Secrecy is important to any firm who wants to launch a new product. By surprising the competitors with a product the firm can increase its market share, reputation and have generally an advantage. If another firm knows about the new product he can potentially launch a competing product earlier. Especially in the B2B world this can be disrupting. As an Art Director you are often directing also the overall communication of your client – so even this topic is of your business. After the break I talk about how I discovered a secret product line through crowd sourcing and how we can prevent such an event. …click here to continue…
There are beautiful portfolio sites out there in the web and I wanted to redo my portfolio site because like most of the websites of designers my site was:
Quite out of date
Not very compelling any more
The reasons because my site was like this are easy to find. If you are a busy designer you mostly don’t have time to update your site. In the last years I started a blog and used twitter to engage with my audience, so the time for the portfolio is even smaller. Maintaining a portfolio site is not as easy and there are many big sites where you can upload your portfolio. The question was, what should I do. …click here to continue…
In various posts around the web you can find opinions on the new identity of the tv channel SyFy – formerly known as Sci-Fi Channel. While I don’t want to go into the design details I want to express some thoughts why the probably made this change. At first it seems quite unusual to change a well established brand so radically. It seems even more radical as the new name is also a new term that sounds like the old name but doesn’t has the same meaning – it actually has no meaning.
This puzzled at first even me. Science fiction was born over 100 years ago and the abbreviation sci-fi has become wide spread. Everybody knows what sci-fi is and therefore naming a tv channel who broadcasts sci-fi shows should be called sci-fi. But here lies the big problem. The vast majority of people “thinks” the know what sci-fi is all about. Basically science fiction is all about ufo’s and space travel. Science fiction is obviously much more than that and actually most of the movies and shows on tv are some sort of science fiction. How can you break this misinformation of the general public?
There are two ways. One way is to educate the people, but this would cost much more that just do it the way SyFy has done it. They changed the name and claimed that SyFy is the tv channel where you could “imagine more”. The name sound familiar enough to sci-fi fans to recognize the term and is new enough to new viewers to just be a name.
How far SyFy is more than just space crafts and aliens shows the spot – well done and good luck to the “new channel”.
Update: As @Lazarus2000 on Twitter pointed out giving a brand a unique name has another advantage. You can trademark the brand.
Sometimes things just won’t work. You made a nice communication concept, build a campaign and everything the execution was impeccable. But when you and your client look at the results they don’t meet the expectations. Now what should you do? Normally we would think that we would try harder – but you shouldn’t. …click here to continue…
Advertising lies all the time – at least this is what most people think. I must admit that I tend to believe them when I see all the rubbish on various home shopping channels or housewife-magazines (no really, this kind of magazines exist). To be honest, advertising doesn’t lie more than the average human in any position and mansion, but I think advertising should not lie.
In many countries “lying” in advertising is strict prohibited and if you check the ads you probably find small clues for the omitted facts or the specific “conditions” to get the praised results. But this is not my point.
When do you reach the point where it is advisable to not advertise at all a product? Is it ok for a Aspirin to advertise its painkilling for sportsmen? I’ve seen an ad in TV where two girls talk after a fitness session. One complains about her aking muscles and other one gives her aspirin. Hmm. Stretching or not overdoing might be the better advice.
As an art director I was more than once presented to advertise products with small to none improvements or benefits when compared to the competitors products. I had obviously to show the product as if it where the best product of the world but I always avoided to push it over the top. I also refused to do advertising for certain products. I will not do advertising for weapons, drugs, cars (if they claim to save nature), the usual stuff – but where do you trace the line?
Is the graphic designer responsible for the products of his client? In my opinion any art director and graphic designer take a part of the responsibility because he helps to deliver the message to the costumers of his client. If you deliver a faulty message or if you do not deliver the truth you take part in the disguise. You as a graphic designer might not spot on first sight that the product doesn’t deliver what it claims but this is not always the excuse – it should come out when you do the briefing.
What do you think about the morale in advertising, where do you trace the line? Your opinions are welcome.
Sometimes we discover after we finished our education that the job we pursuited doesn’t match our expectations. Sometimes it seems that we are forced to change our job and learn a new one. Is it worth the time and money or should we stick to what we’ve got? I was contacted by Brittany asking me if she (an account manager with a degree) should go back to school to become an art director. Here her mail and my thoughts.
I came across your blog online and it caught me because I have just decided to go back to school for art direction. I graduated with an undergrad degree: Bachelor of Science in Advertising in May 2008.
