A look back when I stepped into the world for a few years,
which I see very differently today
After years of studying at ŠUP, VŠVU (10 years in total), years of practice at Burnett, BBDO, Jandl, core4, Wunderman Vienna and also due to a move in my life to another country, taking on the role of a mother and other circumstances, I came to feel the need to define myself honestly to myself. In hindsight, I am writing here a short story about my ” brand (end) love story” which was born out of several circumstances, situations and events, influenced by other people’s decisions, mine, the energies of the storylines and also “God’s” intervention at the right moment. And it was this fact that was decisive and granted the story the status of “bringing to light”.
Commercial advertising is not a realm my soul is drawn to, it has never honestly grabbed me by the heart. But for some reason, life sent me there. I was given the opportunity to “peek behind the scenes” and see how things were really handled, the lives the ad creators lived, the values they presented outwardly and inwardly, and a host of other behind-the-curtain details of that scene.
Creating perfect artificial visuals and linking them together
with matching “headlines” doesn’t make sense to me anymore. And now that even artificial intelligence has started to show off its “skills” this whole “business” is getting a chance to redefine itself, and maybe even truthfully so.
The biggest challenge in my professional life came when I was hired at WLB as a graphic designer. After I had worked out a few assignments and after several weeks, the creative director Peter K. called me and told me that I was accepted into the team. On my first day on the job, he told me I would be working on the team for the cigarette brand L&M. And now what? Accept the fate of fate with a go. My academic education, my studies, my professors from the VŠVU (professors Longauer, Stankoci, Drličiak) professor Pichler(ŠÚV), conscious and intelligent people who supported us in how to create a higher aesthetic and search for artistic values, have now been slapped across the face. After a year and 8 months I left.
Beautiful projects have passed through my hands, and clients that I love to remember. Beautiful chocolate boxes for Fidorky, beautiful credit cards for Unicreditbank and lots of interesting creative stories. But as he (Mr. Shepherd) himself once said in a lecture at the Digital University that those “Golden Nails” campaigns don’t work in reality, I would have to partly agree with that. Arty seniors were happy/unhappy to work on these projects. Writing with statues on shelves is pretty exciting. Who sees them but the statues themselves? :). And what was, and still is, really going on here?
About a gentleman named “Ego,” the sandbox, the “Art Director of the Year” category? A boy’s world in adult form or exactly the opposite?
Those “big hunts” blown up for a sense of importance, golden statuettes for lying. The false illusion of creativity is worth a lot even today. But that “sum” could also have another meaning and give something else a real dimension in ordinary human life. For example, the paediatric hospital in Poddunajské Biskupice or even in Kramary would need a new toilet quite urgently, or just such crap as new furniture for the rooms or toilet paper. Because that one piece from the Ministry of Health is not enough for three people in a room for a week.
Everywhere in creative teams there were “apparently” few women . One, two at most.
What’s the problem? Two decades ago. How it is exactly today, I don’t know. Everywhere men were and are visible in a great preponderance. It’s my observation, I’m not going to comment on it to analyze it or address it. But frankly the ads, the “let’s put some pretty grandma in there” type, while aesthetically appealing, were profoundly shallow. To me, they’re just a testament to the human and spiritual level their creators were at back then. And the era itself.
Showing red pouty lips, “boobs from a size 4” there, where it has no logic or reason at all. The possible connection is just a mirror of the immature and current mental setup of its creator. Sex symbols are fine, but they don’t belong everywhere, in advertising only in a specific context and only in a specific category. And certainly not in an ad for a company that sells, say, security doors. (A digital drawing of a “sexy bone” sitting in a latex corset on a flying doorway, with the corset bursting at the seams in the exact spot where her breasts naturally have the most volume. Headline: “Protect the most precious thing you have at home”). The owner of the company has told the public more about himself and his state of mind than he might have wished.
That whole era of contrived feminism, so-called Western economic capitalism and the quest for equality. Is it possible to equalise something that is built on different principles and missions? Man and woman can/will/must only complement each other. All of this has also shifted a great era of creativity and our lives into a strange space where if there were no fake boobs, asses in miniskirts, “naturally” blonde models, high platform shoes, jumpsuits, short skirts and red lips, you probably wouldn’t sell anything or get attention. That whole era of “open borders” with no boundaries has crossed the red line and back more than 100 times, creating the impression and feeling of a bottomless pit.
Balance sheet insert
“To try to create a new life and almost lose your own when you try to bring the new one into the world. Life and death itself set the boundaries of true creativity. I miss the essence of feelings and forms, everything is often monotonously monochromatic. The post office is yellow, telecom is pink, orange is orange, electrodom is blue, lidl is yellow again, bipa is pink again, zalando is orange again, the famous big bank is blue…
But where is the human and socially responsible dimension of some big brands? Where are the projects that support the needs of children, even the disabled, of women, even single mothers, of ordinary human life that was extinguished yesterday so that one of the rulers of countries where war is now raging can buy a flat in London? What are you going to do when you run out of pantone paint and there are no soldiers because women will not bring children into this world? “Artificial intelligence will save the world”.
End of the reflection insert