphone, made some sounds on his guitar, also sampled both and then he just played his song over what he had just sampled. Really nice!! I´ve never seen anything like that before. And in addition he has an amazing voice. So check him out here if you like.
On sunday we went to the Rise Festival in Finsbury Park to see The Holloways and Saint Etienne - also very nice and for free!
So today it´s been exactly one week I´ve been here and it´s probably time to get back to work. I still have to do my other book with all the illustrations...so I better get going before Seb kills me...For everyone back at home some pictures:

My new room (yes, that´s basically it)

my view,

my street,

a nice shop in Camden,

Fred in Soho,

and The Holloways at Rise.

Make The Logo Bigger!

Probably the phrase I´ve heard the most in my life (head-to-head with “I told you so...!“)...now they´ve made a song out of it for the “I Have An Idea - Portfolio Night 5 World Tour“...very funny (not only if you are a graphic designer)... Listen to the song and watch the video:



And to sing along, these are the lyrics:

Make the logo big.
Make the logo bigger.
Make the logo big.
Make the logo bigger.

Chorus
Make the logo as big as you can.
And make the logo bigger.

That logo isn't big enough.
So, make the logo bigger.
Bigger, bigger, make it big.
Make the logo bigger.

Chorus
Make the logo as big as you can.
And make the logo bigger.

Yelling
Don't try to be the brave guy!
We don't have a job for you!
You know what you've got to do!
You gotta stick to the process!
Make the damn logo as big as you can!

Chorus
Make the logo as big as you can.
And make the logo bigger.

I don't want to tell you how to do your job.
But, could you make the logo bigger?
Bigger, bigger, make it big.
Make the logo bigger.

Chorus
Make the logo as big as you can.
And make the logo bigger.

Surprisingly Good News!

Just before I left the agency I´ve worked for in Hamburg, Seb and me have won a - what they call - “bronze world medal“ at the New York Festivals and what´s even better and very surprising, a bronze lion at the Cannes Advertising Festival. Nice! And since Seb is a copywriter and much better with words than I am, you can read the whole story here if you like.

Is This The End...

...or just the start of something?
To be honest, at this point I´m not so sure about what the answer will be: In more or less one week I´ll be sitting on a plane going to London with no return ticket in my pocket . I quit my job, quit my flat and am leaving all my friends and my lovely copywriter Seb to move to London to find out what will happen to me there....
Crazy you think? Probably yes and I would be scared to death by now, but thanks to Seb and his scare theory I know now, that scare is really only in your head, which calms me a bit (but only a bit). Thanks to him I also learned that you are supposed to do at least one thing a day that scares you (you can read his whole scare theory here and here ) Until now, that wasn´t quite my philosophy of life and as I remember I might have done two maybe three things in my entire life that scared me so far....but with my move to London I think I´ve pretty much filled up my “lifetime-every-day-scare-account“...
So after thinking a lot about what this blog could be about , now I think I´ll just keep it as a record for myself so that I´ll be able to analyse later on at which point exactly everything went completety wrong....or – if I´m lucky – everything turned out good...
So I guess for now there´s nothing left to say but “Auf Wiedersehen“...

...flat,

...balcony,

...Kolle Rebbe

...and last but not least Hamburg!