Back in my agency days I had a client whose in-house design team was responsible for laying down the law regarding their online brand standards. It is of course right that they should take ownership of their brand. One of their laws, however, was that all headlines on their website should be in title case. Allow me to explain why this is a bad idea.

A while back I wrote a post about QR codes. It’s not a pet topic of mine, but I do have one on my business card. I have one on a self-inking rubber stamp. And of course there’s one on this site, if you happen to want to continue reading this on your iPhone. But are they worth loving or hating – or even arguing about? (Spoiler: no).

I had a particularly odd day back in July of 2010. I was at a presentation for a pretty high-profile project. The team had been working very hard, and we were quite happy with the result. The creative director was on vacation, and my art director had to beg off for another meeting. It was a busy time.

One thing that the BP and Cooks Source incidents have in common is hubris, though the two cases are separated by several orders of magnitude in scale. It reminds us that the “social” aspect of “social media” doesn’t merely mean that lots of people are logged in to Facebook, but that they are in fact people, with personalities, opinions, and morals.

Am I one of the 10 most creative people in the Canadian Marketing industry? The suggestion is as flattering as it is unlikely. As we delve into the possible answers to this question, I will first address those of you who already know what I’m talking about. I’ll get to the rest of you shortly.

I really have to work on my rhetorical style. And by that I mean to say that I don’t think it’s the rhetoric that’s the problem so much as the delivery. I make what I think is – what I know to be a perfect conversation-ender and then turn as if to walk away, and at that instant, someone says “Yeah, it’s like when…”

I went to a political rally yesterday: the anti-prorogation rally. I’m very frustrated about the current political climate in Canada, and, perhaps like most Canadians, feel powerless to do anything about it. Sadly, I didn’t feel that much more empowered after the rally, for reasons I’ll get into below.

The end of the year is a time for lists, and as I am a writer it only seems natural that my list is about words. And because I am cranky, it is equally natural that my list is about words I don’t like.