Me & Mine

As June comes to a close it slowly dawns on me that we are halfway through the year and I cast a thought over the last six months.

I remember back to December and wishing so desperately for 2009 to end. It was a particularly menacing year for those with any responsibility for business generation and I don’t need to remind you all of the hardships that were endured in order to keep things moving forward despite the business shortage, and decreasing prospects.

The following month I started in CBRE Japan, as a Marketing & Design Consultant, assisting in production of brand-consistent sales promotion material. It was a new year, a new optimism, a new job and in a new field. I relished the opportunity to bring my experience to bear on what lay ahead, and also be open to new career directions.

A couple of things stand out as I look back, and consider the highs and lows of the year so far.

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I read the article found at this link

http://ow.ly/21sfi

and was delighted to see how passionate the writer became through the course of the passage. By the end the language was turning less and less complicated and more down to simple, straight, and to-the-point directions on how to get your message out there. More than this it was about how to conceive your message, boil it down and then further refining it to a point that it is pure ‘You’.

Another inspirational read for self improvement, organisational streamlining, and self-promotion. I could read these things all day…

Thanks for your patience. Here are the remaining words broken down to conceptual and administrative sections. I hope they are useful for all those budding linguistic creatives out there.

I know that Japanese is often considered to be a language where stock phrases and ways of saying certain things are used and reused but please consider that these are by no means a definitive list. Just something to help you get through the maelstrom of unknown words in an industry that will require you to explore a new lexicon.

Thanks again, and I hope you get some value from the list.

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Indeed at long last, I’ve completed all of the aspects to my folio, and already I’m getting swamped by the next idea and project. What is it with creatives that we just need to have virtually all our time consumed with the pursuit of the next project and the next idea?

Having recently finished reading Scott Belsky’s recent publication, Making Ideas Happen, the main problem with creatives is that we produce so many ideas that its almost to our detriment. In the heat of the moment actually getting things done and reaching a task’s conclusion is a difficult thing. Its only when we make a plan and stick to it with mini-goals and a stepped actionable approach that creatives actually reach the finish line.

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When starting out in Japanese business I quickly found out that in each specialism there are special words that not every Tom, Dick and Shintaro will understand. They are the wonderful ‘Sen-mon-yo-go’[専門用語], specific industry language. Each industry has them and of course you can just imagine what exists under the hood of the Japanese creative industry. I thought that by building my own little cookbook of notes I’d somehow arm myself to withstand the daily grind of communicating your intentions to designers, bosses, production staff and clients, but realised that I didn’t have a big enough note book. That said here are a few of the useful ones that I really found to be helpful once I had them locked down.

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As I sat staring at the monitor wondering what I could write about in my inaugural blog, I considered what I had previously contributed to what is now a giant vat of diatribe, from all sections of the globe.

Having only given a short few pieces over to the masses on my old company’s website I felt I can choose whatever I like without crossing any boundaries or fields of discussion. As a result, I’ve decided to write about something that is close to my heart and my profession, to get the ball rolling;

1. Irish identity, and
2. Branding/graphic design.

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