What do you do?

June 13th, 2010 by Kris

So, as many of you know, I’ve been pretty busy over the last 3 weeks. We’ve had several projects that crossed and blurred the lines between traditional ads, viral marketing and cutting edge public relations messaging. It’s gotten me thinking about that age old question that all artists deal with when working in the marketing and advertising world, “What do I do?”

At first blush that question seems so straightforward, easy, I take pictures, you may draw or design web sites; now stop and think about it for a second. We all know there’s a lot more to it than that. So, with media changing so quickly, who are we as creatives? I’ve seen print designers have to learn web, web designers become video engineers, is there a way to cut through some of this fog? Is it time for you to retool? Do you need to learn HTML 5? Maybe you do need to know the difference between MPEG and MP4.

A few weeks ago I read a blog post by Seth Goddin, he brought up some interesting questions regarding this question. His post was geared towards people starting out as freelancers, but I think it can apply to all of us in the creative field. He put forward some questions to help build a dialogue about what it is that we do.

Here are a few that I thought were interesting:

  • Who are you trying to please?
  • Are you trying to make a living, make a difference, or leave a legacy?
  • Is it more important to add new customers or to increase your interactions with existing ones?
  • Are you prepared to actively sell your stuff, or are you expecting that buyers will walk in the door and ask for it?
  • How long can you wait before it feels as though you’re succeeding?
  • Is perfect important? (Do you feel the need to fail privately, not in public?)
  • How close to failure, wipe out and humiliation are you willing to fly? (And while we’re on the topic, how open to criticism are you willing to be?)
  • What does busy look like?

Just some food for thought this week.

(Read Seth’s post here.)

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