100 Jul 16, 08, 8:44 a.m.

"100"
- uncle_helv

I wonder how quickly a thread could hit 100.

Negotiating fees Mar 12, 08, 8:50 a.m.

Me, "20k"
Client, "Can you do it for 6?"

Mediocrity Apr 11, 08, 9:34 a.m.

I've put a doodle of the word "Mediocrity" on the front page of my website. I can't decide if that's knowing and mirthy, or just really fucking dumb.

http://www.studiospooky.tv/

Excerpts from my memoirs Apr 23, 08, 10:27 a.m.

Tuesday 14th May 1998.
Woke early. Couldn't face Porridge.
Still no sign of my fishing socks.

A question of scruples Mar 26, 08, 5 p.m.

This has been on my mind since I got hospitalised with meningitis a few weeks back.

Prior to falling ill, I had taken on a big ad campaign for a fashion brand. Its a big job and the client wanted to commission one piece out of a possible six by way of a test before he committed to contracts for the full fee. Stupid really because a contract isn't going to help anyone if they aren't doing the work, but thats what they wanted.

So, we had one week of February, all of March, all of April and most of May. Ther eis a lot of work to do, but it was manageable.

Then, after sending over a pencil sketch of the test piece (a test piece that will be used as part of the full campaign) there was a weird sort of two week delay where we waited for feedback, and sort of pushed and pulled a little bit on things, and generally wasted the time. By week three I was ready to start when BANG, I got ill, and really really ill.

One week of hospital and I get back home, call my client and say (and I really did say this)... I think we've lost too much time to acheive all this now and I need you to know now so you can make alternative plans.

My client though (the art directory part between me and the 'brand' client) did that classic thing of trying to save the situation without changing anything and came back at me with a revised schedule for delivering the test piece that has now swallowed up two more weeks of the remaining time.

In my brain-sick befuddled state I listened to him suggest I use two weeks to work on the test piece (last week and this week) and even though I had been told specifically to take "at least a week off, probably two", I agreed to get back on it. I have to deliver the finished test piece Friday, and I know in my heart of hearts that we just don;t have time to acheive what they hoped to acheive with this.

meantime I am turning down projects left right and centre becuase I can't take anything else on, and trying my best to keep my regular clients happy where I can, and all the time I'm thinking... this is a hopeless situation. I'll never get all six pieces done with the time we've got left.

If you've read this far, thank you for that, and my question is...

Would you wear red slacks with buckle shoes, or a tutu?

No, really my question is, would you tell the client now that the project is not going to work out and kill it now rather than keep turning other projects down and keep rushing it to try and get back on track?

Its really taking so much longer trying to do this test piece in a rush than it would have taken if I had had the time to do it 'properly'.

I feel so desperate about it and wondered what anyone thought?

QBN Award: Longest fucking post ever.

I remember... Apr 29, 10, 2:55 p.m.

When all this was a design forum.

Good days.

Where is Vague? Feb 20, 08, 9:58 a.m.

Was Vague got Culled?

Absent Scots... Apr 1, 08, 9:52 a.m.

The Clan McLairy seem to be absent today, so I'm flushed and emboldened with playground bravado in their absense, safe in the knowledge that they wont stand up and approach me when I shout...

"Right you fucking limp wankers, who wants some fucking knuckle pie up the throat, cuz I feel like a fight, and you tossers are in the firing line so COME ON, LETS FUCKING HAVE IT YOU BUNCH OF SHIRLEYS"

Preparing for the year 1PC Apr 16, 08, 10:18 a.m.

Any plans?

Spanish boycott of QBN Apr 11, 08, 6:32 a.m.

Ola.
Grazias.

Crit... Apr 2, 08, 10:47 a.m.

Work in Progress. What I do when I'm waiting for feedback from clients or for files to save. Its 6ft square (the paper is) and I'm wondering if I should colour it, or leave it black and white. I'm going to put some bold black sans serif hand lettered typography at the bottom like a 1930's poster. Not sure what it will say yet.

