Others prefer order and clarity – a place for everything and everything in its place. I definitely belong to this later group.

As I see it, when you strip away the excess, you get to essence. When you have essence, you have identified the true value of an idea.

Simon is like a modern day Dickens. He sees through the hype of the American Dream and reports on a more authentic and vulnerable society in Baltimore. What stood out for me was his commitment and consistency in bringing his stories to light.

For some of us who have been involved in web design for a long time, we have experienced many highs and lows. For instance, in the mid-90s I worked for an agency that produced some of the first movie websites including Pulp Fiction and Toy Story to popular acclaim. And, in 2000 I worked on huge budget projects for the likes of BP and UBS. I have also experienced my share of recession, cutbacks and downsizing.

Taking David Simon as an example, I think the key to making progress in this current climate is staying committed and consistent. Our constant aim is to deliver quality work for quality brands.

As The Wire’s Avon Barksdale would say… “No doubt.”

He has started to produce a series of movies using both stills and video to create a varied and engaging narrative. An example of his work is on our new site – the Tokyo cityscape. Other examples can be viewed on www.patrickgosling.com

It is also makes me happy to look at a busy studio who have a number of interesting signed off projects and some great pitches coming up in June. Perhaps that economic outlook isn’t so gloomy after all or maybe it is being helped by the sunshine.

To help illustrate the diversity and scale of our work we recently produced a mini brochure outlining a day in the life of our agency. Clients have responded well to it because it strips away much of the usual jargon of web building. We intend producing several more versions throughout the year to show the progression of our client’s projects.

Many of our clients are walking a hazardous path at the moment. Nervous about economic conditions and looking to ensure they are making the most of their web presence. Our consistent aim is to provide the right tools to ensure that they feel in control of their brand and confident that they are moving in the right direction.

Right now, our focus is on crafting a clear and concise communication strategy for our agency. Whilst we have a great legacy of work and relationships to build on, life moves on. Anticipating and articulating what comes next is the big challenge.

We are looking to position ourselves as a Web 2.0 specialist. Nowadays companies don’t just want to put their corporate brochures online, they want to be in the driving seat – using their websites as a publishing tool for marketing, selling and networking.

Our job is to enable them to achieve this as efficiently and effectively as possible. We are paid to conceive; design and build the right solution and facilitate ‘intelligent interaction’.

As the new Creative Director at Global Beach, my first task to help Peter and the team convey our offering and capture the imaginations of our clients.

I have got everything ready for the Board meeting, which is planned to take place virtually with Clive in China after the Youth pitch tomorrow morning.

Really pleased with the effort put in for tomorrows pitch. I think the creative is amazing, especially given the timeframes and Andy has been a huge help here, although he has been able to build on the great work already done by the team.

It’s always a nice feeling when you have a presentation you are looking forward to giving

Andy has already been helping us on a number of projects we have been working on and we have a pretty full on week this week. We have a second meeting with a Youth Charity here on Wednesday morning which requires quite a bit of Andy and my time but that will be time we enjoy giving as it is a really interesting project it would be fantastic to win.

Off to Crewe again on Thursday to start a planning process for the year with Bentley and then we have an introduction meeting on Friday with Juliet from AAR whom I know from previous agency life, as well as a number of new business opportunity meetings.

It will soon be Friday before I know it…

It’s not because it’s sexy and shiny and plays music and lets you watch YouTube and play great games and read blogs and twitter.

It’s not because the touch screen keyboard is pretty good and the accelerometers mean it automatically rotates the screen when you turn it over.

It’s not because the location services and built-in GPS mean it knows where you are and can do cool things with maps and friend/restaurant locators.

It’s definitely not because of the quality of the camera or the life of the battery or the slightly flaky exchange server push mail integration.

Nope, it’s more fundamental than that.

Using the iPhone is relaxing.  Seriously.  The gestures, the screen transitions, the responsiveness all combine to make a calming user experience.  No other mobile device manages to achieve this: The Blackberry is a tense fiddle of scroll wheels or mini track-ball followed by cramped two-thumb typing, all Windows Mobile devices I’ve used are sluggish and require almost pin-point accuracy with a small stick and every Nokia, Motorola or Sony Ericcson I’ve ever used has had a counter-intuitive interface a predictive text system that has made me want to smash it against the nearest solid object.

Just about the only thing that’s frustrated me about the iPhone in the last week has been level 64 on Blocked.

Creative Director, Matt Conn, came up with the overall creative and decided the best way to proceed was to work closely with specialists Incentivated who provided the underlying technology and speed to market.

To quote the MMA:

“This seriously heavy-weight mobile advertising campaign directed traffic to a purpose built mobile Internet site from where Jaguar enthusiasts could find out details of the new car, download video clips, wallpapers and the TV ad, as well as find their nearest dealer and order an email brochure to be sent to their PC (directing traffic to the even richer website).

The campaign hot all the right notes with the tech-savvy target audience, being fully optimized for all handsets, including Smartphones and iPhones, and was in keeping with the luxury identity of the Jaguar brand. With 55 million impressions booked (and some still to run) across a range of sites including MSN mobile, Yahoo! mobile and Cars.mobi, this is believed to be one of the world’s biggest mobile advertising campaigns to date.”

Praise indeed! See for yourself at www.jaguarxf.mobi