So far so good Posted by Matthew Weiner on Wed 16 Jul 2008 at 11.48.00 pm
Kris and I have been at irisnation in Singapore for almost two weeks now and it’s been amazing.  The city/country is really cool.  There’s so much culture here.  We have seen a bit but trying to see more everyday.  The agency is awesome.  The people are cool.  The work rocks.  The atmosphere is terrific. I think we made a good choice in coming here.  We are experiencing just about the opposite of what we had before.  I don’t mean that in a bad way either.  I loved CP+B and I love it here.  Now we have a good idea for the...
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	FAO Schwarz Rebranding Posted by Brendan on Wed 16 Jul 2008 at 09.52.00 am
In a recent article A DAY AT THE CIRCUS I mentioned The Creative Circus Superteams. An invite-only class, made up of the Circus’ best students where groups of four or five art directors, designers and copywriters reinvent a brand. It was a class I sat in on and was quite impressed with. Typically the final product is only shared with a select group of people outside of the school. But after some discussion the school has allowed me to share one of them with the readers of ACADEMIA. So click the link below to see what a group Circus students...
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	Journey At The Center Of The Earth Posted by doubleclick on Fri 11 Jul 2008 at 01.10.00 pm
Just as I thought, Journey's hot riffs are melting the earth, it's not global warming. ...
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	6th day @ the Agency Posted by Claudia on Thu 10 Jul 2008 at 10.22.00 am
A much better day. I am trying to deal with many many things going on in my life. Since i don't have the privilege of not working.. I do support myself. Obviously the internship at Alma cannot be my only income. There is a real world that demands me to pay my bills-unfortunately. The reason why I want to write about this today is not because I want people to feel sorry or bad for me.. no I am not interested on your pity. I just want to show how can I somehow manage a million things at the same time in...
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	Ad School! Why? Posted by Aron Tipton on Thu 10 Jul 2008 at 12.36.00 am
Why did I choose to go back to school after being out for couple years? And why Ad School? Honestly, there didnt seem to be any other option. It was either continue to work and find a job in which I could learn to be happy with and eventually fit my personality into, or step outside the conventional lines of employment, do what will make me happy by using my best qualities, and get into a career that defines my personality. Even when I started in college, Advertising was right there in the bag choices of what to do, which...
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	A Day at Wieden+Kennedy Posted by boyoboyitsfun on Wed 9 Jul 2008 at 05.52.00 pm
So I've been a junior copywriter for just over a year now at a smaller shop and I've been a member and contributer to the IHAI forums for a few years now. I didn't go to ad school. Many of the people here were my teachers. They helped me with my work before I got into the business. It's been a blessing and I've even made helpful contacts because of it. I'm now at the point where I've started looking around at other shops and sending my book around. It's as tedious as it was the first time around. I'm starting...
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	First Blog Entry! Posted by Aron Tipton on Tue 8 Jul 2008 at 07.28.00 pm
So this is blogging, huh! I'm just supposed to write about stuff? Easy enough! Sorry for the lame rhyme, that'll be the last time. Ohhh ; ) I'm a poet and I DO know it. Ok anyways, I started this blog as a way to let my friends and family keep up with what I'm doing, as well as a way for me to keep up with myself. From what i've been told many times, these next couple years will go by so fast, that I thought I should try to keep a record of it in case I...
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	Fight for your right to surf the internet on your phone, and advertise on it too!!! Posted by David Neumann on Tue 8 Jul 2008 at 05.18.00 pm
Ok.  What does protesting the new iPhone from Rogers have to do with advertising?  Well, mobile advertising is becoming the newest area clients and ad agencies are spending time and money on.  Well they are in europe, asia, africa, usa,  basically everywhere else but in Canada.  Below is one of the reasons why.  It's cheaper to surf the internet on your cell phone in Rwanda, then in Canada. High rates to surf on your phone  means  not many people are using the services, so clients don't want to advertise on it Speaking out against high rates in Canada isn't just something consumers...
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	5th day @ the agency.... what an awkard, frustrating day Posted by Claudia on Tue 8 Jul 2008 at 01.51.00 pm
Yesterday was not a good day. I went to the agency expecting a very hectic day as always... but  no. I walked in an apparently I had nothing to do... and when i say nothing is NOTHING!!!... remember the campaign that we were working on?? well it got stuck somewhere in the big bosses section... I thought i had to do some executions but apparently that was frozen yesterday. I walked around the agency... asking every possible person if there was anything I could help them with.... and NO ONE HAD ANYTHING FOR ME!!!! There was a point where I...
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	And so it begins Posted by Matthew Weiner on Mon 7 Jul 2008 at 11.23.00 pm
Kris and I are safely in Singapore and just completed our first day of exploration.  We started out by visiting Iris.  The agency is located in the heart of China town and what an office it is.  We immediately were made to feel right at home.  The attitudes seem to be close to those at Crispin.  Everyone was friendly, personable, and welcoming.  The place is much smaller than what we’re coming from.  We are going to get to see how an very different agency works which is the whole point of this program anyway. After a short tour and meet and...

