ARTIST ADVERTISING INDUSTRY CONVERTS UNITE: YOU ARE STRONGER THAN YOU THINK
ARTICLE POSTED:March 9th, 2010 by Todd
After reading an rather ignorant and defensive twitter post by someone I did not know about artist transitioning into other fields being sub par to those who are trained and remained in their field I began to have a thought (after the “I’ll remember never to hire you” thought of course)…after all, I’m a artist and illustrator who became a designer and 3D animator and then became an advertiser and brander…and who knows what I’ll be tomorrow. So I wanted to take a closer look at the unique sub culture of artist working in an alternate field.
There is a strange sub section of Advertiser Creatives out there in the world. They’re not really “big idea” generators, they’re not really designers….they’re not really production artists. They’re sort of a hybrid. They’re the artists. Creative sponges who like to draw and create – but aren’t necessarily trained to do much else. They have visual imaginations that are often way off target or brand but if you are able to navigate through their thought process they can often have the best ideas, the best visuals and more importantly in today’s online and offline world of marketing and commerce…they can often have the unique style and perspective to give you something different to work with.
Like many of these people I to have found my way from industry to industry, project to project, learning to learning and somehow – for the present at least – have found my way into advertising. A world that is so far removed from art and commercial illustration (what I was schooled in) I often find myself marveling at the idea that I’m here. I hear similar thoughts from others from my discipline who are now working in advertising not as artist but as as Art Directors, Creative Directors and all other variety of titles; “How did I go from painting stuff for magazines and drawing in sketch books to selling marketing ideas on how to push products?” It’s an intriguing thought and usually is counter balanced in the arts industry as well as photography industry with statements such as “Things are good but if they don’t pick up I may have to get a real job”. A strange thing to say as I did not realize that a real job only consisted of a regular paycheck…
So thinking that I began to wonder what makes artists in other fields unique – for the better or worse. Think about this: I am a self taught designer. I’ve had only one real graphic design class. I simply like to organize things by nature and if you look at how I paint things…well I tend to design it as well. I work with composition in my design much like I do when I draw. Not because I was told to only because I tend to. When it comes to thinking I break down ideas to answer a solution. For those in the industry that are similar I see some similar hurdles we (artists) all face: presenting an idea as an idea – not as a garbled creative thought, designing the look of something to serve an audience – not ourselves and collaboration. Over the past ten plus years I’ve found I’m pretty comfortable with all those loops and can jump through them with ease. However I see with younger Creatives in the industry that they stumble often with how to overcome their own need for personal expression and the high learning curve you face when you begin to transition from production to actual advertising and management of others.
If you are of a similar mould as I and find you are an artist in advertising with street knowledge, and an urge to learn and are not sure how to grow I have some suggestions (take it or leave it):
1. ASK
Your non-artist counterparts are creative. Be careful to acknowledge that they know things you don’t and vice versa. Often simply opening yourself up and asking questions (especially when you’re starting can not only help you form a collaborative, non-selfish working relationship – but can also improve many of the skills you may have not learn while learning your artist craft). I once taught a group of final year college students how to think beyond what they thought they knew after 3 years of learning to be illustrators. The most important part of that course was NOT creative thinking. It was the fact that they were mandated to present their ideas and work on an almost weekly basis. As an artist interacting with others can be a scary thing. It’s made easier in opening yourself up to a regular dialogue. Other industries are constantly working at bettering themselves through continued education and mentor-ship.
2.LEARN
On that note – if you want it, you need to work at it. Like marriage, an alternate career from that of what you were before is a lot of work. You will need to educate yourself. My first website job back in early 2001 was sold when I said “yeah I can do that”. I then went home and picked up a book on how to use Dreamweaver and spent 3 days teaching myself “how to do that”. I kept learning in the evenings and weekends while working to improve my skills. Same thing goes with 3D animation – picked up books and read through them over a summer between semesters back in school. Some of the most creative and empowered people in any industry are successful because they have a hunger to always learn. Advertising is no different. (Especially digital – see the previous blog post on that topic…)
3. SPEAK
Learn how to talk. Practice it and listen to others. Over the past half decade as I’ve begun to lead projects and companies I’ve focused much of my efforts in two new areas of discipline: talking and thinking big picture. I present a lot more and talk to a lot more people – clients, colleagues and vendors. When it comes to presentations work at being a human sponge. It’s not uncommon to see a good presenter casually open their note pad while listening to someone else present and write down a phrase or word they like. We learn from each other not only how to talk to certain people but how not to talk. Tact is after all a skill.
