The Underdogs of Inspiring Blogs

Like many other young art directors, designers, creative directors and the like, I follow a lot of blogs to help jump start my creativity or simply to see how others are pushing the boundaries in my field.

There of course are the staples of NOTCOT for design & art, Ads Of The World for advertising creative, FWA for digital design, Agency Spy for ad gossip and It’s Nice That for design inspiration. Yet there are quite a few, unsung heros that I follow on a daily basis and wanted to spread the love.

1. Inhabitat: Green Design Blog. The thing I love the most about this blog is it isn’t preachy. It simply showcases some of the coolest green solutions for every area of design. It gets your noodle going in a uniquely green way.

2. The Dieline: Showcase of Packaging. I have always been a strong believer that a true designer can design anything (sans math integration without proper training) be it a website, poster, motion graphics, typeface or a piece of packaging. The thing I love about packaging inspiration is it pushes the boundaries of your thought process in both 2D and 3D.

3. Birds of A Feather: One A Day Picture Blog. I use this blog as a picture a day to keep the block away. Some pictures are good; but, the majority are awesome. Keep this one on the rss feed.

4. Change The Thought: A.D.D. for Designers. This blog is all over the place in an incredibly fantastic way. You get about 3-4 blog posts a day of random awesomeness be it industrial design, photography, motion graphics, screenprinting or a good old advertisement.

5. Thought Bubbles: The View from A Young Copywriter at Mullen. From the Mullen agency that lovingly brought us the brand bowl (in tandem with radian 6) comes the view of a young copywriter at a pretty cool agency. Allison tends to simply blog about the things she loves, all of which has proven to be pretty interesting.

6. Christine Vo: The View from a Young Digital Designer at Wieden + Kennedy. From the digital stuff she makes at W+K to the design stuff she makes on her own. All in all some pretty cool work and interesting pieces of inspiration.

7. Conscience: The View from A Creative Director at the Martin Agency. Although Joe doesn’t post too terribly often, when he does it is always really cool work from the Martin Agency who, as we all know, has recently been winning new business pitch after new business pitch after new business pitch.

All in all a pretty cool group; but, if I’m missing any good ones out there leave a comment or drop me a line on twitter.

How To Network

Being a Minneapolis native, I was spoiled with constant opportunities to network with individuals in advertising, design and other creative fields. When I came to Arkansas I had to learn to seek them out.

I network because I’ve found that through sharing with people in the industry, you get a good gauge of your level of work, are among the first to know about new job opportunities, you can feed off of one another’s ideas and you get your name out there with people that could share your work in their network.

When coming to Arkansas where there is no advertising, design or creative community I found I had to rely more on social networking to connect.

1. Blogging. Although I never had been one for blogging initially, I have found that through this blog I have made a number of connections when a post inspired debate, discussion of work or simply having them look at my personal site after reading my blog. I’ve been able to receive a lot of feedback that has inspired me to revisit my portfolio and refresh my personal brand.

2. Twitter. I’ve always been one too much prefer a face-to-face conversation to 140 characters of exchange. Yet, I’ve found that through sharing the things that I like, I’ve made connections with like-minded people that has progressed to longer conversation and collaboration over messaging and emails.

3. Linked In. Many have a profile; but, few see the value in it. I’ve found that it has been useful in two distinct ways. One, it allows for me to bookmark the people in my profession that I made a valuable connection with. Two, through using your few free emails to target individuals in your industry asking for feedback, I’ve found I’ve fostered strong connections and received great constructive criticism on my work.

Although this is by no means the only ways to connect, and not the only ways I’ve tried, I’ve found that through blogging, twitter and linked in I’ve achieved the best networking results so far. Yet my biggest piece of advice is, if you currently live in a hub of advertising and design use those networks to meet people, you’ll be glad you did.

Ad of the Week: Dove

Here it comes.

Although this ad, which ran after the more popular Dove Evolution, is part of an older campaign I feel that it is one of the rare concepts that will stand the test of time and have a strong punch for quite awhile. The concept itself, women being overwhelmed with beauty messaging, isn't dramatically new, the way in which the message was delivered raised it to an entirely new level.

Through the usage of rapidly moving beauty ads, that foster the idea that to be pretty you have to change, interspersed with depictions of woman dangerously changing their bodies through eating disorders and plastic surgery gives a strong impact. And the overriding message, of talking to your daughter before the industry does, helps reinforce the brand attributes that Dove is using to differentiate itself, they are the brand for real beauty.

Agency: Ogilvy London

Art Directors: Stuart Campbell, Mike Kirkland & Sharon Lee Pan

Copywriter: Tim Piper

Song: La Breeze by Simian

The Perks

Although being in advertising is a ton of work, and sometimes yields only small rewards, there are a few perks that make it awesome. A few for more me are:

1. Having the chance to come in and question everything everyday. Although you get varying degrees of this from agency to agency, this is by far one of the biggest pay offs for me personally. I love the chance to come in, see what a client has, do the research, collaborate, ideate and present concepts that could revolutionize a client's business or potentially even their sector of industry.