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bad art directors...

Anonymous

lol, I know what you mean. I'm a little young in the industry of illustration and concept artwork. But I have a really bad art director I think, compared to the art director I had at another company this one has MUCH to be desired. This might be a little long...
<br>
<br>Let's go in steps.
<br>a) He cannot draw, this struck the green light for me, it's very worrisome when you have an art director in head of the 2D department that cannot draw himself. I am sure there are a few good ones out there like this but this guy certainly ain't it.
<br>
<br>b)Because he cannot draw, he does not contribute artistically to the project. Now, I don't know what an "art directors" job exactly entails, but this guy has never contributed anything to the project from day one. We would be pressed with deadlines and having only one artist working and instead of contributing to pushing the work along the pipeline, he just stacks more projects unto the one artist with impossible deadlines due to shortstaff.
<br>What he pretty much does the whole time as an art director is act as an assistant general manager, he recruits (or tries to), barks orders, tell people what he wants them to draw, contributes no artwork at all, rinse and recycle.
<br>
<br>c)He has no real direction, he doesn't really grasp the fact that he is the head of the art team in terms of what the final product should look like. He doesn't gather references for us, he just throws out names when he feels like, he's never specific about his vision, he just makes comparison. I'll give ya an example of a typical project:
<br>
<br>1) Hey, so I'm thinking we should go with the style the general manager picks out, because I'm not doing my job and HE'S the art director and i'm just hired to kiss his ass and go with the style she wants even though every other artist on the team doesn't feel it's a good style for our target demographic.
<br>2)Ok, let's say we go with the style the GM picked out, but let's go with this kind of anime/DC comics/Spawn look! I think that would be cool. Not only would it completely change the style the GM picked out, but also doesn't fit the demographic, is too complicated at concept art stage and doesn't mesh well, is too difficult for multiple artists to replicate and is too "wide" a descriptive term.
<br>3)Alright I dig that style you gave me, even though it's probably nothing like I originally envisioned because really I didn't really have a specific vision just a bunch of images in my head that looked cool and I really have no idea what direction I want to go.
<br>3) Ok the GM says this isn't the style he picked out, so scratch that and try to stay close to the style he wants....
<br>4) Ok close enough, let's go with this, now let's make him look cool, here's what I want you to do for your assignment
<br>5) I want you to crate a henchman of some sort
<br>6) Hey make him have gold eyes with no pupils, some chains and stuff and some cool tattoos, and you can give him a bazooka for a weapon!
<br>6)Ok this is cool, but make him look like the guy from Hellboy!
<br>7)Hey update me on the sketches you have of this guy as much as you can so I can tell you what else to add or take out because this is my vision and you are just an extension of my hand and not a concept artist!
<br>8)Ok, I like this, now instead of his clothes color, let's make his clothes a different color like the assignment you did last week. It doesn't matter that those colors are rainbow and don't match the theme of a dark risque henchman, I'm the art director!
<br>9) Oh sorry did I say change the color palette? I meant color STYLE, just do the whole thing over in a sketchy style that looks like this!! *pulls out random comic he thinks is cool*
<br>
<br>And so on and so forth...
<br>
<br>This isn't an art director... this is a wide eyed fan boy who has no vision, no direction and will waste the most time he possibly can because he doesn't know what he wants or how to do his job.
<br>
<br>I usually just bypass his rambling and sneakily go straight to the GM with my projects nowadays, that way I get her approval on something and he doesn't go over her head again with changes. I know this isn't a good thing, but considering he is not actually directing and is actually using the project as his own "personal" that's cool! that's my creation! I did that! thing, I think he's exploiting the team, wasting our time, making us do unecessary changes... it's ridiculous...

RizenShine  

Art + Copy = Shit
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