However, I focused on the business side of things and not the creative. I want to go into art direction but I would like to hear what you have to say about this. My concern: I am about to spend about $xxK on school to do this, as I attend The Illinois Institute of Art-Chicago. I will finish with another bachelors, but in Fine Arts Visual Communications around Dec/Jan. 2011. Can I come out of school and move into the path of art direction right away? Such as assistant art director? What is the typical path people take for this?
I am just scared I won’t be able to pay back these loans. I see that the average starting salary for this path is somewhere around $xxK give or take. I have experience working in large agencies, as I interned during my schooling at Y&R NYC, and McCann Erickson NYC, both in Account Management. I appreciate all of your help and advice.
First things first. It’s no big news that our generation and the future ones will not stick to their job for 40 years as might have our parents. Changes in toady’s business and our goals will make it much more likely that we will have different jobs in our lives. So the more knowledge and capabilities we can get the better. Me myself went to university at 25 changing completely my career to study graphic design – my passion as I discovered quite late since I was a small kid (I never thought that you can actually make a living out of designing newspaper and logos). So it is never to late to change the path and pursuit a new career.
In the specific case of Brittany the change is both radical and not radical at all at the same time. Let me explain. We can see from her email, that she is focused and structured (she has a plan, got the numbers, knows when she will get the second bachelor), this is fine project management, a typical strength of an account manager and something many creative people lack. But the ability of seeing the bigger picture and to organize is a capability an art director must have. I’m speaking of an art director in a medium to big agency – as usual Art directors in such agencies tend to not do much “hardcore” design work anymore but to lead the general direction of a project. But they still need to know what they are talking about.
The mix of the business side of graphic design/advertising and the creative part is teached graphic designers when they do a master degree in art direction – but I’m not sure if the bachelor degree if graphic design will do the same trick to Brittany (as she already knows the business side from her other degree). Maybe from the knowledge side, but I don’t think for the career.
A “freshman” from university will not likely start in a hiaboutgh position. Depending on the “real world” working experience the best I could imagine is junior art director, which in many cases is a nicer name for a graphic designer. This is in fact a waste of the capabilities, but understandable from the viewpoint of an agency.
I would choose a different approach. I would aim for a master degree in art direction directly. A bachelor in advertising should enable Brittany to be admitted and she could learn the more basic creative techniques and graphic design foundation by herself. It was never easier to obtain the basic knowledge for graphic design and the business part of an art director master course should not be much of an hassle, as she has already studied most of it. This will allow her to focus more on the creative part. In the end the master degree will enable her to enter the advertising career at an higher level using her capabilities at her best.
Trainees or intern as they are called are part of the responsibilities an art director has. I’m not talking about the bad habit of using trainees as regular workers, sometimes referred to as “precarity” or “underclass”, but about the trainees coming from schools doing a few weeks of internship to learn about the real work in an agency.
I had in the past problems finding the right jobs for the trainees as I was caught up in my daily routine and when they actually showed up at my desk I wondered what would fit. I therefore setup a routine for finding jobs around the year to have them ready. Find out how I did it and the 3 rules for successfully managing a graphic design trainee. …click here to continue…
How many times have you heard your client say: “You can fix this later in Photoshop.” or “We don’t need a photo shooting, we just combine the photos we have.” As an art director one of your jobs is to ensure that the quality of the final product lives up to the standard you set. To ensure this quality you have to look at all aspects. We already discussed the copywriting part, now let’s look at the photography. …click here to continue…
Most of us designers and art director use systems based on DAM every day without noticing it. If you search for images on a website like Getty Images or Corbis you use the web frontend of a DAM. Actually every website has it’s own DAM where it stores the images. But what are the new capabilities of modern DAMs and how can they help you in your daily work. Here some ideas. …click here to continue…
Why should an art director be bothered with file structure, server setups and all this organization stuff? Isn’t this the business of the IT-departments? Well, yes if you are in a big agency and you have an IT-department and even then only for the “physical” part. At the end of the day you and you team have to work with the files every day, not the IT-department, so it’s time to get in charge. Here a few tips. …click here to continue…
What is the job of an art director anyway. How is it like? And how to learn to do the things the right way in real life. I will present you here some insights and some tutorials about becomming an art director, not just a graphic designer. Tips & Tricks you won't learn in any school and normally you will have to figure them out yourself. So go ahead and start your lessons.
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Art directors in such agencies tend to not do much “hardcore” design work anymore but to lead the general direction of a project. But they still need to know what they are talking about.
