I'm not quite sure why I've adopted a policeman's tone of voice for this first post - read into that what you will. But anyway - hello, and thanks for having me. I'll be here all week, as they say.
Apologies that I'm a bit late getting started, but I'm not actually at work right now. Instead, I'm in the midst of a long weekend at The Ickworth Hotel in Suffolk. That's how committed I am to this week's blogging.
Interesting room art at the Ickworth
So this Monday morning has begun, rather unusually, with a big fat Full English and a very nice massage in the spa. (There are other ways to convince young women to run their fingers through your hair and rub oil into your thighs, but they either demand a lot more effort or are considerably less legal.)
I'm a bit of a rambler, I'm afraid, so apologies for that. (His Majesty Stephen Fry seems to have coined a new phrase for the rambling blog: the 'blessay'. Which is nice. Or maybe ramblog?)
Anyway. As you probably know, my Big Idea For The Week is to get writers and designers talking to each other. I work mainly in the design field, but I do a bit in advertising too. As we all know, the difference in creative approaches is marked. In the latter, creative teams are made up of writer and art director, and it's a joint effort from brief to billboard. (Yes, there are other media, but none as alliterative.)
In design, however, the standard form remains to get the document, website or whathaveyou to the point where all that remains is to replace all that cod-Latin with real English. At which point my phone rings. Or, just occasionally, someone else's.
This is changing, thank Heavens, but it's still the norm.
Is it because designers couldn't give a fiddle-dee-dee about writing? I don't think so. (A few of my compatriots might disagree, as future posts will reveal.) Pretty well all the designers I work with seem to have at least a basic appreciation for what I do, and its value.
Is it the industry's name: design? Advertising is a non-creative-specific monicker. Maybe that's why people there are called 'creative' first and 'copywriter' or 'art director' second.
Is it history? Has the history of graphic design been one that moved from a primarily visual craft into broader communications, without letting go of its visual bias? There must be something in that, but more knowledgeable minds than mine will have better answers.
Is it money? Good writers don't come cheap (just as cheap writers rarely come good). Are we simply pricing ourselves out of the early stages of projects?
I'd love to hear your views. Thanks to everyone out there, and at 26, who's already chipped in. I'll be airing some of your thoughts as the week goes on, and I hope it'll stir some rumblings in the comments. Please stick your oars, noses and two penn'orths in whenever you feel the urge. (Or email me at mike [at] reedwords.co.uk) Thanks.
Comments