ANITA NYOTOSETIADI DIARY

Silicon Valley's New Secret Weapon: Designers Who Found Startups

2012-01-27T02:47:00.000-08:00

For the last few years, I was teaching startups to think like designers. But I eventually realized that you need someone to model and inspire design thinking within the company. If you don't have a designer in your founding group, it's harder to have a culture of design. You see the reasons why all the time: A consultant comes in to improve a design and when they leave, the transformation eventually dies.

This was my aha moment; it challenged whether I was making an impact. My solution? Do the opposite of what I’ve been doing. Rather than spending as much energy training nondesigners, I figured I’d help designers succeed as part of the founding DNA of startups, thus making great design a natural expression of their operations.

Although designer-founder genes are rare, more designers have the capacity to step up to the challenge. Inspired by the mathematician Richard Hamming, I believe that being a designer founder of a tech startup is one of the biggest opportunities in the design field today. So I laid out some assertions to begin experimenting, started aligning resources and kickstarted research about designer founders.
What's Driving the Movement

Here's why design is important to the tech world today:

1. As the consumer tech market becomes more crowded, brands and experience design--not just technical capabilities--are becoming critical to success.

2. Innovation is about radical collaboration. The critical mass of combined design, technical, and business skills enables product iteration to happen faster and at a higher resolution.

3. Designer founders have unique skills (not just visual) to understand human needs and discover unarticulated opportunities.

With these points in hand, I presented them to as many designers and investors as I could find. Turns out, more than 50 of them believed these assertions, too. So we came together as a community to create the Designer Fund and invest in the next generation of designer founders.

The Skills to Ship

Clearly, every designer isn’t meant to be a founder and probably shouldn’t be. To be clear, we don’t mean designer as the prima donna pixel-pusher that you might be picturing. We also don’t mean designer as the “I took one class called UX Fundamentals in business school.” We mean an honest-to-goodness, experienced practitioner who has learned to design by designing. And most importantly, they're able to ship usable products.

Above all, designer founders should be experts at finding the right problems to solve. That means sometimes building usable products that are ugly, or prototyping with a spreadsheet, and not getting trapped into making something beautifully useless that will not scale. Designer founders need to be able to do a lot, and it’s not easy.

This Is About Impact, Not Hype

The point is not to get caught up in buzzword titles, or challenge the role of design consultants or founders with engineering backgrounds, but to highlight the emerging opportunity for founders with design expertise from trained to self-taught backgrounds. It makes sense that a prerequisite for a tech company is to have a founder with technical skills. The same heuristic should hold true if you want to ship consistently well-designed products like Pinterest, AirBnB, and Path. Why not have a cofounder with design skills who champions the user experience?

Now, more than ever, we face complex problems that designer founders are well-equipped to solve. Everyone in a company should have empathy and practice design regardless of their title. Design can no longer be just be an outsourced add-on, limited to putting “lipstick on a pig.” Tech moves too fast for such short-sighted design thinking; it won't be a lasting advantage.

Of course, designer founders aren’t some magical unicorn or silver bullet that’s going to solve everything. They’re but one potential key ingredient to teams of innovators, not a guarantee. Many companies will succeed without designer founders and many will fail with them. But I believe they improve the odds of survival.
Studying the Paths of Designer Founders

Designer founders we’ve observed are consistently multidisciplinary and have cross-functional skills necessary to make decisions about products. They are fluent in the full design stack, ranging from user research and interaction design to information architecture and communication design. They may not be experts in all sub-disciplines of design but can get by on their own in the early days of their startup and attract specialists when needed. In addition, they have a thorough enough working understanding of technology and business stacks, including agile programming and data-based marketing methods. Designer founders can move up and down the design stack and across the technology and business stacks to do what it takes to ship and use data to justify their decisions when needed. Thus, they are capable of leading both their product and organization through the design cycles needed to innovate. There’s a difference between a designer who can design a car dashboard and a designer who can design an entire car and how to drive it. Designer founders need to be able to do both.

