Pocketsize Matters. That’s something we believe in. We didn’t at first. But now we, Frans Karthaus and Stefan Da Costa Gomez, have been working together with two tiny Polish guys. We joined our forces. Building a bridge between a small unknown creative world and a big familiar creative world.
It was autumn 2007. The temperature was just above freezing. That’s normal for Warsaw, the capital of Poland. Also known as the Phoenix City: it was almost completely rebuilt after WWII’s demolishing and is now filled with beautifully restored classical buildings and stupendous concrete structures from the communist years. A familiar story to us since we lived and studied in Rotterdam, with the difference that Rotterdam was rebuilt with more experimental architecture erasing almost all traces of it’s classic appearance.
We were enjoying the comfortable temperature of an authentic milkbar. Sipping from our large jugs of milk, we discussed the advertising world, the recent economic slowdowns and the last episode of South Park in which Cartman is faking Tourette’s Syndrome. By the time we were finally talking about work, it was after midnight. Our digital watch told us it was already 00:04.
At that exact moment, yet 45 seconds later, we started believing.
We felt something pulling at our pants. Softly but firm. Maybe it was all the milk. Maybe it was the child in us. Maybe a combination of both. But as we looked down, we noticed two tiny versions of human beings, not taller than a can of beer. We were astonished, flabbergasted and shocked at first. We blinked a couple of times with our eyes but they were still there. And if we could blink with our ears we would have done that, because they actually started to talk to us in the kind of English that Sacha Baron Cohen uses for his character Borat. The communication started of a bit sluggish. But after some small talk, we leveled more and more despite the large difference in size.
The two small guys introduced themselves as Jaçek Grojusz and Piotr Wysoki. They’re from the world of gnomes. To be more specific, they are two ‘Gnomus Artifex’, tiny people with large creative minds. As it turned out, Jaçek and Piotr had been following us for almost the entire day. In the morning, while we were enjoying a filling Polish breakfast with kanapka, sausages and eggs, they sneaked under the table and overheard our conversation about how small the world seems sometimes. Well, they didn’t really understand our language, but they knew it was Dutch. And like many other Polish men they believe that Holland is a small country but a great place to find work and to be acknowledged. They were determined to talk to us. And curious as we are, we wanted to talk to them as well. Jaçek and Piotr had been struggling as creatives for a long time. Their biggest problem is the fact that people don’t believe in them, a common feature of gnomes and creatures alike. They needed help to get their work out there. Out in the human world.
We discovered that the four of us have a lot in common besides the fact that Jaçek and Piotr are ten times smaller than we are. We decided to help these great guys. Since we’re also always looking for ways to do creative work, we made a deal. And thus the first pact between the gnome world and human world. The deal is this: We shop at agencies for work. When we get an assignment we pass the brief to our two tiny friends and they will do all the creative work. We take the work back to the agency and present the big ideas as if they are our own. We then split the money we make (90-10 since they are 10 times smaller then we are and eat and drink 10 times less) If we continue to do good work for the agency we will say that we didn’t do it; The gnomes did it. The only we you will see this is to believe in them
So here we are. Representing the small world. Because pocketsize matters.
