THE WORD ON….

Inspiration, Chess, and Pizza.

“Creativity is...seeing something that doesn't exist already. You need to find out how you can bring it into being and that way be a playmate with God.” - Michele Shea

Let me tell you about really cool dream I had.

Well, it didn’t start off as a dream, it started as a nightmare.

I’m sitting at my computer late at night, working around a strategic design solution. It’s a new identity for a new brand in a saturated market. In other words, I’m stumped. My notes all strewn all over the table, the “artwork” I’ve created on the computer screen looks like a bad dime store novel someone tossed under a garbage truck in 1964, and I haven’t the vaguest idea what I going to do about the typography (font selection.) Aha, and guess what? The first pass is due the next day. Priceless.

My stomach makes a funny noise, and though not unlikely, this time instead of sounding like a little growl, it goes something like BARROOOOMBABABA! But this is a dream, and in dreams you often explain things like this to yourself by saying “I guess I’m hungry.”

So I dial up the pizza guy.

Twenty minutes later, I’m sitting at my desk, STILL staring at the computer screen, and the studio doorbell rings. I open the door, and there’s a kid in baggy corduroy pants, a t-shirt that reads “Joe’s Pizza, wasamatayu?” a red baseball cap barely covering mussed up brown hair, and a name badge that’s not pinned correctly so I can’t see his name.

“Pizza guy” he says.

“BARROOOOMBABABA!” my stomach replies and I usher him inside before the media arrives.

The kid walks into my studio all casual like, looks up at all of the drafts and sketches thumb tacked to my wall and says,

“Hey, your one of those strategic design guys huh?”

“Got it in one” I reply. “But how’d you know?”

“’Cause of him” he says, pointing to my poster of Bill Bernbach.

“An idea can turn to dust or magic, depending on the talent that rubs against it" he says, quoting Mr. Bernbach, “Yeah, I know all about Bill.”

“Cool” I say, really impressed that a kid barely into his twenties knows about of the man credited with revolutionizing modern advertising and media design.

“So you workin’ on something now?” he asks.

“Well, yes and no” I reply. “I’m kinda stuck.”

“Want to take a break, eat some pizza?” he says.

“BARROOOOMBABABA!”

I look sheepishly at him and say “Yeah, I guess so.”

I invite him to stay for a while, and he says “yeah sure, I’m goofin off anyway.”

The kid heads for the dining table, and sets up the pizza and some paper plates. I don’t care how much he sets up. I know for a FACT that I’m getting the last slice.

“My name’s Bobby” he says.

“I’m Robert” I say.

“Wanna play chess while we eat?” he asks, as he pulls out from his pizza bag one of those miniature chess sets.

“Why not?” I reply. “But I haven’t played in years. In fact, I don’t remember how.”

“S’kay, I’ll teach you. I’m pretty good”

“Go for it” I say.

Bobby the pizza guy sets up the board while I’m chomping away at a pizza slice. He tells me what the names of the pieces are, reminds me of their moves, and explains the start game, the middle game and the endplay. Then he looks up from the board and says “Bill knew chess.”

“Bernbach played chess?” I asked.

“Yep”

“Can I go first?”

“Whatever” he says.

For the next 10 minutes, Bobby the pizza guy literally wipes the board clean of my pieces. Second game in, he looks up at me while he’s wiping pizza grease from his chin. “You know who José Raúl Capablanca is?

“Nope” I say. He kills my rook.

“Cuban guy. Nobody in the world could beat him during the 20’s. Completely changed the way the game was played. Instead of reacting to the other player, what Capablanca did was, he would see in his mind how he wanted the game to end and then he’d play all his moves to get him there.”

He looks up at my wall, and the poster.

“Bernbach knew all about Capablanca.” He takes my knight.

“You’re saying that Bill Bernbach knew what a campaign design was going to turn out to be before he started it?” I ask, placing my Queen.

“Yep” the kid says, murdering my Queen.

I looked at the layouts and notes on my desk. They looked empty, devoid of life. There where some good ideas in there, some interesting colors, some nice directions. But it was kind of like looking at a deflated balloon, nice color, but nothing there. What Bobby the pizza guy was telling me about Capablanca made complete sense. We know all about how the design is supposed to execute strategically. We know what the target market is, what they like, what the corporate suits like, what their design prejudices are. We know a great many things before we begin a design. But often, we just kind of start the project and ramble off layouts, copy, color pallets and typography, kind of just chipping away. But as with chess, how are we going to know we’re going to win that way? We don’t. And 99.99999 percent of the time, if we work that way, we loose.