2. Free food. The nay sayers always proclaim, "There is no such thing as a free lunch." But for me, if no money immediately came out of my wallet, its free in my book. And for some reason, the freeness makes food taste all the more delicious, can I get an amen?!

3. The chance to be relevantly creative everyday. I'm the type of creative that needs to create for a purpose and one of capital gain satisfies both my creative and business sides.

4. Getting to see the best of the best. Having the chance to have artist or production house representatives pitch the best of their film, sound, illustrators, photographers etc. Just this past Friday I received a set of free photo and illustration books from WRKBK that have some awesome portfolios of work. I HIGHLY suggest you check them out. (Photo from the work of Neil Duerden)

So in conclusion, if you love to work your butt off, creatively challenge everything, enjoy free food and love seeing what others can do, advertising is certainly for you.

The Agencies with A Bright Future Have: -insert-

I’ve found that the agencies with the brightest futures have a strong sense of comradery through the aspects of humility, positivity and healthy levels of competition.

What inspired me to think about this was when I was looking back at an old youtube video of the group of Lucky 13 interns, (posted above) that I was fortunate to be a part of, and remembering how we seemed to accomplish the impossible by having a healthy environment set by Campbell Mithun.

One the most important pieces, especially for young creatives, is the aspect of humility. By having the opportunity to work with senior creatives and directors that take the time to give direct feedback and collaborate on solutions creates a great sense of trust and respect. The killer of this at agencies can easily occur with a prima donna. I’ve found the ego quickly kills creativity.

The second most important strength seems to be having a great sense of positivity that doesn’t bleed into nieve. By remaining positive in the face of a client review, a rethinking of a campaign structure or simply staying late to get the work done at a high quality, is such an important piece to finish strong. Those that try to lead with fear often see the best within their ranks leave for a positive work environment in order to produce good work.

Finally, the most important piece (and most difficult to balance) is encouraging the right amount of competition within your ranks. By pitting a new creative against one that has been at an agency for a long period of time can lead to strained relationships and allows for the lack of communication to fester. Yet, to strike the perfect cord of inspiring competition within teams to produce the big ideas; but, allowing for a healthy amount of collaboration, can produce some of the best ideas hoped for.

Yet, the real conundrum seems to be that each individual responds to stimuli differently and what is appropriate for one isn’t necessarily for another. Thus the search for the perfect fit of agency and creative individual continues until the best creative work that one can produce comes to fruition.

Digital Utility or Branded Experience

A rather large conversation on the creative side of digital advertising is which is more important and effective, utility/marketing or branded/experience?

I feel the best way to illustrate the differences is through examples. Below is a brand experience video for the band Devo created by Mother Los Angeles.

The Devo site and film give off a wanky, dharma initiative vibe that is very distinctive and memorable. Although it doesn’t immediately discuss the product (music) it created a point in the mind of the consumer to make the gradual perception change of that music brand. It inspires the consumer to find out more and potentially purchase it; but, more importantly, it gets the consumer to continue using the brand if they liked the advertising.

Here is an example of a marketing micro-site for Clorox Whiten Your Whites.

The site is paired down to getting as many emails as possible, to the point that it ends up not feeling genuine or interesting. It shouts at the consumer a potential to win something if they give over their email (to be distributed Clorox coupons via email). Although the consumer may or may not use this product from the coupon, the likely-hood that they would be interested in learning more about future products is not likely.

In the end what is more important and effective, utility/marketing or branded/experience? Ultimately it would depend on the goal of the campaign/product; but, for any brand be it a band or a massive retailer, developing a long term relationship with a consumer will potential yield much higher returns and for a longer period of time.

Ad of the Week: Old Spice

Smell like a man, man.

When Old Spice saw rapidly dropping profits, they knew they had to make a change and turned to Wieden + Kennedy. WK found that most people attributed the brand negatively with old men and were won over by the cool sex factor built into the competition, Axe. So what Old Spice did was tap into the factor of being a "mans man" and using a wanky, monty python like sense of humor to grab attention.

Their latest ad, meant to talk to the female buyer as well as the male user, with the line ". . .if he switched to Old Spice he could smell like he's me." The ad was perfectly planned out, art directed, written and produced to deliver a distinctive memorable brand promise that resonates with the consumer. So much so that the actor, Isaiah Mustafa, has since been inundated with friend requests on facebook and is appearing on Ellen this Friday because she became so infatuated with the ad.

Agency: Wieden + Kennedy, Portland

Art Director: Eric Kallman

Copywriter: Craig Allen

And check out how they made it in this chat with the creative minds behind the ad.