Ira Glass on the Creative Process

I know these kinetic type treatments are a tired execution. But Ira Glass's wisdom is truthful and timeless. Enjoy.



(If you don't know who Ira Glass is, you are missing the best thing on public radio.)

Non-Ads You Will Have to Work On

Here’s a secret you won’t learn in portfolio school:

Not everything your boss will ask you to work on will be ads. You will also have to write and/or art direct the following:

• Mood boards
• Mood videos
• Campaign set-ups (paragraph-length explanations of why the agency pursued the campaign it's presenting
• Web copy (not the exciting stuff - the gunk on the side bars)
• Explanations of how an ambient media or interactive piece will work
• Brochures and leaflets
• PowerPoint slides for your CEO (I wish this were a joke or a one-time experience)
• Award show entry forms
• Award show entry videos
• Agency brand videos
• Emails to client/agency audiences
• Treatments to sell your work to directors
• Casting specs
• Direction for other vendors: editors, music people, SFX (especially when working remotely to edit, or do music etc...more about being crystal clear than crafting it, but important nonetheless)
• Pitch leave-behinds
• Manifestos

You will never practice crafting this stuff in portfolio school. Nor should you. But even the most creative shops and the most creative creatives have these items cross their desk.

But there's a very simple way to make this less of a headache: Know how to write. Be able to art direct in your sleep. Know your craft and this stuff becomes easy.

The more you practice your craft the easier it will be to get this stuff off of your desk, so you can focus that talent on opportunities.

I Wish I'd Known

"If you're interning at an agency: get involved, rub elbows and bend over backwards with a smile. You might be calling these people when you need a job."

What is this?

I Wish I'd Known

"Basically, the biggest problem I struggled with was the loss of control. In ad school, you choose the idea you work on. You write it, you design it. You make it work. In an agency, you have none of this control. Even if it's your idea, and you were concepting on it from the beginning. The idea's on a path, and no matter how hard you struggle or push, the idea will go where it's going. So just relax and have faith in the people above you."
-copywriter, San Francisco

What is this?

I Wish I'd Known

"I guess I would have liked for someone to tell me to take up a hobby after I graduate. Putting a book together for 10 hours a day, seven days a week, 90 days in a row is the easy part. You're brain is occupied. It's when you have nothing to do but wait on replies from emails and phone calls that is the hard part. An hour goes by infinitely slower for the unemployed compared to those with jobs. Be patient. Get used to it. Take up knitting. Or chess."
-copywriter, San Francisco

What is this?

I Wish I'd Known

For the first couple years after I graduated from ad school and had been working, whenever my classmates and I would get together, the conversation would eventually turn to how disillusioned we were with the advertising industry. "God, if only someone had told us there'd be clients!" "Why did they make us think we'd be able to do anything we put our mind to?" "What? There are budgets?" "You want your logo on this? That's not cool."

It was a pretty common theme--we weren't in ad school anymore. But hey, we were getting paid. We were (some of us) getting sleep. And as we talked, we began to realize it was the same pretty much everywhere. Clients, politics, the FCC. Meetings, real briefs, real budgets.

A couple weeks ago, I sent an email out to my former student email list--a few years' worth of students who have since graduated ad school. I asked them to answer one simple question: "WHAT DO YOU WISH SOMEONE HAD TOLD YOU IN AD SCHOOL?"

I plan to do a series of posts with these anonymous bits of wisdom, passed down from those who have learned. And so, to kick it off:

"Think hard about your own definition of Success and make sure it really fits you. Is it winning pencils? Working from your laptop on a Thai beach? Using your skills to empower others? Armani suits? Whatever it is, fine. Just make sure you know what you are working towards."