To support these claims, we’re practicing what we preach and interviewing every designer founder we can find who’s created a venture-backed tech startup. The collection of interviews will be published as a nonprofit book that will be free for students, with the goal of synthesizing patterns and lessons to inspire entrepreneurial designers. The first by-product of this research, our Designer Founders info cards, represent a snapshot of data we’ve collected and some patterns we’re starting to explore. What you find is that designers live behind some of the web's best startups, including Vimeo, YouTube, Hunch, Path, Etsy, and Instagram. That's no coincidence.

The Future of Designer Founders

More designer founders than previous decades are daring to walk the unbeaten path and sacrifice the security of a paycheck to pursue the freedom of creating meaningful impact through tech startups. Whether they succeed or not, these designers represent a new breed of entrepreneur that will hopefully inspire the next generation of designers to be even better at making positive social change. There are also schools who are responding to the call to train entrepreneurial designers, such as the Stanford d.school, School of Visual Arts, among others. As we enter a user-interface revolution, there are even more possibilities for designers to create experiences with touch, sound, and movement interaction.
In the wake of Steve Jobs's example, it's obvious that designer founders should be champions of the user experience. They're the ones who stand with one foot in the world of technology and the other in the world of people, bringing the two together.

ref: http://m.fastcompany.com/design/59797/full/

Think Different

2011-12-15T07:11:00.000-08:00

“We must constantly look at things in a different way. Just when you think you know something, you must look at it in a different way. Even though it may seem silly or wrong, you must try. Dare to strike out and find new ground.”

“Despite what anyone might tell you, words and ideas can change the world.”

“We don’t read and write poetry because it’s cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. Poetry, beauty, love, romance. These are what we stay alive for. The powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse. What will your verse be?”

-Dead Poet Society

“To the crazy ones. Here’s to the misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The people who see the world differently.”

“The people who are crazy enough to believe they can change the world are the ones who actually do.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “To be great is to be misunderstood,” and I always believed that was the general concept behind the “Think Different” campaign.

To the crazy ones.

Here’s to the misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers.

Here’s to the ones who see the world differently.

They’re the ones who invent and imagine and create.

They’re the ones who push the human race forward.

While some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius.

Because the people who are crazy enough to believe they can change the world are the ones who actually do.

“Think different.”

Reference: The Real Story Behind Apple's 'Think Different' Campaign - Forbes ,well written by Rob Siltanen, worth reading.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/onmarketing/2011/12/14/the-real-story-behind-apples-think-different-campaign/

Don't stop at great

2011-12-09T11:24:00.001-08:00

"A big part of being highly creative person is having an open mind & being able to recognize great ideas even when you're not looking for them, perhaps even when they are the last thing you are looking for."

The DIY Lobotomy 2002- Tom Monahan observation

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Bogusky

2011-12-05T03:43:00.001-08:00

"The philosophy behind much advertising is based on the old observation that every man is really two men -- the man he is and the man he wants to be."-- William Feather

"If you are kind," reads the gift, "people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives; be kind anyway. If you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true enemies; succeed anyway. If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you; be honest and frank anyway. What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight; build anyway." -Mother Teresa

I'm convinced that the greatness that matters more is the greatness people achieve through helping each other, through collaborating, more than the greatness that's achieved by grabbing all you can or getting all you can or building all you can. The 'you' needs to go away for there to be the real greatness to things. So for me, the genuine part, it's a weird thing -- to get to the real you, you have to be less you."

He raced BMX and motocross bikes from a young age, under the tutelage of his father, who taught him that "part of the joy of winning is the infliction of loss." Now, he says, tapping his forearm like a junkie, "I've been messing around with this less-competitive version of myself, because the other doesn't make you happy. You can't win enough."

"I'm trying to think ... midlife crises occur generally because we fear death, right? And I'm pretty sure I don't fear death. So maybe, what do I fear?" He pauses again. "What I fear -- actually, I'll tell you what it is -- what I fear is, I fear" -- his eyes start to pink around the rims, his voice cracks -- "I fear a moment when my children are older, and they look at me and say, 'What did you do? The world is like a spiraling cesspool. You were an adult, you needed to do something, I was just a kid. What did you do?' I want to be able to say, I did this, this, and this. And did my best. Yeah, that's it. It is a midlife crisis, and it's not my death. It's the fear of not being able to say that you tried, in all sincerity. I think it's a new kind of midlife crisis."

