From pencils to pixels – a personal meander through 50 years of creativity

First there were Pencils.

My first introduction to the creative process in 1956 was as a very junior assistant in the art department of a medium-sized agency. My role was to change water jars and sharpen pencils for the rows of head-down artists.

This was the time when layout artists were precisely that, artists capable of empowering the copywriter's ideas with dexterous wrists and their own imaginations. They wielded 2B, 4B and carpenter pencils to slickly render black and white advertisements on white layout paper that, for client presentation, was then affixed to cardboard sheets with spatula-spread glue that was weirdly branded Cow Gum.

The illustrations and typographic elements of the advertisements were flicked in at a speed that challenged the gigabyte computers of today. However, there was no room for error and using an eraser was frowned upon as an unprofessional use of studio equipment. Disposable paper cuffs were handmade and worn to protect shirtsleeves from the graphite before quick drying fixative was applied with a mouth spray.

Rare art

As it would be 1963 before the highly inventive Japanese nation introduced the Pentel Pen to the advertising industry. most artists favoured gauche watercolours and poster paints for colour visuals, while the remainder had a penchant for pastel and conté pencils. Reproduction quality was then at its best at a coarse 65 screen in newspapers and 100 screen in magazines and, to ensure product clarity when so crudely reproduced, scraperboard illustrations were often used in lieu of photographs.

This is now a rare art that requires the skill of a specialised artist who coated hotpress artboard with India ink which, on drying, could be scraped from the surface with various styli to create fine line illustrations. The artists had to visualise in negative in order to create these positive images. Salaries were scaled against these artistic skills and not the ability to come up with imaginative ideas. This is not too dissimilar to how today's computer operators are rated for their speed and manipulative skills using the latest software programmes.

The latter part of the 1960s saw the emergence of a new breed of layout artist who possessed varying degrees of Pentel penmanship. This increased the speed of developing the colour layout tenfold as the skill of felt-tipped rendering in brilliant colours replaced detailed illustrating in watercolours.

Another specialist who now has diminished responsibility in the creative process is the professional typographer. This technical artist took the approved pencil and water-colour layouts plus the final photographic transparencies or prints and converted them, using mathematical slide-rules and type specification books, into a language that only a hot metal typesetter could comprehend. Today, the responsibility of making advertisements easily read and attractive to the eye is allocated to the computer operator who compresses, expands and distorts classic typefaces to squeeze copy into any given area without the physical restrictions imposed by hot metal and wooden blocks.

New position created

It was also during the '60s that a new position was created in the art studio as work methodologies were rapidly changed for the better. The copywriter, who once worked alone on his lofty pinnacle, scattering his ideas upon the pool of lowly visualisers, was rapidly brought down to earth when the team system was created. This involved pairing writer with visualiser in a ‘marriage' that accelerated the advertising industry into a totally new era of creativity. This new team under the guidance of a creative director was an instant success and in many instances these marriages lasted many years and agency moves before ‘divorce' took its toll.

The writer and visualiser now worked as one in the generation of ideas and in the early '70s, as the visualiser was presented with greater responsibility for the final product in terms of directing photography and final illustrative work, his title was altered to that of ‘art director'. His or her formal art skills waned over the years and were of less importance as more and more time was devoted to concept generation.

Then, a new situation arose whereby the visualiser, like the fabled Phoenix, was reincarnated as an assistant to the art director to execute the concepts. This person was able to rise to junior art director and then full art director as a career path. This expansion of the creative team provided a more comprehensive creative service for an allocated portfolio of clients and the group system evolved, becoming specialists in specific product and service categories. During the ‘80s and ‘90s this specialisation increased the creative individual's value to any agency that had similar products and headhunting became the new industry blood sport.

Evolved

Other artists evolved to became part of a normal agency service during the '70s and '80s. These included the dye transfer artist. These were the retouchers and special effects artists of the day who worked with the finest ‘single hair' brushes, photo-dyes and magnifying glasses on enlarged transparencies for days, sometimes weeks, to create memorable images such as the Benson & Hedges ‘gold' and the Perrier ‘Eau' campaigns; legends in their own time. Images of similar complexity can now be executed in a matter of minutes by skilled retouchers using the right soft and hardware.

However, it was during those early and heady years of creative development I learned that the single most important tool employed by those wanting a successful creative career is as vital today as it was a half-century earlier. It is not the Pentel or the Pentium processor but simply a highly active imagination let loose within a laterally thinking mind.

A hundred year history of hot metal linotype was replaced over a mere few years, firstly by filmsetting, rapidly followed by computers that continue to accelerate in speed. Radio commercials that were once produced in auditorium-sized sound studios using 35-piece orchestras and choirs are now created in rooms that are the size of, and look like, a NASA shuttle cockpit.

Recordings have changed from mono to stereo to quad as radio improved its act and the finest commercial film editors who used 35mm film blocks, naked razor blades and adhesive tape to create commercial masterpieces now push buttons but despite all these mind-expanding advances over half a century, it is still very clear that it will always be the Great Idea that creates successful advertising and not the tools.

