IF IT’S NOT GREAT, DON’T BOTHER
By Odysseus Miltiadous
During this past week, I and a few of my fellow peers were lucky enough to have a workshop on art direction by the advertising industry legend and SCA mentor Alexandra Taylor. Within this SCAB, I would like to share some of the stand out lessons I took away from the day:
3 WORDS MAX
I learnt that while creating a poster, you should aim to have no more than 3 words on the design. There are of course exceptions to this. However, I found it super insightful to have this, as a rule, to keep in mind, since it would require you to be able to boil down the essence of what you want to say and execute it perfectly.
IF THE AD ISN’T GREAT, DON’T BOTHER ART DIRECTING IT
Get that concept right before you ever get to the stage of art directing the ad. Seems obvious, doesn’t it? Well clearly not for me as I’m definitely guilty of doing this in the past. However, moving forward and making sure to stick to this rule, I will hopefully be able to elevate the quality of my work massively.
GIVE IT REASON
When designing an ad, you must make sure you have a reason for all of your design decisions. Down to the pixel, you should have a reason for why your ad looks the way it does. Something looking good isn’t going to cut it.
EMBRACE YOUR ACCIDENTS
Think of it as being the Art Directors equivalent to a gift from God. I can’t always promise that each accident is going to produce a D&AD pencil worthy campaign, but looking at our design accidents and how they could be used to produce fresh, original work is something we should be looking to adopt in our practice.
BE OBSESSED
To be great ourselves we need to be obsessed with what the best in our industry is producing. This isn’t so we can copy their work and produced work of a similar nature and standard. But instead, do the opposite and create new and innovative work that hasn’t been seen before. In a similar light, doing what everyone else is doing won’t get us noticed.
LOGO PLACEMENT
My Last takeaway is a simple one. Never place the logo in the bottom right hand corner of the ad.
