Well, I found one. In an article I read a few months ago, Kohi Vinh brought to the foreground the alarmingly BAD illustration and exposure artists are getting online. While I could have written a post agreeing with his post… I wanted to do one better.
Below is a narrative of the post – Kohi’s article driven down to its core – an automated, web-static dramatization of what’s wrong with online illustration (or the lack thereof).
Video… Feed readers may need to click through to the post to view the video properly.
I know a lot of my readers are artists, or used to be and now find themselves in “The Digital Wonderland.” What say you? Is this digital age making it harder for Illustrators and artists of all kinds to make a living at their chosen trade, or are we just a bunch of crybabies?
Salon.com, that ubiquitous source of blogging love that we all have grown just a little bored with recently, spouted a surprisingly great post today.
image credit: Salon.com / Timothy Goodman
Timothy Goodman, new Salon author, reflects on how social media has changed the direction in which branding professionals like me and others aim when it comes to effectively communicating to a client’s target audience. It’s no longer the Don Draper“Tell ‘em and they’ll believe it – ’cause it’s F*&n’ TV, damn-it…” generation. Social media has provided an open source sensibility to marketing and communications and Goodman brings that point to clarity very eloquently in, “How do we brand our evolving selves?” Goodman describes the Jungian classification of “Archetypal Character Traits” that they could then classify brands into and beautifully ties it into one of my favorite movies:
It makes me think about “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” when Mr. Edward Rooney’s secretary, Grace, speaks about Ferris: “Oh, he’s very popular, Ed. The sportos, the motorheads, geeks, sluts, bloods, wasteoids, dweebies, dickheads — they all adore him. They think he’s a righteous dude.” And this is exactly the role social media outlets are playing. These brands don’t have to be archetypal anymore, they just have to gainfully house all archetypes.
Integrating Carl Jung into my chosen career certainly gives it a little “Cerebral Credibility”
It (social media) has turned the tables on the “brand warriors” (not you Mark) out there. We, as advertisers and communications specialists, have a responsibility to develop a brand for, in and around an ever-evolving target audience. It’s no longer a push marketing model. It CAN’T be a react marketing model either.
Unfortunately, I left my clairvoyance license in a bar somewhere in 1992. I wonder if that would be doing me (or anyone else) any good today?
Thanks to Cathy J. Prince (site coming soon) for pointing out the post, and thanks to Timothy Goodman for reminding us all what the task at hand is. Keep the needle moving and we’ll all be headed in the right direction… until they change their minds.
Feel that? It’s your life slipping away. Yep. Every second of every minute that you spend reading this post, you’re slowly dying. Breath by breath, each heartbeat with each syllable, you creep closer to the end.
oooooooooh….
Pretty ominous, huh? So, why the dark perspective? Well, this is what got me writing tonight. It’s what motivated me to pick one more juicy word from my mental nostril just to see what it looked like.
In other words, I had writer’s block.
It kills me every Wednesday night. While I’ve known all week that I have a personal deadline set to post every Thursday morning; I wait until Wednesday night (or later) to actually start writing. I take notes, jot ideas, scribble and doodle all week, but when it comes to Wednesday, I open TextEdit and just sit.
CRAP…
Suddenly, tonight, a voice in my head said “What the hell are you doing? Just start writing, you moron!” So I did. I wrote, “You’re going to die anyway.” and POW, the words started rolling.
Many (many) moons ago, I wrote a post about having writer’s block. More to the point, I wrote about the keys to getting the writing wheels out of neutral and making a connection with my readers. For me, it starts with a title. It can be anything – like free association. Eventually the words and images start connecting in my brain and the solution reveals itself.
I wrote:
“… All I want is a headline – a short sentence that would communicate something about YOU or about something you want to discuss… Below are a few examples…
‘Without feathers, I’d never…’
‘But I can’t feed my kids on your wisdom’
‘Forget the President, I want to eat Jell-O’
‘The importance of Balsa wood and Miller Lite.’
‘It’s not Rocky Science’
And so on… and so on…”
Unfortunately, the response was less than stellar… maybe because I’d only just begun blogging and Drew McLellan was the only one that ever read my posts? Who knows? But he was gracious enough to leave me a comment.And I dropped the ball…(sorry Drew)
So let’s try it again.
Send ‘em in. Post your headline and your name / contact info in the comments section below. Once I have enough (5-7 or more…) I’ll hold a contest to see who’s headline will be the start to a future blog post – AND THEY’LL BE VOTED ON BY YOU!
Maybe we’ll make a connection and create something the whole world will love. Maybe we won’t and it will be another piece of gravel on the shoulder of the information super highway. If anything, it will be a way for me to get to know some of you.
Hell, we’re all going to die, eventually. We might as well have fun while we’re here. I look forward to reading your headlines…
Keep Cooking (free-wheeling, fun ideas…)
Andrew B. Clark
The Brand Chef
