Creativity doesn't need a muse. It needs a drill sergeant. • Hacker News Board

Re: Creativity doesn't need a muse. It needs a drill sergeant.

#51

Post by flocial » Sat, Nov 05, 2011, 11:23 AM UTC

People are so caught up with office hours (which I think work because they expect people to come early but leave on time) but the real gem is rigorous quantification of tasks in 15 minute increments. It's like the Pomodoro technique at double speed.

“I’m one of the few people who understands how producing technology requires intuition and creativity, and how producing something artistic takes real discipline,”

Steve Jobs

http://www.kansascity.com/2011/10/24/3227298/steve-jobs-delv...

Re: Creativity doesn't need a muse. It needs a drill sergeant.

#52

Post by smilliken » Sat, Nov 05, 2011, 3:46 PM UTC

dhx wrote: post #49

invalidOrTaken wrote: post #7

I get the feeling advertising is a very "pure" industry, by which I mean its business model is pretty well set, and widely understood: take "creative" people, put them in offices, sell their services. Compare that to the software industry: Who is the software for? Will we charge for it, and if so, how much? What is possible and what is impossible? How long will it take? What's the most important part? In software, th…

Marketing: who is the client? what image are they trying to create? what are the target demographics? how much time do they have? how much money do they want to spend? which mediums should be targeted? Those factors can change quickly depending on news and current affairs, someone beating you to an original idea, technological changes and business changes (mergers, new services/products becoming the focus). Software…

I believe the grandparent was referring to a product company instead of a consultancy. A software consulting company does indeed have a lot more in common with a creative agency.

Re: Creativity doesn't need a muse. It needs a drill sergeant.

#53

Post by regularfry » Sun, Nov 06, 2011, 2:36 PM UTC

InclinedPlane wrote: post #44

TomOfTTB wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't buy that at all. It's impossible to look at the success The Richards Group has had and conclude it's all "moderately creative trash". More to the point it's insulting to the people who did that work. If there's a lesson here for the HN community I think it's that there's more than one way to do things. You bristle at the idea of punching a clock and accounting for your time in 15 minute increments. So you sho…

Perhaps "trash" is going too far, even so I find it offensive that someone would put forward the notion that a work environment that is suitable for producing mildly creative advertisements should be the universal model for all creative work. Advertisements are perhaps the shortest lived, least substantive, and least impactful creative works.

Bad adverts are non-substantive and lacking in impact. Good adverts have perhaps the most impact of any medium in existence.

Re: Creativity doesn't need a muse. It needs a drill sergeant.

#54

Post by Detrus » Mon, Nov 07, 2011, 1:32 AM UTC

jiggy2011 wrote: post #36

Detrus wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Simultaneously the print industry is dying. Ad agencies are not used to the new mediums. You can advertise on Google and Facebook without the overhead of designers and rich media production. Big old agencies are cutting staff and outsourcing to smaller "techy" shops. The number of total employed and revenue may have fallen, I haven't seen the numbers. Either way, there will be significant reorganization of the indust…

Not so sure, allot of internet advertising still looks allot like traditional advertising to me. When I watch stuff on youtube it's very often prefaced with a 10-30 second video advert for something. I'm assuming these adverts were designed by people with "traditional" advertising skills. Not to mention image/flash animation based ads that have been around for even longer. Allot of advertising works simply by forcing…

That type of crud is done by people who come from old media companies and think of the web as a hot new thing in 2011.

Agencies charge for how much production work they can do for the commercial - video shoots, retouching, flash, etc. This doesn't necessarily deliver conversions but no one is taking it seriously because the web is seen as secondary to print and TV.

Bad user experience is just that, bad. On TVs it's tolerated because you don't have as much choice as you do online. TiVo's major selling point was it let you skip commercials.

Apple's iAds have good UX, so do many ad network startups like http://decknetwork.net You don't need to be annoying to use targeted display advertising online.

Re: Creativity doesn't need a muse. It needs a drill sergeant.

#55

Post by Detrus » Mon, Nov 07, 2011, 1:49 AM UTC

klbarry wrote: post #46

Detrus wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Simultaneously the print industry is dying. Ad agencies are not used to the new mediums. You can advertise on Google and Facebook without the overhead of designers and rich media production. Big old agencies are cutting staff and outsourcing to smaller "techy" shops. The number of total employed and revenue may have fallen, I haven't seen the numbers. Either way, there will be significant reorganization of the indust…

The advertising business is blooming with new technologies, in all the fields you mentioned (just take a look at sample projects of any of the major agencies right now). Designers for websites, interactive ads display, apps, and much more. The pie has just gotten bigger with more technology, with new positions. And believe me, the ad industry has known about brain science since the 1920s. Google "A Century of the Sel…

Well again I haven't looked at the job/revenue numbers, I wouldn't go by personal impressions.

The gimmicks in Century of Self are the standard of today's obnoxiously annoying advertising. It's hard to say how well those tricks worked in their heyday, but they're certainly less effective in today's over-saturated markets. Those approaches relied heavily on guesswork because data gathering and analysis wasn't always available. Focus groups can't keep up with brain scans and behind the scenes data gathering like Facebook's.

The industry certainly knows about brain science but most people don't have a good grasp of it. Most are involved in shmoozing clients and doing production work. This work is then judged subjectively by clients and art directors. A/B testing hasn't gained much popularity in that process.

Re: Creativity doesn't need a muse. It needs a drill sergeant.

#56

Post by JoeAltmaier » Wed, Nov 09, 2011, 1:15 PM UTC

dissident wrote: post #42

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A comic book is so far above an ad as to make the comparison silly.

That's absurd. Just because the motive of the advertisement is to sell you an idea, doesn't mean it isn't done creatively and artistically. In fact, advertisements tend to be most effective when they are extremely artistic and unique. Art is supposed to be emotionally engaging. What does a comic book do better?

A comic book has a theme, a moral, characters, continuity.

An ad has "Buy this car! Buy this car! Buy this car!"

I deny ads work better when artistic. True, you remember them better. But often I totally miss what the product was, which makes them score Zero on the ad-o-meter. Do you remember the product for those 'artistic' Apple ads? Not good enough to say "some Apple thingy".