No Barking at Art Directors.

Am waiting on a client who did not call Friday. Left weekend empty. Surf web, feels like smashing information in the good English way, Gosh this is smashing. Discovered new people. Art Directors. Having been out of the publishing world for so many years busy with other storming visual ponds, suddenly I need art directors. Not only that, I need to hear back from them. One cannot actually call an art director. One can call voicemail.  Call assistants. Get assistant’s voicemail.  Email addresses definitely not for the public. The usual wall. They do work for the public however.  Ah, I know. Everybody is talent now. I discover Fortune magazine has had a remarkable art director for 27 years. Nai Lee Lum. Everybody knows who she is. Within the industry of course. As everybody knows Arem Duplessis design director of The New York Times Magazine, an enviable post for an excellent designer, reams of freedom. John Korpics, now independent, with a hilarious blog. I studied art directors when I was a teenager, waiting three months for the annuals and issues of Graphis to arrive by boat to land on my bedroom floor in South Africa. I devoured the greats…  Later, in New York, I actually made appointments and showed my portfolios in person, a great thrill. I was making it, even when not being assigned work. Now illustration is just one thing I do, publications just one of myriad surfaces. It’s good to see strong confident layouts, photo shoots, typography, at a time when magazines are fighting for air. Perhaps that is why the work is looking good. Or perhaps the Brits again veered off course, rammed the wheel to the right, then the left leaving smoke and dust and out of that came a funny looking new vision, a design drama no-one had dared, woohoo! That is good! Thanks for the permission. The adrenalin flows through the players or it should. It gets instantly absorbed, drives fresh art direction, flickers of a form of copy paste. Inevitable. Even with more visual disciplines at their fingertips than ever, art directors are a pretty disciplined lot, seldom if ever having having final word. So pick up the phone AD’s, DD’s. Return the call. Return email. And tell your assistants they are not allowed voicemail. Ever. Turn yours off too. Take calls. Connect. Be brief if you must. You will be much happier people.