Last week Mark Kingsley sent me a link to this article, as an interesting potential for a Speak Up topic. Before you go there and read your brains out (it’s a pretty long article, and worth reading), let me just summarize it for the purposes of this discussion. The article, by Jesse Sunenblick, is about the decline of pointed, metaphorical, artist-driven illustration in editorial use. It sites many examples of editors nixing potentially offensive material (including, incredibly, one where a farmer in a field is possibly flipping the bird to city-folk driving by—an illustration deemed too small too tell for sure, but causing editorial panic nonetheless), and hints at the documentation of hundreds more, indicating a growing trend to favour literal, safe and “pleasant” representation in illustration over ambiguous or overtly critical illustrative intent.
It’s an interesting article, but I was struggling with how to relate it to graphic design and the readers of Speak Up.
The next day I received my Communication Arts Advertising Annual. What struck me after only a few pages was how “radical” many of the ads were. They were sometimes ambiguous, cheeky, suggestive and risqué. I thought back to the article I’d read on editorial censorship of creative work, and I realized that much of what I was seeing in the ads would not have made it to print in an editorial context—even something like, say, a tongue being set on fire by the burning point of a magnifying glass (as on p.59) would probably have been deemed too “ugly” or offensive.
Why would this be? One of the “culprits” cited in Sunenblick’s article was Rolling Stone Magazine; and yet here in CA were Rolling Stone ads that—among other things—extolled the virtues of Satanism (p.46 “666 Pentalicious”). I could see that it was tongue-in-cheek, but why would a magazine so willing to take risks in their advertising be leary of offending people (or advertisers) with a certain illustration in their editorial?
Just as I was thinking, “Is advertising where it’s at? Is it now advertising where true creative expression can flourish?” (and “How ironic.”), when I realized … wait a minute … this is the CA Advertising Annual: the cream of the crop—and representative of what miniscule percentage of the ad industry? (If there were an Editorial Annual—and why isn’t there?—it would probably have just as many wonderful examples of boundary-pushing work in it.)
Indeed, in the same issue there is an article by Barbara Gordon lamenting the increased use of stock photography for all the usual reasons—but also because the stock starts to drive the creative, rather than the other way around and, she says, creative ideas get left on the table because the most readily available imagery doesn’t fit them. In addition, the author laments “…a time when creatives were known to take chances—sometimes risking their careers or jobs to push for a theme or campaign, that they knew would work for their clients.” I returned to the Sunenblick article and read, “All the heavy thinkers are gone. All the big ideas diminished … anything requiring the slightest abstraction of thought.” And this quote from Milton Glaser, “The corporate voice has become increasingly wary of individual expression.”
So, is it true? Is this all just a bunch of people lamenting the good ol’ days, or is there currently a fear of creative work that challenges the individual to consider and interpret what they see and read? And how about how we treat the creatives we hire to work with us—are we able to encourage the creative input of photographers and illustrators or do we find ourselves having to ask them to tone it down, or make the message more overt? And finally, are some industries, like advertising, more open to the subjective creative concept than others?
with just reading your summary. i wonder if stock-imagery falls into the same category. one of my new years resolutions for the past few years has always been to use less stock, but rather to create well-pointed and customized imagery (but the low-prices of stock, combined with the instant accessibility seeem to make it almost impossible to get off the stock track). while the topic might be more about critical versus pleasant, i feel stock does the same thing. its safe, its okay, some even beautiful or cool, but in the end,-- to me -- it waters the design down. thats why i cannot get excited about the veers, csas, etc.
On Jan.19.2004 at 10:34 AM