Everyone Starts Somewhere

An old poster that’s from my father-in-law’s former agency, French Gold Abbott, hangs in my bathroom at home. My wife is pictured in it, then aged five, along with her sisters. It got me thinking, even the best start somewhere creatively.

On paper it sounded good - everyone I mentioned it to said ‘yeah I have loads of rubbish early work’. And I wanted to collect that ‘rubbish’ work so that students and people starting out could see that even
the Dave Trotts and Alan Fletchers of the world started somewhere.

In reality though, the people I spoke to were being modest. No one sent any truly bad work, the bare fact is that they probably never did any.

What the collection does illustrate is that great creatives share a spark of something - cheek, flair, nerve, naivety, drive, ambition, blind faith, a point to prove - that little bit of something special.

It’s the nerve to sit in the middle of Piccadilly Circus and draw a 360 degree pen and ink panorama over five days (no rubber allowed). The guts to write a letter to Martin Sheen to ask him to pose for an ad for your very first brief. Or perhaps the cast iron knowledge, at age six, that you are destined to work with a certain web-slinging, wall-crawling, super hero.

As Sir John Hegarty put it ‘If you do interesting things, interesting things will happen to you’. I think the work here displays that and I hope it shows that everyone does start out somewhere.

Most importantly though, I hope it encourages people to never, never give up and to nurture that spark that makes each of us unique. Huge thanks to everyone who took the time to find and write about their old work.
—
Garrick Hamm
D&AD President

37 photos | 2,724 views

items are from 24 Jun 2009.