But when we have a vision, a creative starting point, a point that begins at the end, a STRATEGIC DESIGN, we always come out with a winner. We might have two or three of those puppies, all bright and shiny, ready to work for us. But the best design always comes when you wink, smile, and say to yourself “I know just what to do with this.” Then you let that vision take us along for the ride, bobbing and weaving, knowing where we are going, just inventing how to get there; how we are going to win.

“Remember when Kasparov played Big Blue?”

“Yes,” I said. Garry Kasparov is a Grand Master chess player, who in 1997 played one of the world’s largest and most powerful computers, IBM’s Big Blue, and lost.

” Problem is, Kasparov tried to play a traditional game. Creating a formula, planning moves three to four, sometimes 5 plays in advance. That’s Kasparov, he can do that. The human mind is great. It can see a multitude of calculations, mathematically or abstractly, in seconds. Deep Blue, now that boy can see not a multitude, but millions of calculations in seconds. And if any of the moves in Kasparov’s turns where expected, then Big Blue had millions of calculations to cover the next set of moves. It’s ready to play against any and all moves it’s expecting. It’s watching Garry go zig, zig, and zig. It would have never been able to recover, however, if Garry had only zagged.”

“Zags are hard to come by” he says, looking at what’s on my computer screen.

Ouch.

Bobby the pizza guy looks at me, massacre’s my bishop, and sets up a massive, two move play to obliterate my King with his Queen. He says, “Chess can help. It’s a mental exercise. It’s like brain power lifting. Helps you look at a situation, or problem, and see all the different angles you can attack it from. Gives you a fresh look at things.”

I look down at the board. I’m down to some puny little pawns. One rook, which’s looking the wrong way in my estimation, and my king, sweating it out.

“So when you’ve looked at all the possibilities of a game. Covered every angle, knowing that you want to get there, but can’t find a way out, you zag.”

I take a pawn, the last sucker I should be touching right now, and just move him. Up once, that’s all he can do, and in the face of the Queen, nothing much to look at either. But the game fell on my head like a ton of bricks. I saw it all. That little pawn gave me the one extra move I needed to position the rook to take out his king. Two moves, he’s toasted, and he knows it.

“Check!” I say. (In the back of my mind, I scream BOOOYAH)

Bobby the pizza guy looks at me, grins, and says “told ya.”

I look up at the clock and its pass midnight. Bobby the pizza guy has got to go ‘because his boss calls him on his cell to tell him he’s got another delivery.

“Hey, thanks for the game bro, and the pizza” he says. “I gotta go.”

“Sure” I said. And try to pay him.

“On me” he says.

Smiling, I walk him to the door.

“By the way,” I said “what’s your name?”

“I told you, Bobby.”

“No, your last name.”

He looks at me with that “Oh I get it” look and flips up his dangling badge.

“It’s Fischer. Bobby Fischer, see ya.”

I see Mr. Bobby Fischer, the pizza guy, get into a beat up old car, and drive away, whistling some freaky little song.



At this point I realize it’s a dream. It’s gotta be a dream.

He drove off with the last slice of pizza.



*Notes

Bobby Fischer is considered to be the world greatest chess player, in his, or in anybody’s time. And unfortunately, as with other great minds, his is also a bit twisted. Having been a recluse for many years, he is considered ill and not responsible for his outbursts, which are often incredulous and sad. However, as a younger man, and chess master, he was known as having a good nature and spirit. It is this Bobby Fischer that I represent here.

Quotes on Bobby Fischer: (it will help you think creatively)
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Over the black-and-white board, Fischer's genius was unmatched. He could play two dozen opponents in high-speed games and then recite every move from memory - hundreds of moves in total. He racked up unprecedented strings of victories against top grandmaster competitors. Where prudent players settled for draws, he fought to win every time.

He took the 1963-64 U.S. championship with a perfect 11-0 score. No one had done that before, and no one has since.

At the World Championship -
Fischer's accomplishment cannot be overstated. A brash twenty-nine-year-old high school dropout, armed with little more than a pocket chess set and a dog-eared book documenting Spassky's important games, had single-handedly defeated the Soviet chess juggernaut. Spassky had a wealth of resources at his disposal to help him plot moves, including thirty-five grand masters back in the Soviet Union. Fischer, on the other hand, had two administrative seconds who served essentially as companions, and Bill Lombardy, a grand master, whose role was to help analyze games. However, Fischer did almost all the analysis himself—when he bothered to do anything. "After the games were adjourned, all the Soviets would go back to Spassky's hotel room to plan for the next position," recalls Don Schultz, one of the seconds. "Lombardy said to Fischer, 'That's a difficult position. Let's go back to the hotel and analyze it.' Fischer said, 'What do you mean, analyze? That guy's a fish. Let's go bowling.'"


You have to have the fighting spirit. You have to force moves and take chances. -- Bobby Fischer

be there
Robert Garcia
Creative Director

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