Listening to Mike Meiré talk last night at the Istituto Marangoni was both wildly entertaining and strangely down to earth. It covered (almost) everything an art director deals with. To hear someone who operates in that sphere of both client and creative say things that you and your colleagues have said or – more regrettably – should of said countless times was quite inspiring:
– You have to be involved from the start and educate the client or they will just give you what they have.
– There is an economy of attention.
– Covers like posters.
– Forget the product get into the experience (echoing Andy Budd of Clearleft’s point from a couple weeks ago: “The content is no longer the product – you are selling the experience”).
He also had some insightful descriptions of what drives some of his larger projects such as “The Farm Project”:
– The brand develops it’s own content.
– “This is cool because it’s independent” doesn’t work any more. Commercial cannot progress without creative work.
I loved one particular solution that I should of brought to clients in the past but never thought of: As part of his redesign of newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung he ran workshops with the staff about to how to edit photographs. Photography usage for some products has totally fallen apart and it is such a difficult issue to address within any existing institute.
SImon Esterson had the only question – and possibly the only question worth asking: “Do you ever get told no?”. The answer, ultimately, was quite reassuring: Yes.
(Correction – I quizzed Simon on it and he more accurately informs me: “In fact I asked something like ‘Do people ever say no to you and do you say no to people’. Mike said he said no to Deutsche Bank because he didn’t have confidence in the people he would be dealing with”. I think I had attention an deficit by then).
ideas/forms/functions 