After having introduced our new columnists last week, this week we’re introducing a new item called ‘Inspiration’; Amsterdam creatives sharing their inspiration on a weekly basis. In order of future appearance we found the following posse willing to show us what they like, what fascinates them, or what they admire on a regular basis: Jennette Snape, art director at Dolly Rogers; Jarr Geerligs, art director at Selmore; Joep Beving, creative at Massive Music; Rick de Zwart, designer at Meneer de Zwart (and responsible for AAB’s visual identity); David Snellenberg, copywriter at Dawn; Johan Kramer, director at 328 Stories; Martin Pyper, designer at MeStudio; Reuben Alexander, creative at Buutvrij for Life; and Christian Borstlap, art director at Part of a Bigger Plan. Of course these people do more than just what their often somewhat rigitd title suggests (in art, music, photography, etc.) but you can read about that on their profile page, once they’ve posted their first contribution. Today Jennette Snape kicks off with an art piece she created herself. The title is “Inspiration lies in the eye of the beholder”; a nice kick off for this new genre, since it philosophies on what inspiration really is.

We’re very pleased to announce a brand new set of columnists. Before we worked with ‘Viewpoints’, allowing our readers to contribute on a casual basis, but we’ve discovered that deadlines work better than ‘whenever you like’. So we recruited a bunch of ad folk willing to write on a more regular basis. In order of future appearance; Astrid Groenewegen, strategist and founder of SUE Amsterdam; Axel van Weel, since recently freelance (long form) copywriter and ‘surf magazine journalist’; Sasha Naod, PR specialist and journalist, who worked for Philips before and recently started his own business; Gerald Hensel, strategists at Blast Radius and responsible for founding APG Netherlands; Marleen Wiedhaup, freelance copywriter; and Maarten Boer, copywriter and founder of Buutvrij for Life – the Cosumentenbond found his columns often too critical, so let’s see what he can do for us. Astrid kicks off today with the column ‘Design for excitement’, about the small, designy things in our business – rather than the ‘big ideas’ – that make us love brands.

The last day of the year, a good day for reflection. What did 2011 bring Amsterdam Ad Blog. A redesign implemented in the beginning of this year. A lot more traffic and followers on Twitter and Facebook. The traffic came from 168 countries – in total – this year. Roughly 50% of our visitors came from the Netherlands, 10% from the States, 6% from the UK, and the same percentage from Germany and France combined. The top 10 is completed by Italy, Canada, India, Brazil, and Australia, respectively. The list of countries is closed by one single visit from Mayotte, a small island that we’ve never heard of – located between Mozambique and Madagascar. Next year we’re going to introduce some new features. Among them ‘Interiors’; photos of the interiors of Amsterdam advertising agencies. Also ‘Inspiration’; what inspires Amsterdam ad creatives. We are also talking about a collaboration with another ad platform and we’re happy to announce that we found two new columnists who will be writing for AAB on a regular basis. And, finally, as always we’re open for new, interesting content from our readers. So if you have any ideas, let us know. Thanks for reading us and have a great 2012!

As you can see our new design is live. We hope you like it. What is new? The 3D logo, wider posts (640 pixels, instead of 560), and a more elaborate sidebar. Please note that there are still many technical and visual bugs to fix – so please bear with us. In the coming weeks we’ll be working hard to get it all sharp.

For most people this time of year is a time for self-reflection; what went well in 2010 and what not? What should go better in 2011? We’ve asked ourselves the same questions. What went well? Traffic! The amount of absolute visitors grew 375% What went not so well? Two things: finding more columnists and finding more funding. Especially the first one should improve next year, so for anyone with a catchy (very important), English pen, send us your columns – it can be about anything as long as it has to do with advertising. In return we’ll offer you a ton of exposure around the globe! The second point of improvement, finding more funding, has to do with the fact that we hate doing sales – which is pretty ironic when you work in advertising. So, while we’re at it, if you have any banners or jobs you want to share on our site, let us know – we’ll give you a special price! The good news is that Amsterdam Ad Blog will get a redesign real soon. We were actually hoping to implement it before 2011, but some persistent bugs and a web developer that felt the need to go to Egypt (of all places), postponed things a little. Another introduction in 2011 will be the ‘Ad of the month’ and – at the end of the year – the ‘A Award’ – the latter will per definition become the most prestigious award in Amsterdam advertising. Finally, thanks for all your views, comments, and e-mails. Without you, we’re nothing. We wish you an ambitious, creative and productive 2011 and hope to see you back next year!

A few of us are on holidays. Therefore the coming weeks we are not able to post frequently. Please bear with us…

This is Amsterdam Ad Blog’s second X-mas since it was founded in the summer of 2008. 2009 was great year for us and we certainly hope for you too. We grew in terms of content as well as traffic – this of course often goes hand in hand – and we are planing to do the same in 2010. This year we had a redesign and introduced the interview, column and job section. We have some exciting introductions planned for 2010 that should again raise our platform to a higher level, so we’re counting on you to stay tuned in. In any case, we hope you’ve enjoyed reading the blog this year as much as we did writing it. If you have any tips, creative work, comments or anything you want to share with us, keep sending us your mails, so we can enrich and improve Amsterdam Ad Blog constantly. Thanks for reading us and happy holidays to you all! PS Since a part of the Amsterdam Ad Blog team is leaving Amsterdam for the holidays to visit family and recharge the battery, we will be posting less until next year.

Since we were getting ‘spammed’ with e-mails from creative professionals from all over the world, telling us that Amsterdam is their church and begging us to recommend them a decent ad agency in Amsterdam to work for, we introduced a new Job section. Twofish, 180 Amsterdam and Achtung! were the first agencies to eagerly accept our very special introduction subscription. So if you’re looking for a job, check out their vacancies! On the job page we also added an expat section with info about Amsterdam news, cultural stuff, blogs, working permits, etc. Any feedback on our new job section is welcome.

We are very proud to introduce our new visual identity. It is created by Meneer de Zwart. The reason why we wanted to change our previous logo, is that it looked too much like the city marketing logo of Amsterdam: I Amsterdam. We kept the original colours red and black, because these colours represent the Amsterdam coat of arms. The lettering in the logo is inspired by the Amsterdamse School, an architectural style from the 1920’s that is very dominant throughout Amsterdam. Many bridges still display the Amsterdamse School font. With the new identity we’ve also added two new sections to our blog: interviews and jobs. For the interview section we will ask Amsterdam creatives 9 questions about creativity, advertising and Amsterdam. The job section will display vacancies in the Amsterdam creative industry and give tips for expats that (want to) move to Amsterdam. In the next few weeks we’ll start to upload content to these new sections. And there are still some design changes to be made and technical bugs to be fixed, but we hope you appreciate our new design and would love to hear your comments.