Know What You Want To Communicate

Making a video about "saving the planet" is not as easy as we think. We might think that we can throwing out words and phrases into a video and letting audience to figure out the rest. No! Our brain is not capable of absorbing too much information within a short amount of time. Maybe all those words and phrases in the video can make audience feels what do we mean, but they do not know what exactly are we trying communicate. 

I do not say that I am doing the "correct" video, but I believe my way to do the video can be a helpful guide for others to think about how to communicate effectively. 

In this case, I would first define a problem that related to "saving the planet." The problem can be particularly narrowed into a simple phrase. I would not choose a broad problem and try to compress it into a 2-3 minutes video because that maybe too short for a large topic. For example, I find the problem is that "Even most of adults do not care about saving the planet, so most of children do not even know about the damage that we have done to this planet." I would also define a keyword to target into a specific problem such as "Trash." This first part is to inform audiences what already happened. (Problem)

Then, I would create a "statement" as solution for that problem by researching for credible sources. I would also narrow down the solution into one single idea. For example, my solution is to teach children to pick trash then throw in trash can. The key phrase for the solution is "Start from small things." This part would inform audiences about what to do. (Action)

To motivate an action, I would create a certain feeling for the video which has odd scenes of children. To make it a bit like horror film. (No blood, or anything horrible but just the feeling of scene that is similar to some beginning of horror film.)

Art Direction

We had a 3 shot story practicing by using 3 three "different" pictures from magazine. Professor Jimmy mentioned "art direction" in the middle of the lecture.  But, what is "art direction?" By interpreting it literally, it's a job of directing art, kinda like film director. I did not research for what art direction means exactly but just pretending that is what I think. What abilities an art director should have?

Knowledge, is THE most important ability that a successful art director should have. The knowledge here should not only be about artistic or design knowledge, but also cultural, scientific, and social knowledge etc. He/she does not have to be expert in any of the fields and can still be an excellent art director. A wide range of knowledge, if use properly, can help to solve difficult problems or make important decisions. For example, cultural knowledge helps me to see things differently because I learned two cultures. When I have to make a decision about targeted audience, I would not only think from one perspective but two.

Management, is also the key ability for an art director. Art directors are not only thinking like artist or designer but also like a "manager." Such as finance, time, and human resource, art directors have to think in a huge picture including all of the involved factors "together." Art directors need to figure out how to maximize the efficiency, productivity, and creativity at the same time. 

"Calmness" is the most important ability for an art director to be the most successful. Art director is the leader so that if a project failed expectation, client would psychologically think that's the art director's fault. Failure can be the worst case. But, if that just something bad happened during a project, what if the art director freaks out? A leader should always be calm even if the world would end within next few hours. Solutions often be found only when people are calm instead of freaking out.

Last thing I believe it is "gut." Whatever how careful when an art director makes a decision, there is always something can not be predicted. So, that is when luck comes into play. Because of the unpredictable future, it takes guts for an art director to make a decision and ready for facing failure. Even the worst failure makes an art director falls down from top of a mountain, he/she can still climb back up to the top because of "guts." A strong minded person can careless about failure.

3-Shots Story

3 SHOT-STORY telling is common in comic expression. It is a great practice for artist to look at key element of an idea. Because 3-shot story usually consists of beginning, process, and result, so it would be effective when incorporating this method in commercial advertisement. 

Many commercial ad, billboard and poster, often come with single image plus text in order to deliver certain message to targeted audiences. I, as one of many consumers, do not only want to see what is being offered, or what are the benefit from such billboard advertisement along freeways, but also I want to know where to get, how long would take, and what is the result. 

Image this, If a billboard is evenly divided into 3 panels, each panel tells a part of the whole story, in this case is advertisement. If key information is in all three panel as a sequence, consumers might get the message fast. 

Creative Brief

I used to think that if someone wants me to design something, I would just go straight to the design process. Creative brief we learned in class gives me a whole new perspective of design because it shows almost "everything" that goes into the design process so that client can actually "see" how his/her money is spend and what has been achieved. As Prof. Jimmy was talking about creative brief in class, I was thinking about bringing it to China.

In China, advertisement companies do not usually inform how money is actually spent and how such designed advertisement benefits their clients. A normal situation would be client signed contract with Ad companies then writes a check. As a matter of fact, people do not really care about "design." For example, real estate corporations nowadays are forced to pay excessive amount of tax if their properties are not sold out two years after they were built. That new law can easily cause panic among the boards of corporations. As a result, they want to advertise the "new houses" and try to target all kinds of audiences. Sometimes, they will even give out brand new cars to the first three people who buy their houses. For the advertisement, all they know is that advertisement will help the sales. That's basically all they know. They do not care about how certain designs can effectively promote sales but simply accept the fact that it is advertisement companies' jobs to figure out what should be "designed."

Sometimes, it gets even worse when advertisement is paid by the government for the purposes of promoting governmental interests, such as family planning, one child policy, and communism. Due to the government corruption, officials who in charge of dealing with advertisement company would most likely take some of the money into his/her own pocket. Those government assigned officials would only make sure that such ad would not affect the party's reputation and not a revolutionary spark. Besides that, all their concerns would be what is the actually cost and what amount should be written on "contract." 

If creative brief becomes common in a country such as China, maybe that would change how people think of design.