Current Issue

"Shoulders To Stand On" - Today's Leaders Talk About The Leaders They Admire and The Work That Inspired Them.

For this feature, Applied Arts approached some of the leading Canadian Creative Directors and asked them three questions about their creative inspiration: what inspired [them] to get into the business? who or what was [their] greatest influence? and what are [they] most proud of? While it came as no surprise that many pointed to pioneers such as Bill Bernbach, Allan Kazmer and Paul Lavoie, the second most popular response was a family member. Alan Madill, co-founder of Good and Ready even sited Mr Dress Up (Ernie Coombs) as having taught him "how to take what's inside my head and express it through art…" demonstrating that grownups can still foster curiosity and child-like imagination. Flip through the pages to discover who nurtured these people's creativity and inspired them along their journeys from artistic children to global creative leaders.

Business

Karen Howe discusses the rise of in-housing and the value that is lost when agencies are cut. Clients are under tremendous pressure to deliver results with smaller budgets and misperceptions about the benefits of agencies abound, justifications to many clients for cutting their agencies. However, as the quality of creative becomes the sacrificial lamb, competition for audience attention is fierce - so good work is needed now more than ever.

One of the greatest values of an agency is that is it not the client. They offer fierce objectivity, priceless learnings from other categories and deep creative expertise. COMPROMISE. Howe proposes to following solution to clients - retain your agency for the heavy-lifting, critical foundational work and pair it with in-housing for your day-to-day needs.

Craft

Creating memorable and effective ads is becoming increasingly challenging when deadlines and budgets are constantly being tightened. So when you think you are backed into a corner due to sold out inventory, no time for production, photographers who can't squeeze you in or you have a minimalist budget, Jane Murray suggests that you consider a headline campaign. They are ubiquitous - you see them on church signs, bumper stickers, Spotify and graphic t-shirts. Clickbait has developed a entire industry riding on the power of the headline. No Name products used their Helvetica Neue 75 bold font, yellow label, and deadpan description of the product inside, and turned it into installation art. If they can find success in the humble headline campaign, can't you?

Creativity

Not everyone is creative. True creatives are a different breed. They are eccentric, out-of-the-box thinkers who live to solve problems and are truly unique in that they can produce results day after day, week after week, year after year, unlike others who may have a great idea or a clever line now or then. Unfortunately, the creative process is at odds with the creative business model as it moves toward finding the quickest solution at the lowest cost with the least amount of risk. Dave Stubbs argues that the creative industry needs to re-discover what it means to be creative and find better ways to value this creative output – it is time for creatives to take back the word "creative" and truly own it.

Pick-up your copy of the Applied Arts Design Awards Annual on newsstands now.