Zonder moed geen comeback van LUV, geen Virgin Galactic en geen klanten die deze concepten wilden financiëren. Moed is spannend en moed maakt orgineel. Moed is voorwaarden om op te vallen. Moed moet.

This article is about advertising art directors. There happens to be a big difference between art directors who are in advertising and art directors who work in the fashion- or movie- industry.

 

Advertising art directors are conceptual thinkers and ‘direct the art’ when their advertising concept is sold and gets to the execution phase. The means of execution can be film, animation, photography, illustration, graphic design, 3D modeling, cardboard cuttings, paper mache or a combination of the above. During this phase advertising art directors are the protectors of the idea. As to fashion art directors who studied them self in mirror a bit too much and movie art directors who are glorified handymen.

 

The following insights are written from my perspective and experiences. If you don’t agree with the statements or are offended by my observations then you should… how do I put this… start crying about it and write your own damn article. Thanks for reading.

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Art directors are stone cold darling killers, merciless typeface rapists. Like evil villains always preparing their next big skeem. Battling their archenemy ‘Compromise’. Searching for opportunities to spread THE word. Ruthless missionaries with no regard for the law.

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NEVER confuse them with painters or poets. Art directors don’t need inspiration. They’re blessed with the gift to see the bigger picture. Their minds make connections and quick associations. They are trained to visualize a problem as a 3D object; they rotate it, flip it, turn it inside out, shave it and mould it. Turning weaknesses into strengths.

Inspiration is for amateurs.

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Because of the large amounts of information art directors need to absorb – of which they will use only a fraction – a strange thing evolves: An eclectic mind. They will know little of a certain subject. But they will know something on just about every subject.

Advertising deforms art directors; they will get a great hunger for knowledge but with a very short attention span. When the big picture is clear, they’re off to the next subject. Curiosity is the engine of associative thinking.

 

NOTE

A fully operational eclectic mind has a downside. It doesn’t shut down very easily. This means that most art directors suffer from brain flatulence. The brain expels ideas with no apparent reason. This can happen at any given moment. If you see this happening, don’t be alarmed, amuse the art director and just go along with it.

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University degrees suck! With the exception of a bachelor or master in fine arts of course. Art directors can’t have a fixed frame of reference. Students who tried 8 different majors –and failed all of them– have a much better change of succeeding as an art director then students who have spent 6 to 8 years mastering their specialty.

There should be a faculty of associative thinking: 'Fill in the gap; yellow, banana, ..., guy falling from a mountain with a rubber duck in his hands singing "let the sunshine in"’.

 

Most art directors have an art/graphic design background and computer skills are mandatory since the turning of the millennium.

 

NOTE

It can’t be a coincidence that most art directors suffer from dyslectia. What used to be a curse turned out to be a blessing. They were visually trained since childhood. And since we have google and spelling control, who cares.

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Every art director goes through a junior or an apprentice period. It doesn’t matter if they start at a big firm or a small company. They all start at the bottom of the creative chain. At this point the art director wannabe’s don’t have a clue if they can make it in advertising. This has its downsides but it also has an upside that will never return in the career of any art director. They have the underdog position.  They were hired on the educated guess that they have talent but nobody expects them to deliver anything. This is a wonderful time, they can come up with the most radical ideas and nobody will tell them too be serious. They are judged on the amount of crazy ideas they had and not on the number of usable ideas. Never again will they have this freedom, sad but true. Just enjoy it.

 

to be continued...