I’ve always been able to show better than I could tell. Every time I had a project in elementary, middle school and even when I could get away with it in high school I would always draw it. One of my personal experiences I can remember was in third grade. My elementary school and the Drug Abuse Resistance Education (D.A.R.E) program had a drug poster contest. The rules were that the class that could come up with the best D.A.R.E poster would have an ice-cream, pizza, and soda party and their poster would be on display at a local grocery store. Since I was known as “the class artist”, my teacher put me in charge of coming up with an idea for the poster. Of course the poster had to have something about drugs, being drug free, and how doing drugs is bad for you and since it was October the class wanted to put a little Halloween influence in the poster as well. By working with the class and the teacher we came up with a poster that infused everything suggested. It had a dark blue background, black crows flying around with cigarettes (the ones flying low to the ground and smashing into things) and some without cigarettes (the ones flying higher in the air), a scarecrow and orange and black lettering across the top. Our class won the poster contest and got to have an ice-cream, pizza, and soda party. I guess you could say that was my first experience at being an Art Director.
To be able to draw, sketch, or paint what you see or imagine I believe sharpens your skills in any career. As a designer/artist I am constantly pushed to see myself and the world around me differently, and to persuade others to see it differently as well. The profession of Advertising Design requires you, to have the desire to connect with people, but it’s also what you as an individual can bring to the profession that sets you apart. These few years at MCAD I have not only been taking ad and design, but I have also taken classes in fine art and illustration. The first reason for this is to become more comfortable with my drawing style and to go further in my founded love for illustration. Secondly, it is so I can take what I’ve learned and done in these classes back to my ad classes. I also feel these classes will help me in my future goal of being an Art Director.
As Art Directors we must be both artists and designers to reach people. I find that we, future Art Directors and even current Art Directors tend to forget that we (at one point) were artist ourselves. By forgetting this we fail to see the value in how a conceptual artist helps to bring a fresh approach to a visual communication and the end result being better work.
Most of my work in Advertising up to this point uses Illustration as the visual component. This comes from a desire to rebel against photography, as well as to develop work that hasn’t been seen, and a scripture in the bible that henders me, but at the same time pushes me, “there is nothing new under the sun” (Ecclesiastes 1:9). Look at photography. How is one photo different from the next except in subject? Now look at illustration. Different approaches taken, different mediums used and you see the artist’s individual statements all within the same subject a lot of the times. There’s nothing wrong with photography, and I understand why clients usually go with what they know and something they can understand right away. But to show that there is something else out there (like illustration) to a client that can get their message out in ways they aren’t considereing is something to fight for.
