the power to affect people

sample student works (from 2001)

just came from the art directors club. first day of the saturday career workshops, a series of 5 workshops led by professional visual artists offered to selected high school juniors from new york. it was a great enriching experience.

today's workshop was led by diana laguardia, the (on-sabbatical) art director of conde nast magazines for house&garden, gourmet and traveler. she shared her background, the many jobs she has held, her portfolio, and led the group for the day's project—making your own unique magazine cover from magazine cutouts and premade mastheads. found myself walking around the different tables, looking to assist but eventually found myself in one of the all-girls tables coz one of them needed help. angelica had a little bit of a problem—she was afraid her idea might be offensive to others. i asked her what it was. and she said she wanted to show an image of the equation "dog + lipstick = serena williams" as a reaction to how society (and fashion magazines) have these typecast definitions of beauty. i gave her the quick pep talk on how it's her magazine and she's free to put whatever she wants, and how it's important to voice out ones thoughts especially in our current society where everything seems to be on the "safe" side (not sure where i found those words but i found myself listening to my own sermon so that's good).

savvyana at first had no clue as to what cover she wanted to do. asked her what her interests were. and she said aside from art, she has a passion for writing and is sort of torn between the 2. gave her a short story on how ad agencies work: take an ad, 2 people are usually behind it: an art director takes care of the visual, and a copywriter takes care of the words BUT those 2 jobs actually overlap. an idea needs shape and words. and a passion for both is a great combination. she ended up making a magazine cover of a woman's face with reality written on top of it and all sorts of sentences and words scattered to fill up the white space. she was very proud of her work. in a way, i was too.

design time was up. the students posted all their works. amazing how creative they were but what was more striking was the amount of social relevance most of them had. most memorable was this girl who did a magazine called truth. on top of it was in image of a man whose back is turned away. below, an image of a monkey equated to a poverty-stricken kid. she explains her work, "it's a magazine about truth and how we can't turn our backs on the amount of poverty there is in the world." goosebumps all over the place. i felt deeply honored to be a part of such a room of 42 great young, fresh, honest, inspired talents. and all the more excited for giving my own mini-presentation to them on advertising in a few weeks. share more of my own thoughts (and more importantly, hear more of theirs).

in the middle of doing the project, i overheard savvyanna tell her friends, "i wish we had this [program] at school." i wish so too. the world needs to give more of these kids the opportunity to pursue a career in the arts and the opportunity to affect more people with the power of their images, words and thoughts.

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so-so filipino ad running @ current ADC exhibit

coincidentally, an exhibit is currently running at the art directors club for public service ads from all over the world. the ad for women's rights from the philippines was ok (could have been better art directed). but it is amazing how much great work is out there. ads standing up for various causes—from the environment to social equality, from aids awareness to use of free range chicken. perhaps, some of those are scam ads (advertising term for ads made to fish for awards) BUT once again the power to affect people is a common denominator to all ads. the ability to make people think or make people act (or even both) ties all the featured ads.

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i had my "im very happy with what i do for i feel this is what im meant to do (for now)" crystal moment at work yesterday. i was in an internal meeting and we were discussing the 60 seconder tv ad concepts for an upcoming depression awareness campaign. angela and zeke, one of the other teams, were presenting one of their story boards and julian (the creative director) sort of had "issues" with how the lead character, a depressed mother, had to throw his current medication down the drain. back and forth on why it's important to be there. back and forth, back and forth on why it shouldn't be there. then all of a sudden, angela, usually quirky and funny in her comments, commented, "that's how my mom was for three months. she was seriously depressed and was doubting whether her meds was really working. it was like that for three months and thankfully my grandmother realized that she needed to be talked to..." moment of silence after. in that second of silence, the thought that this is what im meant to do and that what i do is important was crystal. sure, it's not the sexy advertising im used to, having worked on nike, ibm, sprite. sure, there's a bit more of a challenge to produce award-winning work with all the fda restrictions on what can be said and done (but i have a strong feeling the award is just waiting to happen really soon). but in angela's few sentences, i felt something which working on sprite, nike, ibm or winning any advertising award never was able to give—a certain level of must-ness. a certain feeling of what i do is important coz it has the power to affect peoples' lives and of those surrounding them.

(the concepts earle and i came up with were very well received. was happy to know that what we thought good, the others thought good too. im just hoping we do end up doing post-production in europe though. or anywhere not new york. i need a free trip to elsewhere.)