"Men often become what they believe themselves to be. If I believe I cannot do something, it makes me incapable of doing it. But when I believe I can, then I acquire the ability to do it even if I didn't have it in the beginning. -- M. Gandhi."

"My sense is he thinks it's a big game," a friend of Bogusky tells me. "He just likes playing the game. The game of life. If he finds something intriguing, he's like, 'I'm going to be the best in the world at it. I'm going to convince people to eat more fatty burgers, and I'm going to convince people to drive electric cars -- because I can convince them of anything.' "

I was reminded of one creative director who described Bogusky this way: "He's a combination of believing something and being so good at selling it that you can't tell the difference between the two."

reference:
http://www.fastcompany.com/alex-bogusky-tells-all

Just do it

2011-12-04T23:35:00.001-08:00

DC comics

2011-11-10T07:28:00.001-08:00

Collaboration of artist, writer and entrepreneur
The mission: to entertain, to challenge, to captivate, to enlighten

If you put the best artist in the world and the best writer artist in the world, they will make the best masterpiece in the world and you know what its called. They called it a comic book.

Comic should be a reflection of a time.

I think people need an ideal to look at and to try to become and maybe for me Superman is that kind of ideal. - The death of Superman

One of the wonderful things about working in comics is you get built on people and people built on you.

You have all that under you and you add to it. I'm going to make my remarkable here, I am going to tell a story that hasn't been told about this character.

Sometimes they just need the right take or they need the love that somebody really understand it & someone see something new in it. Its not just about entertaining people, its giving them something to think about & some values & maybe something about to live towards.

I don't even want to think the world without DC. I love superheroes because its just like everything you want to do in your life. You like helping people, they help people, and you gotta live through them.

Comics are a story telling form that you can tell any kind of stories
We provide this great space for creative talent to really have a place to tell their stories

You gonna make this character into real people that you care about.

The character is so flexible, they work in every era because the creator has always found way to talk about what's interesting to them now and what's happening in the culture now.

Superheroes are the archetype, live within us & somebody find a way to present them to us, in a way that is compatible with realities that we live in. There's still around all this decade because they've been loved to evolved.

Character continue to be built, as it always have, by drawing on history and culture and personal experience to convey the deepest hope for the new generation in whatever forms the comics may take.

I have no idea how much longer books have for this world, but I do know people like Seigel & Shuster, Bob Kane & Bill Finger, Julius Schwarts & Allan Moore. These people came up with character and stories that are going to be run forever. Whether you're reading it on a small thing that look like a diamond that you tap with your finger and get straight the content into your retina or whether you're reading it on something that you can fold up and putting it on your pocket afterwards & you wanna pile up and put it in a tree house I don't know but I can tell you that hundred years from now there will be kids who want to find out what's happening with Superman.

ref: Secret origins the story of DC Comics

Dhanu's Farewell

2011-10-14T23:55:00.000-07:00

by Anita Nyotosetiadi

Collaboration with Eno FFD 'Fresh For Death'

by Danny Hananto 'The Design Chamber'

Farewell Poster for our amazing Creative Director Dhanusree Sant
Collaboration works by the Ogilvy One creatives.

Feminax Teens Mag

2011-06-20T01:01:00.001-07:00

illustration for feminax

Massive Wheatpaste

2011-05-17T02:22:00.000-07:00

Collaboration work credits:

@twittdeath @tony_ariawan @muloyoung @chikakochan
@fredc2209 @anyotosetiadi @thesompret

My drawing on top:
inspired from May star sign The Twins (Gemini)

Feminax Warning Signs

2011-04-18T04:18:00.001-07:00

3 out of 4 man become a domestic abuse every month

Some of the warning signs to prevent the situation occurs
Go to http://www.preventmiseryandsorrow.com/

Persistence

2011-03-22T07:52:00.001-07:00

Nothing in the wold can take the place of Persistence.
Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent.
Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb.
Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts.
Persistence and determination alone are Omnipotent.

