SCABs

SCAB 7½ : Double Whammy – By @xladxrolov

Vlad Frolov

By Vlad Frolov

 

SCAB 7½ : Double Whammy

Everything Solutions

 

2016 was one messed up year. Internet sensation Annoying Orange is president. Everyone good is dead. UK is…whatever happened there. iPhones don’t have a headphone jack anymore. We have a lot of problems to deal with.

 

As one of my three things to do this holiday break, I’ve decided I’ll make a list of problems and potential solutions, I’ll write one of those down every day for 25 days, and although I haven’t finished yet, I’m already finding it incredibly useful.

 

I found that in a way, solutions interact with the scamp-aigns (weeey!) task. If you have a problem solution relevant to a brand, and you attach that brand to it, the two might start interacting to create a strong piece of communication, one mutating along with the other.

 

So maybe we should all have drawers full of solutions, not just “ideas”?

 

I’ve long been of the opinion that brands should use their money and influence to improve our world by solving our problems, however trivial. That way their advertising would be done for them because they earned it. You just need to ensure the solution sparks with the brand to make killer communication. Don’t forget about the proposition!

 

This will be something I’ll be trying this coming term.

 

***

 

Master of None

 

This one’s about my passion project.

 

It took me some time to realise that a part of me is dead. I don’t even know what I am. Which is why I had no clue what to for my passion project. It was a turbulent few hours, 1 AM to 5 AM. I wrote things down and made graphs, tables and pie charts. Nothing like a nice graphic representation to tell you what your life’s purpose is, right? So I made a timeline of the sort of stuff I used to do creatively and I realised that I started writing at the age of 6, as soon as I was able to write. I read constantly and my spelling was on point. It started to become my passion, to conjure up images of things I had in my head using only words. It’s like code, words are pretty universal. You can describe something and people will have completely different, personalised images of what you’re describing in their minds. It’s how I work even as an art director – by tweaking words, changing meanings of phrases, trying to get it all to fit as nicely and succinctly as possible so the message is clear. I stopped writing creatively in around 2010 – as much as I used to, anyway. I no longer did it as regularly, I no longer did it every day. I’d write something in the Notes app on my phone and pretty much forget about it. I’d write poetry and go to Poetry Slam at my school, which was the extent of my writing at the time. When I went to uni, all of that was abandoned entirely and all I was producing was the occasional psychology essay. Only now have I started to realise, that was just as crucial to my writing as picking up a notebook, age 6, to write my first story. I learnt to write succinctly, to use different words to change meaning, to have it all fit nicely in a word limit. To have it make sense to not just me but an audience (albeit one of a stressed out lecturer).

 

Thanks for your life story, Vlad.

 

But what about my other creative outputs? Why do I think I’m an art director? Where does this fit onto my creative timeline? As much as I enjoy words, I also find myself in a flow state when I’m creating feeling with simple layouts, textures and colours. Or to put it short, I still don’t know what the fuck I’m doing when I’m in my art director mode.

 

But back to my passion project: what do I do?

 

I am going to finish The Yellow Wallpaper, a play script I have been writing for about a year now. I’m 70-odd pages in, so I’ve got about 20 pages to go to make it into a full-length play. I have set myself the deadline of 9th of January, the day before we’re all back in the studio. After that, I’ve got an idea for a script based on various Russian funeral rites. Then there’s my MA dissertation coming up, which for now I am doing on the broad subject of internet privacy and surveillance. I am looking forward to this year.

 

But equally, I have met two of my friends back home, Claire and Tanya. We got to talking and we’re all in similar situations with regards to creativity. Meaning we’re not really doing anything. So Claire and I, and Tanya and I, have made promises to each other. I will send Claire, and she will send me, an A3 artwork every month before the month is over. With Tanya, we promised each other to talk every Tuesday, and we are to write a song from scratch, music and all, before each month is over.

 

Take *that*, creativity timeline.

 

Anyway, I’m not sure if anyone’s even going to read this, leave alone read it this far, but this really helped me clear some things in my head. I’m excited for 2017 and now I appear to have some passion. I will now be interesting to talk to. All because I cleared some shit up and made it succinct.

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