Our partner, Norman Siegel, is an award-winning art director with over a half-dozen commercials in the Paley Center collection (and his aviation art continuing to win awards). His edgy sense of humor constantly reminds us what he thinks of our “edits.” The other day, we asked him to “remove the hyphen at the end of a line and don’t break the word.” Sure enough, we got back a layout with “market-ing” (on two lines) replaced with “market ing” (on two lines). Remember, art directors care most about how good the work looks, not how perfectly detailed the spelling and punctuation are. How good are you at giving clear and complete direction to visual people?

With the school term wrapping up, Paul asked his Spanish and French students in his International Advertising Class what struck them most about living in NYC this semester. First they said, “The subway.” Paul thought they were going to praise the system’s 24/7 schedule. Their observation was how decrepit and dirty it is. As if that wasn’t depressing enough, their second observation was about the large number of rats they observed on our streets at night. Seems like our face to the world needs a significant facelift. What do you do every day to extend your best face?

Steve made a call to his bank the other day and was told-via recording-”Welcome to [name of] Bank and our legendary service. Your hold time will be approximately four to six minutes.” And what part of “legendary service” does “hold time” come under? Do you overpromise and underdeliver on anything? Don’t! Always underpromise and overdeliver.

We’re in the middle of a long-overdue purge of our offices – selling, donating or discarding huge amounts of old files and “dead tech.” From items in our refrigerator that are at least a year old (the average American has three of them-check your own!), to the detritus of our first apartments, we accumulate junk like cat hairs on a blue suit. The purge feels good and we highly recommend it. What are you holding onto that’s taking up physical and emotional space? When in doubt, throw it out!

What we’re still wondering is: Did the secret service agent choose to ignore the price in his drunken stupor? Or did he just not speak the language? Sometimes when we’re negotiating a project we know exactly how those escorts felt. What are your best practices in negotiating fees and reaching clear agreement regarding pay for service?

The other day, all New York City programming was interrupted to broadcast live coverage of the space shuttle Enterprise being flown past the Statue of Liberty on its way to retirement. We thought it was so wrong-headed in so many ways that it was unbelievable. Are we alone in feeling as if they were celebrating the end of the space era and the decline of America?