- Calvin Coolidge, 33rd President of USA

Why I Draw

2011-03-14T01:11:00.000-07:00

Sometimes when I'm sitting in class and listening to my Fiction Writing Professor talk about the process of writing, my mind begins to drift; not in a way that I fail to hear what he's saying, but I start to align his words alongside my craft of drawing and illustration. I have a terrible time with labels, assigning and boxing things neatly (or not -) into some kind of space and then call it a name. You'll notice that I switch between the words, art, and craft, and illustration, and design, and drawing in many of my posts -- and when I do, I think it's because I'm starting to see them more and more each time as being extremely similar to one another in a sense that they share so many of the same traits. Although there are many people who I'm sure can clinically delineate the difference between each of these disciplines, including myself, ultimately, I'm beginning not to care so much any more.

When I was 13 years old, I clearly remember saying out loud that I wanted to draw for a living. Back then, I had no clue what I was talking about because I didn't know anyone who made money from their drawings. When we moved to Canada, my father worked in a factory and my mother did data entry at her first and only job for decades. Drawing was not practical in their eyes, and as a result I could not foresee that it would take care of me.

There were moments when I thought that I would give up on drawing. In third year art college, I almost dropped out of school even before the semester began. I wanted to, I needed to move out of my parents home, and so I thought that I would stay working full time at a clothing factory in a suburb of Toronto to save up enough money for rent. Had I done so, I have no clue where I would be now, fortunately for my sake I snapped out of this delusion of mine, and with the help of my brother and sister, stayed in art college for the remaining years, and then moved out shortly after. During this time, I probably drew more feircely than ever because I guessed at that moment, that I had no other choice. In a way, I cast all of my hopes and frustrations into this particular discipline wanting so badly for it to lift me out of the place that I was in.

I sometimes look at my drawings and wonder if are they good or if they are not. I understand that if the drawing has been commissioned by someone else, that there are reasons that make it successful; that in addition to the aesthetic component, that it needs to communicate an idea and have a concept, and satisfy a viewership. I know all of this, I believe it, and I teach this to my students: content is paramount. But when I distance myself from my work and really stare at it, surface and content together, the parts of it that are not so good begin to reveal themselves to me. I have always fantasized about being a great artist, like the ones whose books I keep on my shelf. They are the ones who are able to manage shape and line in such a way that makes me feel that they have exclusivity to use them. The ones who employ colour with such beautiful ease, as though they were the ones who gave birth to such colours. But I know that for many of them, or at least, I tell myself, that I believe not all of this came easily for any of them. Not any of this came quickly either.

I recently opened up Charley Harper's book, the one that was put together by Todd Oldham, and it makes me feel good because the pictures in it reminded me - it reminds me of why I draw. The photos of Harper's work span his entire lifetime, showing images of drawing as the content. The way in which he relates colour to one another is magical and the restraint that he holds in his brush when rendering the details of the figures and objects convinces me that there is a reason and place for every mark that he puts down. And even though he is one of these artists who I have come to revere, I am learning to appreciate the work that he is done as just that, work that he has done. I try to remind myself now of the importance of the act of drawing, drawing for drawing sake, not drawing for money sake, nor for the sake of fame, or for the sake of trying to be like someone else. These things grow less important to me.

And so I draw.

I draw because I enjoy simply moving the paint around on the page, and stylus on the tablet. I enjoy mixing colours and arranging them next to each other to create patterns. I enjoy making marks on the pages and allowing them to twist and turn into something figurative or abstract. I draw because I have things that I want to say that I might not be able to express through words, through actions. I draw because when I do, the world around me falls away. I draw because it makes me feel good.

by Marcos Chin
http://www.marcoschin.com/

Better World

2011-02-10T04:49:00.001-08:00

Don’t tell us what we can’t do.
Don’t tell us not to dream.
Big, Fat, Hairy, Audacious Dreams.
Life Making the world better through sport.

Sport is our Passion
Sport reduces disease, lowers crime, rallies communities and denies prejudice.

Sport laughs in the face of racism, flicks a towel on sexism’s butt.
Hell, it’s even been known to stop wars.
That’s a pretty impressive resume. Sport, You’re hired.
We won’t rest til everyone on this planet has access to it.

We will make the best gear, to propel humanity forward without wrecking our global playground in the process.

We will do good with a vengeance.
We’re going to be so environmentally friendly it will make you puke.
Think performance and sustainability hitting it off so well
They have each other’s name tattooed across their chests.

And to all the cynics we’re going to make the world better for you anyway.
Because like sport we don’t discriminate.
We’ve made the world better
But we still want a better world.