Any comments, suggestions about colour?
The image...like it, hate it?
I know its just a big fucking fly not a fancy website, but do your best to sound vaguely interested, even if its just to say its shit.

AWESOME ROBO-DOG! Mar 19, 08, 9:13 a.m.

Drinks Irn-Bru

What I am doing today Feb 20, 08, 7:53 a.m.

Currently I am drawing a wolf, hair by hair.

I'm drawing a wolf one hair at a time for a book cover. I already did one wolf, but the client felt it looked a bit poor, so I'm doing it again and really the only way I can improve on what was there is to create the wolf from individual strokes of the pencil.

Geez, Its things like this that make me wish I was back in the old days Boshing out logo options in Illustrator in .3 seconds flat.

Dear QBN Jul 9, 08, 9 a.m.

Mr Kelpie has not been able to load the Qoob all day and has asked me to ask you if he has, by some strange chance, been IP banned or some such thing.

Water Closet Rules Apr 14, 08, 4:26 a.m.

I just went for a wee in the gents on my floor. For me, personally, if I'm in a stall and someone enters for a wee, I tend to keep my activities to a discreet level and if possible I try not to emerge from the stall until the weer has left the gents. Thats just me and I recognise its an extreme behavioural quirk.

However, I just went for my wee, and as I stood there wrestling manfully with both hands around my enormous and highly motivated penis, a cubicle occupant began sandpapering his arse back and forth, back and forth, back and forth like he was shaping a surf board, repeatedly for the entire duration of my wee, and... (gag) doing strangled trumpet farts THROUGHOUT the course of this extreme wiping technique, and making wierd 'ah' and 'oh' vocal noises which to me suggested he'd farted his way through the well work paper and added a fudge-fin to his wiping hand by mistake.

Now if that was me I would want to wait until the weer had left before emerging from the stall with my rectum in bloody skinless tatters and my hand tinted and sour. But no, out he dived, like a big jolly shiny faced, poo-handed telly tubby with his shirt tucked into big underpants that circumnavigated his tumtum a good three inches higher than his silly trousers.

Sometimes I yearn for the termination of our species.

Christian Bale arrested! Jul 22, 08, 11:13 a.m.

He's just been released from a London police station on charges of assaulting his mother and sister, they charged him.

Sorry if I'm late with this scoop.

Please Help a Retard Jul 8, 08, 10:28 a.m.

I am utterly web-stupid. I really have no idea. I muddle along with an old version of Dreamweaver and generally I just accept whatever the software will allow me to do, warts and all. My site is (apparently) frames-based though I don't know what that means. I know enough to know this is risible to 99.9% of people.

I also know that one of the single most frustrating things for people is untilted dcouments / untilted pages.

The thing is, all of my pages are saved with titles. Where it has the input box at the top entitled 'Title:' I put in "Dykeenies Project" or "Sketchbook Project" or whatever, and yet they remain "Untitled Page" and I continue to be told how bad this is.

Is there anything I am doing wrong? Is it soemthing to do with the fact that I use frames, whatever they are?

I hate the interneb, I really really do.

About Llyod Mar 26, 08, 9:40 a.m.

I feel bad about Llyod sometimes.

On a lighter note... Feb 28, 08, 7:54 a.m.

Suicide, racism, propellor face, global economic crisis, it all seems very depressing on QBN today. Someone thinks this is what I look like...
http://flickr.com/photos/ntmugs/…
Anyone got any better ideas?

Gripe Friday Jun 20, 08, 7 a.m.

I hate it when a client forces me to show them something in its rough form, and then they email me to say "I'm quite keen to see how this part looks when you've worked on it a bit more".

Oh really? I'm looking forward to farting heartily upon the creases in your invoice.

(If any of my clients are reading this, I don't mean you).