In his keynote address to the young guns of America, Neil Gaiman said one of the most inspiring things I’ve read in my life. He said no matter how hard life kicks you in the balls, make good art.
Husband runs off
with a politician? Make good art. Leg crushed and then eaten by mutated boa
constrictor? Make good art. IRS on your trail? Make good art. Cat exploded?
Make good art. Somebody on the Internet thinks what you do is stupid or evil or
it's all been done before? Make good art. Probably things will work out
somehow, and eventually time will take the sting away, but that doesn't matter.
Do what only you do best. Make good art.
In the profession I
am in, unfortunately it takes more than moments of jubilance and misery to make
good art. It needs a good art partner. Copy and art is an arranged marriage
made in the supreme court of procrastination. If you’re lucky the most productive
hours of your day between you and your art partner are spent in criticizing the
system, the account management, the client, the boss, the overly sweet canteen
coffee, our laughable CTCs, the new loony Priyanka Chopra song. It is an
incredibly creative exercise after the hours you waste on mindless internet
trolling.
However, when it
comes to thinking on things you’re actually paid for, the equation changes
dramatically. Art directors may adeptly write a thesis on how lazy piece of
morons our lot is, but sitting down with a pen to crack an idea or sketch a
scribble is a rare priced quality these days.
Overlooking all
this, if you’ve managed to write a half-decent headline, chances are your art
partner would ask you to axe it with the professionalism of a seasoned
gardener. You can’t make the logo bigger with a headline line this long,
he argues. To which, you have nothing to say but despondently question your
choice of career. At which point, the happy harmony of the arranged marriage
goes for a flying toss.
In our field, the
idea of you making getting over creative differences with your art partner
after a stormy brainstorming session shares the collective fate of Indo-Pak
peace summits that have happened so far. Ego, procrastination, demotivation are
the familiar demons, we fight too on most days.
The reason I come
across so strongly on all this is because I was lucky enough to overcome all
this pretty early in my current job. And I’m dreading the days that lie ahead
of me, now that my art partner has flown off to another place, a better one I
would hope for her sake.
This is probably the
most cynical goodbye note you would have read. But that’s only because putting
her worth in a few nice adjectives would be belittling her talent and her
persistence in chasing the deadlines we set for our self, the weekends we spent
in office more than just sulking. From her, I learnt the importance of
presentation, neatness and elegance in the little things we do. The ground
rules of teamwork, when it came to defending cool ideas, and clipping the not
so cool ones.
And now that she's
gone, my only demand from you- the rest of hackered species of my profession
would be make
good art partners