Nike Better world.
http://www.nikebetterworld.com/

BE STUPID

2011-01-19T03:01:00.001-08:00

Like balloons we are filled with hopes and dreams
but overtime a single sentence creeps into our lives…
Don't be stupid
It’s the crusher of possibility
It’s the world’s greatest deflator
The world is full of smart people doing all kinds of smart things
That’s smart

Well we’re with Stupid

Stupid is the relentless pursuit of a regret free life
Smart may have the brains but stupid has the balls

Smart recognizes things for how they are
Stupid sees things for how they could be

Smart Critiques
Stupid Creates

The fact is if we didn’t have stupid thoughts we’d have no interesting thoughts at all

Smart may have the plans…
But stupid has the stories…

Smart may have the authority
But Stupid has one hell of a hang over

It’s not smart to take risk, it’s stupid
To be stupid is to be brave

Stupid isn’t afraid to fail.
Stupid knows there are worse things than failure…
Like not even trying

Smart had one good idea and that idea was stupid
You can’t outsmart stupid
So don’t even try remember
Only Stupid can be truly Brilliant
So, BE STUPID!

Credits: Diesel "Be Stupid" Ads
http://www.diesel.com/be-stupid/

Fifteen Underground

2011-01-18T03:59:00.000-08:00

some logo ideas for Fanta brand

Fifteen Underground courtesy of Ogilvy One Jakarta

a self portrait

2010-12-22T12:33:00.000-08:00

a self portrait

Dessert

2010-12-07T15:08:00.000-08:00

mouthful of sin

ice cream float

classic banana split

30 days drawing challenge part 1

2010-11-23T03:40:00.000-08:00

day 1: a self portrait

day 2: fave animal

day 3: fave place

day 4: fave cartoon

day 5: fave food

day 6: fave book

Creative Block

2010-11-19T04:32:00.000-08:00

Miss Anita in the midst of creative block
artwork by Stevie Sulaiman

Close Up

2010-11-04T09:58:00.000-07:00

Pitch for Close Up, Flirt with Colors

Ogilvy One, Jakarta

Dancow

2010-11-04T09:53:00.000-07:00

Pitch idea for Dancow Milkland "Love that flows"

Ogilvy One, Jakarta

God

2010-10-28T19:26:00.000-07:00

This campaign was run by the church of Singapore to get more people to attend church services on Sunday. They ran a press campaign along with an outdoor one.

The following ads are from their press campaign. By all accounts, the campaign was roaring success. Got people back to church in the droves.

Enjoy…

I was once with a man at the seaside. As we walked, he noticed two sets of footprints.

“Whose are those?” he enquired

“They are yours.” I replied, “This is the path of your life.”

“And who do the other footprints belong to?”

“They are mine, I answered.” I was there throughout the course of your life.”

As we strolled along, I pointed to a stretch on a sandy shore where one set of footprints appeared to stumble.

“There.” I said. “that’s where your wife become very sick. You see, I was with you even then.”

“And what about here?” wondered the man, picking out a portion of the beach where there was only one, deeper, set of footprints.

“That is where your wife dead.”

“Well, where were you then?” cried the man in anguish.

“Where were you when I needed you most?”

“At that point,” I whispered, “I was carrying you.”

- God.

I am here. - God.

I hate rules. That’s why I only made ten of them. –God

When you’re weary, feeling small. When tears are in your eyes, I will dry them all. Simon & Garfunkel. – God

How can you possibly be a self-made man? I specifically recall creating you. – God

It’s not the end of the world. Not until I say so, anyway. – God

Nietzsche is dead. –God

Please don’t drink and drive, you’re not quite ready to meet me yet. –God

Could you imagine the price of air if it were brought to you by another supplier? –God

What do I have to do to get your attention? Take out an ad in the paper? –God

Earthlings, don’t treat me like an alien. – God

I was thinking of making the world black and white. Then I thought.. naaah. –God

If I miss the sunrise I made for you today, never mind. I’ll make you another one tomorrow. –God

If you think the Mona Lisa is stunning. You should look at my masterpiece. In the mirror. –God

Don’t forget your umbrella. I might water the plants today. –God

I think you’re the most beautiful person in the world. Okay, so I am biased. –God

Credits: written by an award winning copy writer Eugene Cheong.