Then there were Pixels

This brings me to contemporary times and the core reason for this brief walk down memory lane. I have observed over the last decade that unoriginal ideas can be, and have been compensated for by an increased dependency on the omnipresent computer. It can easily output highly attractive material in a matter of minutes but lacks the ability to produce effective advertising without brilliant input.

This shortcoming has been insidiously undermining the overall image of the industry.

It appears that agencies are now frequently viewed by short-sighted clients as service providers who can be horse-traded and not as a business partners. There is very little remaining of the artistic mystique that once was a magnetic force attracting the most creative minds from art and business colleges. The formidable emptiness of the white sheet of paper that once challenged thousands of brilliant writers and artists over the years has all but disappeared.

Words have been relegated to a role of lesser importance in the communication compared to the visual and many art directors and graphic designers resort to a key word or phrase from the creative brief to summon thousands of photographs from the ether to find a quick creative solution. Valuable creative time is commonly used to review photographer's ideas on the Internet as a ready-made solution, rather than spending the time searching for tailor-made answers within themselves and resorting to scribbles on a piece of paper to communicate that moment of brilliance.

Tighter deadlines

The need for instant ideas is undoubtedly due to how deadlines have become tighter and tighter as clients, exposed by agencies to the speed of the computer used on their work, incorrectly associate that speed with the delivery of ideas from the human mind.

Computers have been the advertising industry's revolution in execution but the basic thinking that creates meaningful selling ideas have only evolved at the speed of each emerging generation and their advertising literacy.

Many may object to this sweeping overview and insist that filmmaking and audio technology has revolutionised television commercials concepts beyond imagination. My simplistic response is that high production values may deliver a brilliant execution but never a brilliant commercial if the idea weren't brilliant in the first place.

Should we accuse ourselves of using highly expensive special effects in print and film to camouflage inadequate thinking? Thankfully we can answer that by pointing at the great creativity that still rises to the surface in the awards annuals and in highly coveted portfolios that are clearly the result of an intense personal passion and team brainstorming, sans computer.

One common purpose

Since the dawn of the advertising industry great concepts have come from the meeting of minds that have had but one common purpose, to exceed the norm and deliver the abnormal. This is the true evolution of the industry which is very evident in those rare moments of brilliant insight when two or more creative people gather to strike a spark that will ignite the flame of fame. The creative world has always been the breeding ground of egoists and that scribbled headline or crude sketch on a restaurant serviette may result in instant recognition. This is a goal more desirable than a massive salary increase to a dedicated creative who knows instinctively that award-winning originality cannot be found in a dependency on stock library pictures.

Over the more recent years I have seen a completely new industry emerging that is every much as dynamic as the one I knew back in the1980s. Where once Corel discs acted as the main source of inspiration for untrained studio visualisers, now there are smaller, regional agencies with self-motivated copywriters and art directors that have acquired the ability to out-think and challenge multi-national agencies with their creative product. These agencies, drawing on their wealth of regional experience are a clear example that this rapid evolution of creativity into the e-age is a positive step forward.

However, like any other industry advertising cannot possibly survive without pro-active education programmes and these must remain the responsibility of every experienced adman and affiliated organisation, such as the IAA. The creative solution that is able to adjust to motivate each new market as it emerges can only be nurtured by knowledge gained from experience. As everyone in the industry is well aware, the prime objective of any creative idea is to motivate by clearly communicating the main product or service benefit in an original and relevantly visible style that is accurately targeted.

Advice

To achieve this, it is my advice to all creative people, whether copy or art disciplined, to review the growth of creativity over the past quarter century; to study the consumer-driven copy and visual styles that have come and gone and the development of marketing ideas, including motivational research, that lead to brand and product positioning in the market and the greatest marketing tool of the 1970s, the Unique Selling Proposition. Although rarely applied now due to the ever increasing number of parity products the USP still remains a milestone in the development of great creativity.

Whenever seeking inspiration I always recall the history making headlines written by two great doyens of creativity, Bill Bernbach and David Ogilvy. The first for Volkswagen stimulated the reader's imagination with ‘How does the snow-plough man get to the snow-plough?' Think about that for a few seconds. The other for Rolls Royce underlined superlative engineering with ‘At 60mph the loudest noise comes from the electric clock'.

These are clear demonstrations of a copywriter's skill in being able to manipulate the target market thought processes and elicit a precise response that is favourable to the brand. Both met identified yet unspoken needs in a conversational tone of voice that the target market instinctively related to.

Real answer

On studying these works and listening to Bill Bernbach rationalise his thinking I finally understood that the real answer to creating great advertising is to fully understand two things, to whom you are talking and what motivates that person.

Every creative person should focus on these aspects whenever confronted with a new brief and that intimidating white sheet of paper. Then, pick up a pencil, create and leave the pixels ‘til later.