Budgets are finally opening up for 2024—no one tells you when you start out in this industry that nothing happens until February—which means the Three Point Four Media team is talking to clients old and new about projects and scoping out work. It’s always awkward: a very large corporation asks competing companies to put a number to an entire year’s worth of work, without knowing every single detail about the work itself. (It’s worth mentioning here that creative work is less time + materials based for costs than, say, construction or catering. Hard to do cost-plus when you don’t know the costs.)
We try to get an idea of the true scope and spend but sometimes it’s just: “Come back with a bid.” It’s not rocket science to put together a project scope and say “this seems fair for [redacted global corporation],” but it’s also very easy to get caught up in the process and forget that you are providing the client a unique skillset and real value. There’s a delicate balance between charging too much, knowing your value, and charging way too little.
What I’m saying here is shoot your shot.
Onto the links.
An Article
Really enjoyed this big piece in the New York Times Magazine about big pants. But it’s about more than just pants and dives into the context of how we dress and why—and what clothes say about us, man:
“Wear whatever you like” has long struck me as up there with “be yourself” when it comes to useless style advice, as if your personal style didn’t always contain some irreducible level of dialogue with the tastes, prerogatives and opinions of others — as if taste were something that could ever take the form of pure monologue.
I don’t wear big pants—I’m not cool enough and would look ridiculous—but the silhouette of my jeans has gotten slightly wider in the last 18 months. Not like the guy in the spread above, though. Never like the guy in the spread above.
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A Project
Recently kicked off a project with a new client that we are very excited about. Once we are cleared by the client to publicly share the project—there was a lot of bold face type in the contract about discussing the work—you’ll be the first to hear about it. No, it’s not government or CIA work; we have, however, been talking to a state agency about doing work for them going on seven months now. But that’s another conversation for another newsletter.
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A Movie
The Michigan Theater screened The Italian Job this week—the original, not the 2003 remake—and it was a pure joy. A young Michael Caine as the architect of a heist, colorful vintage Mini Coopers in the streets of Turin, and a Quincy Jones original soundtrack? Yes, please. What I love about older action movies is how much slower the chase scenes are, it feels more relatable.
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A Video
I’m really into watching old late night music performances lately. It’s hard for a band to really hit their stride and do their thing when they only have a 10-minute slot. This 1983 R.E.M. performance on Letterman, the band’s network television debut, brings the heat from start to finish. Stipe is a god.
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A Ski Race
The 50th annual American Birkebeiner happened, despite a historically warm and low-snow winter. I skied three laps on a 10 kilometer loop composed entirely of manmade snow. It looked like an art installation. There was a gnarly turn on the course that produced so many crashes on Saturday—I did not crash, nbd—they re-routed the course Sunday to take the turn out. Cross country skiers look so dorky when they crash.
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Thanks for following along—no more cross country skiing content until next winter.