On The Waterfront

After dropping off our materials we ventured down to the waterfront for lunch. Lisbon is located at the mouth of the Tagus River, as it opens up to the Atlantic, and the water views are stunning. Ventured down the waterfront, taking in the sights, checking out the graffiti, and eventually ended up at Cervejaria Portugalia, a brewery on the water...


My first meal in the country was a fantastic, sizable piece of grilled Bacalao, along with a nice glass of local stout. Here's an interesting rundown of Portuguese breweries and their offerings...

After lunch we ventured down the river bank till we arrived at a deserted waterfront nightclub called Urban Beach. Looks like quite the spot for a party...

LB/Lisboa - An Agency With A Soul

Arrived at our hotel around noon after a long, sleepless night of travel and a short connecting flight through Madrid. The flight from Madrid was only an hour long, but offered up some beautiful views of what I believe are the Central Sierra mountains, or perhaps the plateaus of the Sistema Central... My geography is a little rusty...either way, the topography in the Iberian peninsula is quite lovely...

We decided to venture out of the hotel to the office, to drop off 3 of the heavy suitcases we had lugged from Chicago filled with workbooks and supplies for our meeting. The office was right down the street, a 5 minute walk, but we managed to completely destroy two of these suitcases by dragging them down the cobblestone streets. Truth be told, these suitcases have probably 500,000 miles on them and were on their last legs anyway, but dragging them down the streets of Bairro Alto was probably not the best idea. These cobblestones are no joke either - I brought the wrong shoes for this city...

The agency was a revelation... Located in a building from the 1500's, it's airy, has high ceilings, and lovely tile and paint work inlaid in the walls. There are less than 100 people working there, and every employee has a headshot located on the wall behind the receptionist. There's a rooftop deck with a glorious water view, where we'll be lunching in between sessions, and the whole place exudes a vitality and youthful energy woefully missing in the corridors of Leo Burnett Chicago. I've grown used to working in a big steel and glass skyscraper inhabited by a horde of people I don't know, perpetually trading cubicles in a building that doesn't have a lot of character. This agency feels much more like a living, breathing entity, and the building itself gives the company a familial feel. I'm looking forward to spending the week here.

Outside out meeting room is a small foyer completely overstuffed with Cannes Lions and countless other international awards, a testament to LB/Lisbon's incredible creative track record. The walls throughout the agency are decorated with amazing and inspiring work, but some of the pieces that jumped out at me are actually from a brilliant poster campaign by a designer /illustrator named Mico Toledo, who used to work for LB/Lisbon before departing to London for other opportunities. Mico created an exquisite poster campaign around song-lyrics, and they're all over the walls at LB/Lisbon. Here's one that jumped out at me, but you should really check out the whole collection at his "music philosophy" site.
Below is a picture of the agency hosting their "portfolio night," an industry event that helps develop and nurture young talent... sigh... I wish my office had an open air patio...

Why Blog?

So I'm off to Portugal, to spend yet another week in a conference room, surrounded by 25 creative directors, analyzing and deconstructing 500 ad campaigns from around the world. My job is to transcribe the group's critiques, and craft their commentary into suggestions that might actually improve the work. I sit on a corner of the table and type at a feverish pace for about 8 hours every day, stewing in silence and growing increasingly withdrawn as the people around me talk and talk and talk... So why should I spend the handful of free moments I have writing a blog? What's the point? Why not rest the aching hands and tired mind?

I write because it's a compulsion, and because it helps me flesh out my own experience and remember who I am... These travel blogs are a means for self-preservation... I spend the other 12 hours a day relinquishing my voice and perspective to the demands of my job, and I need this space to harbor my impressions, my ideas, and my thoughts, lest they be wiped away and over-written by the pressing crush of 25 executives airing out their opinions. I write to understand where I am, to honor and respect the people I'm surrounded by, with the intention of observing and documenting the culture I'm momentarily immersed in. When you travel for business as I do, if you don't distinguish each place from the next, all your experiences start to run together into a polyglot blur of hotel bars and orchestrated business outings. I don't want to sleepwalk through my travels like that. With these blogs, I'm just trying to be fully present, to savor every meal, and to see the horizons around me clearly... I want to feel the pulse on the streets, bask in the poetry of languages I don't speak, and pore over the inherited detritus of every civilization's long history, in the hopes I might learn something. I know this is hubris, and that it's unlikely I can appreciate anything about a place from a cursory week spent in a hotel. But sometimes, in a state of exhaustion and sleep deprived inebriation I might catch a fleeting glimpse of a deeper truth in what's right in front of me, and that single moment of recognition is worth the time it takes to purge these words from my mind. In that moment, you understand that while people may be different the world over, and cultures face enormous obstacles to understanding each other, the human experience is universal, and each place and the people in it have found unique ways to articulate the paradoxes and blessings that comprise the curious state of man. Isn't that what travel is, after all? Seeing the threads of a larger tapestry? Or are these just the confused, unsolicited ramblings of a corporate scribe desperate to find meaning in the destinations he's dropped into?