Prayer for fellow creatives

2010-10-03T08:03:00.000-07:00

R.I.P Eryk Fitkau

2010-06-09T16:53:00.000-07:00

About Eryk
I cannot count how many times I have heard Eryk blurt out, "A photograph does not speak, it does not smell, it makes no sound, it does not move, it is just a two dimensional piece of paper, but a good photograph can do at least one if not all of the above!" At the end of the day that is exactly what Eryk's images are all about. Considering the fact that most of the images in this website have been created under the auspices of creative advertising photography makes it an even bigger achievement. Within the restrictions of budgets, client requirements, deadlines and all else associated with advertising, he never loses sight of the fact that a good photograph is more than just a two dimensional piece of paper.

With no formal training, Eryk was working as a photojournalist in communist Poland three months after he first picked up a camera. It was not about a love for the camera and photography as such at that stage, it was more about staying out of the work camps that the unemployed were put into by the government at that time. Up until then Eryk knew only Icehockey, exchanging money on the black market and a bit of modeling. The reality of it was that these were the things that actually helped him to succeed as a photojournalist, knowledge of street life, the ability to take risks and an active and creative mind. It more than made up for lack of technical knowledge and experience with the camera.

A few years later Eryk emigrated to Australia, he worked on building sites during the day and took photographs in restaurants at night. Slowly he infiltrated the world of advertising. I could fill a book with stories of the beginning of Eryk's career in Australia, maybe it is enough to say that there was no advertising in communist Poland and so there was no chance of getting experience or knowledge.

His first advertising shoot in Australia was done in the living room of an old house he'd just bought. The background was a curtain stolen from a demolition site he was working on and he had borrowed 2 lights. When he first got the job he had prepared a quote based on double a building labourers wages, just as he was about to give the advertising agency the bargain of the century something made him stop and explain that he was new to Australia and he wasn't familiar with the rates here so they gave him a budget. Be it enough to say that it was considerably more than what he was about to quote.

Unused to shooting transparency film and oblivious to the notion of clip testing, the final shots were overexposed. It didn't take him long to convince the art director and client that what he had done was something new, fresh and original. So began Eryk's advertising career.

It's all a bit different now. The studio is centrally located in Melbourne and constitutes 4,000 square feet. It has all its own lighting equipment, cameras, cyclorama, bar, dressing room, darkroom, artroom, etc. All processing and printing is done in the studio as it is necessary for Eryk's specialized photographic postproduction techniques. It is also important when working with tight deadlines and overseas clients as we are able to work successfully within limited time frames.

Unlike some photographers, Eryk enjoys and possibly thrives on diversity. He believes it keeps the senses alert, ideas fresh and the brain stimulated. To those who say that everything has been done, Eryk's reply is: "You have forgotten how to live, if you do not push yourself to experience, do not set new challenges, do not accept the good with the bad, then you can expect nothing". His greatest influence is life. Drawing on experience, being able to relate, understand, empathise, excite, stimulate. Advertising demands that you work hard, play hard and then take time out to recharge batteries in order to be able to do it all again.

Recharging batteries happens in a house on the beach in the country far from Melbourne in an area one can only refer to as fishing heaven. Obsessive as Eryk is about creating images, he is equally obsessive about his fishing, both small and large fish, ocean or estuary. Amongst the locals in the small town he is as revered for his fishing ability as he is worldwide for his photography. The house is situated in such prime country area that it is now equipped with darkroom and postproduction area as the location has proven itself time and time again for a variety of shoots from catalogues to advertising of all descriptions.

For many, Eryk's strength lies in his photographic postproduction techniques, I say it lies in his ability with people. Not only those he puts in front of the camera, but those he surrounds himself with. The importance of production, the right selection of talent, makeup, stylist, the right everything. Every link is important, if one link is weak it will show in the final image. Advertising relies on group effort. I watch him brief people, explaining the concept, his ideas, lighting, showing references and then he waits for input. Inevitably every now and then there is a new makeup artist or stylist who listens carefully and then with the best of intentions quietly asks, But Eryk, what do you want me to do?