4.REMEMBER WHO YOU ARE
And possible (for me anyways) one of the most important things to work on – follow your industry, BUT DON’T feel hand cuffed by it. As artists we have a lot of influencers and it is very common for them to have nothing to do with advertising or marketing at all. Use that to your strength. Keep an eye on the industry out of respect for what you are doing and to not feel ignorant to the craft – but bring forward outside inspiration. It is our greatest strength and it is often shunned not buy our fellow industry colleagues but by ourselves. We fear they won’t care so we do not bring it up. Some of the best solutions came from completely unrelated fields of thought. I still watch cartoons and animated features, I still play video games, I follow art and technology advances. I pay attention to things that I like and try at every occasion to use it on projects if I see a fit.
I encourage EVERY real job artist convert to do the same. No matter where you go remember where you are from and use it to your advantage.
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This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 9th, 2010 at 3 56 pm and is filed under All Blog Posts, Industry Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
DIGITAL AFTER ALL IS NOT A WEB SITE: WORKING IN THE MEDIUM THAT IS ALWAYS EVOLVING
ARTICLE POSTED:February 21st, 2010 by Todd
As a child of the digital age (hey I had an intellivision when I was little…that’s sorta digital…right?) I’ve been on the wave of online digital advertising over the last 5 years and watched it evolve daily. With the onset of online users beginning to create more content than a simple blog and the term “social media” resting comfortably on the tongues of every marketer – it is a band wagon almost everyone one seems to want to hop on. Trouble is, many are just getting to the station now and like a Monday morning on a subway the first time you ever used it – it can be a chaotic and frustrating experience. Everything in our industry is “digital” persay. I can admit other than one horrible experience in school I’ve never had to manually design typography. Yet like any growing movement there are those who remember when advertising played out like an episode of Mad Men. I have a crushing reality for you if you don’t work in the industry…it’s not like Mad Men. Though there are still a few who may wish their job relied on an hour of scribbles, a tag line and a pat on the back followed by “now you go and make that a website champ” – they are now finding themselves at a cross roads. I know because I’ve spent the last few years watching their brow wrinkle as others who followed this new medium called “Digital Advertising” tried to explain why even though you may have 15 seconds in that banner ad – you can’t simply make a commercial and call it a day. A painful lesson if you are unwilling to bend and evolve yourself.
This is a conversation I’ve had a lot of late. What is it about the world of digital that has so many in the Mass side of marketing (Radio, Print and Broadcasting) so blindsided about? Well in truth many of them aren’t. Yes there are a few who still refuse to work digital. But over the last 2 years as the economy’s bottom fell out and many brands turned their attention to cheaper ways to reach large audiences online through online marketing and social outreach – those who still wish to work in the industry are beginning to alter their perspective. Believe it or not we’ve seen brands go completely digital over the last 12 months and agencies go from 40% digital to 80%. There is another reason I’ve seen interest from “Traditional Advertisers” who have started to realize they need to get on board – and it has nothing to do with the changing in numbers or budgets. They are working a little harder at understanding…us.
Why would anyone be afraid of a digital advertiser? That was a question I thought about for a while and have had half a dozen conversations about this year alone. And I came across a thought: unlike Mass – Digital evolves. And it evolves fast. Think about it for a second. Other than better sound quality what has changes about how to approach radio? Other then better editing and the introduction of CGI as an affordable production tool for commercials…they are still usually 15, 30 or 60 second linear stories. Now take a look at digital? It is still young but it is growing and evolving at a terrifying rate. Ten years ago when I started making digital websites, they were ugly static HTML tables with big chunky text and animated GIFs. I still remember when we got image rollovers and javascript – man I was excited. And when Flash first came out my first flash site was only 300pixels by 200pixels to match the average users screen. It was also 6 megs and a mess. But it was an evolution.
As we’ve gone from clunky 90s home computers to fashionable Apples Computers and super powered home gaming rigs – our ability to see more content has been matched blow for blow with that of online media and content. We are now ok with watching 50 meg videos, loading flash hybrid sites with 3D engines that are usually massive (though built to load in small segments to optimize the experience). And for an advertiser that means something that is a profound thought…us, the digital guys have done commercials. We’ve done radio. We’ve done print. It was simply on a screen. Whether it was a static banner ad or logo design or a full web episode or a narrated web spot – we do it all now. A few years ago I would have had no idea what video shoots looked like or how to direct 3D productions. Or working with copywriters to develop voice-overs and scripts…all for online. So while we’ve been taking over in other mediums – some in Mass have started to notice and become curious about trying to understand digital. And I commend you – you’ve got the right idea and are also evolving. Now Digital is asked to be at the table from the beginning of an idea. Something that simply didn’t happen before.
