AIGA’s conference for motion graphics, entitled “MOVE—Stories in Motion”, was thought-provoking in unexpected ways. The choice of speakers and the way they were juxtaposed revealed the intricate psychology of our industry. I was sitting in one of the side balconies of the auditorium. Looking over the entire crowd from a distance enhanced the feeling of being an observer of this community.
The first day of the two-day conference was rather painful. Many of the presenters were ill prepared. As my friend pointed out to me, they were purposefully so. My interpretation is as follows. They belong to what I call “the cult of cool.” They would not take the risk of being sincere and failing because it is much safer to act like they don’t care and fail. As an audience, this is a painful and frustrating thing to sit through for hours, and ultimately insulting since we paid for it. Granted, not all talented graphic designers are good speakers nor are good at explaining what they do, but if that is the case, the least they could do is to prepare for it by writing down what they want to say beforehand. Naturally, they would not look “cool” on stage reading from a script, but at least they would not waste people’s time, and the audience would see that they are being sincere by doing the best they can. If they truly did not care, they should not accept the assignment.
This type of attitude is ubiquitous in our industry, especially among young designers, and more specifically in broadcast design which is itself a young (and in many ways immature) industry. On the one hand, young broadcast designers spend enormous time and energy into creating something that would be noticed, but on the other, when the time comes to receive recognition for what they have done, they act like they don’t care. They love to be recognized, but they hate to admit it. Most of us designers are guilty of this hypocrisy and pretense; it is a phase most of us go through in our twenties. I am no exception.
The whole music video industry is founded on this premise. Twenty-somethings have an inherent need to be noticed and make their marks in society. The older people who run the record labels are aware of this and take advantage of their insecurity. The labels’ need to promote something cheaply and young designers’ need to be noticed at any cost is a perfect symbiotic relationship. Among the presenters who belong to the cult of cool, music videos were their most proud accomplishments. They all admitted that there was little or no money in those projects.
The afternoon session of the next day was a stark contrast to what preceded it. The fine artist Golan Levin presented his experimental audio-visual work. He creates moving imagery using only algorithmic processes of his own, no pre-existing artwork. It is equivalent to creating your own versions of Photoshop and After Effects. The intelligence, the sincerity, and the artistic substance of his work were undeniably clear to everyone. There were a lot of hands clapping during the presentation, and at the end of his presentation, he received the biggest applaud by far. What won the audience over, I believe, was the fact that his work looked nothing like anything anyone has done in the broadcast design business. From the perspective of someone who struggles daily to come up with something even slightly new and different, this is an incredible feat. We realized how much we are limited by the tools we use.
Also, what probably moved a lot of people besides me was Levin’s courage to pursue something that may never lead to money. In our business, many of us do take a lot of risks, but we do so with the hope that we become financially successful someday. Even those who claim that they don’t care about money would have to admit to the degree to which they do care about money when they see someone like Golan Levin. In other words, he represented someone we could be if we truly did not care about money, instead of being, for instance, a mere tool for the record company executives.
After Levin, we watched the films of Oskar Fischinger who was pursuing something similar to Levin several decades ago. Before they rolled the video, the host Peter Hall explained the difficult circumstances in which Fischinger created these films. Again we were reminded of what it means to truly take risks for the sake of art. Fischinger and Levin had a humbling effect on the entire audience, which was confirmed by Paul Matthaeus of Digital Kitchen, the last presenter of the conference. The opening remark to his speech was, “Bad news. I’m not as smart as Golan Levin.”
After the Fischinger films, we had Geordie Stephens from Crispin Porter & Bogusky, an advertising agency known for their creative thinking. This presentation highlighted the peculiar group mentality of so-called “creative business.” To the audience, Crispin Porter & Bogusky represented a group to which all of us want to belong. Regardless of whether you actually felt that or not, it was implied not only by the content of his presentation, but also by the choice of the speaker itself.
Stephens began his presentation with a story of how he ended up at his current job. He depicted the advertising people in general to be stupid. He knew that there had to be a place where truly intelligent people worked together. The answer obviously was Crispin Porter & Bogusky. The unspoken message here is: “I know you want to be part of us. If not, I’ll make you want to.” It wasn’t just Stephens who played with this high-school psychology; most presenters representing their groups did the same, except perhaps Paul Matthaeus of Digital Kitchen who clearly explained the different positioning his company took, as opposed to simply presenting themselves as someone different because they are better than others. Stephens even had to rub it in that his company didn’t need to do much pitch work anymore because their clients just come to them, crying for help.
In our business we see many people play with this group psychology. Many designers would feel naked if they were stripped of their association with a group or a company. There is a famous story of Attik, who used to be a big player in broadcast design, where they had all of their employees wear the same slick clothing at a BDA conference. The hidden motive behind it was to make people feel jealous of them being part of Attik. Now that Attik is no longer a player, it seems like a joke, and everyone laughs about it.
Many people in so-called creative business are motivated by this type of group psychology. They either want to belong to a prestigious group, or want to start one of their own. The latter being the dream scenario for most. Having others want to belong to their group, becomes the ultimate reward and satisfaction for them. The self-congratulatory books by Pentagram, for instance, are physical evidence of it.
When you are motivated by something as superficial as this, hypocrisy becomes evident in one form or another. Crispin Porter & Bogusky proudly presented their work for Truth where they accused tobacco companies for killing thousands of people a day. But it was followed by their campaign for Burger King. They are helping a company that produces products that actually kill more people by making them overweight and obese, than smoking does. So much for standing on a higher moral ground. I felt like making a commercial where a team of people unload thousands of oversized body bags in front of Crispin Porter & Bogusky. Personally I don’t believe in blaming corporations for this type of issues (I advocate individuals to take their own responsibilities for their own actions, and encourage young people to do so, instead of teaching them that it’s OK to squarely blame their own misjudgments on corporations.), but the hypocrisy of the Truth spot bothered me deeply. I should also mention that Stephens talked proudly about how they helped boost sales for Budweiser.
I am glad that the conference ended with Paul Matthaeus of Digital Kitchen. As noted by his humility of his opening statement, he explained matter-of-factly what his company does creatively as well as business-wise. It was sincere and informative. After all, what we do is business. It is when we pretend as though it is something beyond that we start to become hypocritical and pretentious, and we end up doing things that are ultimately irrelevant. This is the greatest thing I learned from the whole conference. It allowed me to see our industry for what it is. The choice of speakers, its unexpected variety, allowed me to see it in proper context. In our business, we are easily seduced by these plays of psychological forces. Our business itself is not any more evil, immoral, or superficial than, say, accounting, teaching, or farming. Just because some are, does not mean that all are. It has its own function in our society. At the same time, it is not any more noble, creative, or valuable either. Because of the high profile nature of our trade, we often get a wrong idea about who we are and what we do. To be relevant in our society, it is important to have a healthy perspective on one’s own industry. This conference allowed me to do that.
Dyske (“Dice-Kay”) Suematsu is a graphic designer based in New York City. He spent half of his life in Japan and the other in the US. He is quite opinionated and writes a lot of what his wife calls “Jibba-Jabba”. His personal site is dyske.com and his business site can be found at dyske.com/design/.
Great post Dyske. Sounds like an interesting conference, and the closing paragraph is very useful. About as profound as design criticism gets.
On May.02.2005 at 12:30 PM