At this point, those who are used to him suddenly remember something very urgent and important that they should be doing and they disappear into different corners of the studio to the strains of Eryk's voice, "Sweetheart, I am not a makeup artist, do I ask you what film I should use? You know the brief, you have seen the model, the references, my lighting - now make it work!!!!!!" It may all sound a bit severe, but lets face it, its a tough industry and its amazing what people produce under pressure.

Indeed the industry thrives on pressure and needless to say so does Eryk. It is under pressure that ideas flow, decisions are made and the sun comes out when least expected. It is also at these moments when budgets and restrictions become secondary to the need to produce good shots. There can be no worse feeling than the knowing that you have not succeeded, despite sometimes very real restrictions beyond anybody's control. Similarly the thrill of succeeding against the odds has no equal. There are different measures for success in Advertising, such as winning awards or being selected for publications, but the thing which generates the most satisfaction is knowing that an ad has really worked.

I remember when a young designer came to Eryk and wanted him to shoot an ad for her. She was fairly new in the fashion industry and could not really afford him, but her attitude and determination got him thinking and he struck a deal with her. If she trusted him he would come up with an idea which would be very simple and inexpensive but it would buy her publicity. She trusted him. Without doing anything illegal, immoral, sexist or offensive he did a simple black and white shot, very photojournalistic in style. It was published in one magazine. One week later the ad appeared on every prime time news bulletin on every major television channel along with interviews with the designer in her shop. Lets just say that you couldn't wipe the smile off Eryk's face for a long time.

Helmet Newton once said that, every photographer has got a tiger inside, unfortunately the tiger often dies before the photographer. For Eryk, setting himself challenges like that every now and then, combined with diversity of work, big jobs, small jobs, some very large parties, some smaller parties and fishing, keeps the tiger very much alive.

Models too often need more than a bit of prodding to make them work, with experienced models there is often the need to break established routines in order to get that extra magic. The current swing towards more real people in advertising, often involves scouting and working with inexperienced people of all ages and genres. To a large degree Eryk almost prefers the fresh and uninhibited reactions of inexperienced talent. The result is that we are always scouting our own talent which we use extensively for a variety of jobs, many of whom appear throughout the book.

At the end of the day, the studio structure means that Eryk manages to have control over the work he does. Every detail from choosing talent to how his films are processed is important to the final result. At the same time let me not forget the importance of Eryk, his eccentricities, love of people, nature, fishing and of course photography. His inability to do anything in halves, be it work or play - it is always all or nothing and maybe that is at the end of the day what counts the most.

photography site: http://www.eryk.com.au

wisdom word from Paul Arden

2010-05-24T17:01:00.000-07:00

THI$ WILL MAKE YOU CREATIVE

For a creative person starting out on a career, try not thinking about film/ media/ whatever.
Think about money. It's honest.

DON'T STAY TOO LONG IN A JOB.

RESIGN?
It's the way to show you mean business.

If people constantly reject your ideas/ what you have to offer, resign.
You can't keep fighting and losing that makes you a problem.

If you are good, and right for the job, resignation will not be accepted.
You'll be re-signed in your own term.

If they accept your resignation, you were in the wrong job, and it's better for you to move on.

It takes courage, but it is the right move.

FIRED?
It's the best thing that can happen to you.

Things not going well at work?
Frightened/ being fired?
Waking up at 4 a.m. worried sick?

Okay. Just imagine you were fired 10 days ago.

Since you had no choice but to accept it,
you might as well look upon it aa a good thing.

You will have to arrange your life differently.

You hated your situation anyway.

You must begin again.

It's a wonderful opportunity for you.

Literally, they'll let you go.

NUMBER 1
Churchil said that when you are at the top you only have to think about policies.

When you are no 2 u have to think about what your boss is thinking, and what your opposite no is thinking, before you begin to think about policies.

Start your own company, then you can have control of your own destiny. It makes you no 1 from the start.

TURN UP

If you don't have the degrees/ fee to go to uni, just turn up.
If you want to be in a job where they won't accept you, just turn up.
Go to all the lecturers, run errands, make yourself useful. Let people get to know you.
Eventually, they will accept you, because you are part of their community.
They will not only respect your perseverance but will like you for it.
It may take time, a year say, but you will be in, not out.
When asked the secret of sucess, Woody Allen replied, "Turn Up"

---

Paul Arden, Whatever you think, think the opposite.