We are an industry that is in constant evolution. It just changed a second ago – did you miss it? And to stay in the middle of such a forward motion you need to have a hunger for challenges beyond creative ideation and now into planning for what hasn’t been invented and how to use what came out yesterday. Much of it is useless. I’ll be the first one to admit that I’ve seen nothing commercially viable done with augmented reality that would help an experience and not hinder it. And papervision is choppy and ugly as sin. But some of the new things aren’t useless and we are always looking at that something and thinking… “How could I use that?” And since much of what we do is based on user interaction – we talk to a reactive audience not a passive one who is only listening, reading or watching media – we have also started to delve heavily into new areas to understand out audience. Behavioural science, social interaction and user reaction. They are not simply big words – we do actually think about it when we plan out and poke holes in our own ideas.
I admit I am filled with curiosity. And it has served me well. I for one enjoy instability. I like when a developer tells me he doesn’t think it’s possible to do something. It brings forward some of the best collaborative efforts and selfless creative problem solving I have ever experiences. Although I love some of my brands – If I slept at an office it wasn’t because a project was late, or because it was broken – it was because we knew we could do better and hell or high water, no one was going to see us fail.
So where is it going? Honestly, I have no idea. But I’m sure it will be interesting as it always is. Personally I think the future of digital is all around us and many advertisers strange as it is have not seen it for what it is. Digital is everywhere – so why aren’t your ads? And better yet – why isn’t your state of mind? An open mind will accept the impossible and make it reality. A mind that wants to stay rigid will block off potential and in the end cage itself. I do know where I would like to take it in my own work…experiential. Digital after all is not a website. It’s not a banner. It’s not your i-pod or i-pad. It’s electric. It’s interaction. It’s reaction. It’s a mirror of how we socially interact with each other. And where ever electricity is digital media can evolve to fit into. Now where’s my note pad…
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This entry was posted on Sunday, February 21st, 2010 at 1 08 am and is filed under All Blog Posts, Industry Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
MT ENGAGES SOCIAL MEDIA AND FACEBOOK FOR A HAITI PLEDGE DRIVE WHICH RAISED $1000
ARTICLE POSTED:February 4th, 2010 by MT
THE TAG A HEART FOR HAITI PROJECT
A SUCCESSFUL MINI EXPERIMENT IN FUND-RAISING THROUGH MEASURABLE INTERACTIONS
It started with a simple idea. We wanted to donate money the global Haiti relief efforts. There wasn’t much – but enough to make a difference in some of the lives of a few Haitian families. Usually that would be enough to pick up a phone and donate. However we wanted to try to do more and push each dollar as far as we could to not only donate but raise awareness. So we did what we do best – got creative and decided “Hey, let’s wrap a campaign around this pledge drive and see how it works out”. A good way to test out social media’s current state on Facebook and Twitter and have a little fun.
The ask was simple: Ask other creative people (artists, photographers, designers) to donate some of their time to create a single unique piece of artwork with a heart theme – we called them “Heart-Art”.
The mechanism was as easy as 1-2-3: We uploaded the work to a single photo album on our Facebook fan page and invited people to become a fan, pick a piece of “Heart-Art” they loved and photo tag their friends name on the picture. For every tag made Miner Thought pledged to donate a $1 to the Haiti Relief fund. In essence we asked Facebook users to share their heart.
On the social experiment side the campaign was pushed via twitter feeds, shared album and photos within Facebook and from users seeing that they had been tagged in the work – naturally making them click through and learn about the project. Upon learning the concept many who were originally tagged quickly became involved and tagged more. Like a wild fire it spread through Facebook organically and quickly the message and work reached other users.
In just over 72 hours since launching on Saturday Morning on January 30th Tag A Heart for Haiti was a success, breaking all our expectations. The fan page went from 2 to 124 fans and the initial donated artwork doubled for a total of 26 original “Heart-Art” pieces. Our target goal of $500 for 500 tags was reached by the mid afternoon that Tuesday in less than 4 days – seeing over 500 photo tags. Many of the artworks reached their 50 tag per image Facebook implemented limit in the first 24 hours.
Finally to add to the success of the project our friends at Dashboard Communications doubled the donation which in turn was doubled by the government. What does that mean? It means measurable interactions = relief in a grass roots campaign put together with a few creative people from across North America and raised $2000 which was donated to World Vision Canada. Not bad for a weekend.
We’d like to thank ALL the people involved in Tag A Heart for Haiti. From the tweeters to the Facebook users to the contributors. YOU made this happen. And we are humbled by your generous donation of time to make this work so well.
Thank you.
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This entry was posted on Thursday, February 4th, 2010 at 10 00 am and is filed under All Blog Posts, News & Events. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
