Normal 0 Is your typical day spent like this?
· Struggling to find time and mental space for creative work
· Priorities swamped by day-to-day tasks
· Constant interruptions breaking their creative focus
· Overflowing e-mail inboxes
· Demanding clients expecting instant responses
· Important commitments being lost or forgotten
· Information overload and digital distractions
· Having to deliver more with fewer resources
· Being ‘busy’ instead of creative and effective
If so, your creativity is likely blocked and you may find help to these daily challenges from creative coach and poet Mark McGuinness, who pens the blog Wishful Thinking. Many of Mark’s suggestions for working in creative fields can be found on his blog, or in his ebooks.
His popular Time Management for Creative People has been downloaded more than 45,000 times -- you can get it for free here.
Upcoming ebook from the author is a DIY guide called How to Motivate Creative People, based on his thoughts in this blog post.
He’s also got a seminar in the works based on Time Management for Creative People and is a co-founder of Lateral Action.
Feeling creatively motivated for work,
-Lisa
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As the months of this year march onward toward their inevitable annual close I’ve had the glamorous artwork of an Erté calendar to guide me through the year.
Born Romain de Tirtoff in 1892, this illustrator adopted the artist name Erté to avoid retribution from his family who would have preferred that he join the Navy. Instead he went on to define art deco style. His images graced the pages of fashion magazines and his set designs showcased in theatre and film including the Ziegfeld Follies of 1923, La Bohéme and Ben Hur.
Gazing upon Erté’s artworks each month makes me wonder why today’s commercial world can’t seem to foster similar artistic credibility in similar tradition to what Erté has produced, and let grow our own period artists. What I see too often is ad firms ripping off, or buying into popular art trends to try and sell something. Often you’ll find a Banksy-style ad selling alcohol, music or television shows. In another example, the current Vauxhall car ads copy the concept of Ugly Dolls to produce sassy characters to run in their ad campaign.
Sometimes ads are inspired by artists independently – in the recent political campaign example, Barack Obama was the lucky recipient of a Shepard Fairey iconic image that added to him winning respect among young people for his powerful election win.
It isn’t like there aren’t talented artists and designers working within the commercial world who can provide inspiration and originality, in fact Banksy complains that advertising is leeching talent from the art world:
“The thing I hate most about advertising is that it attracts all the bright, creative and ambitious people, leaving us mainly with the slow and self-obsessed to become our artists. Modern art is a disaster area. Never in the field of human history has so much been used by so many to say so little.” –Banksy
I’m not opposed to the ad world recruiting artists for campaigns, although the artist themselves, like Fairey, have had to come to grips with the possibility that their underground images may be tarnished. And by the way, the New York City street artist James De LaVega is for hire.
Cheers to Absolut who recruit artists to craft the company’s collectible ads, often doing a series of images with a single artist. If any ad can immortalize recent decades artistically it is likely to be this vodka maker. I celebrate the originality produced with the Absolut campaigns and would like to see more company’s support art in similar fashion by having guest artists develop a campaign or fostering new talent from within the ranks.
Hopefully clients will appreciate something original that is proposed, and allow creative talent to shine through rather than go for copy cat campaigns. If they do support new ideas, then from the commercial world might come along the next Andy Warhol, Banksy, Fairey or my own beloved Erté.
Wondering where this generation’s Erté is,
PS: Comments as to who might be the commercial world’s next Erté are welcome.
Normal 0 Last night I was among millions of fans of Antiques Roadshow who waited to find out what object could possibly fetch £1 million in valuations. I had images of a fantastic story of discovery that had the owner stumble upon a treasure at a car boot sale or dust off an old family heirloom to bring along and have one of the experts tell them of its stunning value. Instead, viewers were greeted to an object of art by Anthony Gormley, the marquette for the final version of his sculpture Angel of the North. Brought in by the Gateshead Council, it made for less fun than when you see a Granny exclaim excitement over her sudden found wealth. Antiques Roadshow quoted the Anthony Gormley piece at £1 million and now the Gateshead Council has the masterpiece to caretake, or sell to raise money for fixing potholes or other projects. But is it truly an antique? According to the definition of antique, it applies to objects 50-100 years old. In the case of the Anthony Gormley piece, the Angel of the North sculpture was erected in 1998, making the marquette less than 20-years-old. Has Antiques Roadshow lost the plot? The marquette is something more likely to be found at Freeze Art Fair or Tate Modern, but not on Antiques Roadshow. The value of the piece is the highest ever made for an object on the show. Evaluating a piece less than 20 years old and calling it an antique seems like false advertising to viewers. Bring back the traditional format and next week lets see Antiques Roadshow get back to rocking the worlds of treasure hunters with true antiquities. Collecting all kinds of tat for future Antique Roadshow valuation,-Lisa
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Normal 0 As the dust settles inside the BBC over Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross’s prank call gone wrong to Andrew Sachs, it seems the question of tastelessness is holding centre stage in a debate about what’s funny and what’s not.
The British public registered opinion quickly and furiously after learning that Brand and Ross phoned up the treasured actor and left a message informing him that Brand had sexual relations with his granddaughter. Never mind that no one would have paid much attention to the incident if it hadn’t made headlines, prompting thousands to complain.
Behind it all, I can’t help but wonder if the bad taste incident can be chalked up to not just a misjudgement on Brand and Ross’s part, but a prevailing culture of meanness that washes over entertainment. Were Ross and Brand the victims of a culture that makes cruelty to others humorous?
Meanness prevails in countless programming from the contestants on The Weakest Link to X Factor to the Dragon’s Den. Even cooking shows seem to get popular when the celebrity chef abuses participants with profanity. If you were surrounded by an entertainment culture that applauds cruelty to others, wouldn’t it just come natural to pick on someone during a prank call to amuse your audience?
As Ross remains in self-exile waiting out his sentence to remain off-air, mulling over and over his mistake, he is perhaps also contemplating the nature vs. nurture argument to make sense of what and why he did it. Joking at the expense of others feelings is nothing new in comedy and Brand and Ross are hardly alone among they’re peers who make good livings off of cruelty. Here are three that deserve top awards for leading the culture of meanness:
Mean – Sir Alan Sugar
Meaner – Gordon Ramsay
Meanest – Simon Cowell
Let’s face it folks the meaner people get to each other the more the ratings go up, so rather than blaming Brand and Ross as punishable bad boys, maybe we should all take a look in the mirror and point a finger right back at ourselves. If we don’t want to see mean entertainment then speak up about programming and not just one incident among a sea of insensitivity.
Beware the consequences of unleashing complaints though, as you might find yourself in a climate of censorship similar to what happened in America following Janet Jackson’s wardrobe malfunction during the Super Bowl. There is a fine line between clamping down on entertainment for taste’s sake and stepping all over the right to free expression.
Brand and Ross have gotten the point, they’ve admitted and apologized for the mistake, let them back to do their jobs. If you want to clean up the airwaves then simply turn off a show if you don’t like it.
Missing Jonathan Ross,
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The tune of this classic gospel song is playing again and again in my head today.
It is a joyous day to have witnessed history being made with Barack Obama's election in America.
Oh happy day,
Lisa Devaney
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Member since: 14 Jun 2008
Last login: 04 Nov 2009
Total Posts: 94
