I Miss Geppetto
Ernie SchenckI miss Geppetto. I miss the tinkerers. The craftsmen. The crazies. The looney art directors who don’t know the meaning of the words, “pencils down.”
The obsessed whack jobs who never quite know when to let it go. The font that isn’t quite right. The word that isn’t quite adequate. The 1.5-second dissolve that maybe should be 1.576, or 1.478, or something. And there is always, always, always, always, always, always something.
I miss Geppetto.
Not that there were ever very many of him. And I suppose that’s how it should be. This is a business after all, is it not? There are deadlines to keep. Expectations to manage. Opinions to navigate. So many hostile realities to turn back. It’s as if you are Neo in some advertising agency version of The Matrix and you are fighting a million Mr. Smiths all at once.
Yet, somehow a few manic souls once managed to dance between the raindrops. And somewhere out there, they still do. How they are able to do this, I wish I could tell you.
I miss their passion for the word and the picture. I miss what they once gave us. The realization that, hell yes, the work is worth sweating over. That compulsiveness is something to be coveted, instead of discouraged. That the nagging suspicion that all those faceless gray drones in the Apple 1984 spot were, in fact, not us. That we aren’t all just creative androids toiling away in our cubicles, deluded in our hopeless belief that what we are doing is fresh and worthy and edgy, when in fact it is gray and faceless and we are all mere cookie cutters working for, as John Twelve Hawks puts it, The Vast Machine.
I like speed. I love speed. I love 48-hour film projects. I love ticking clocks. I love how they put our backs against the wall so there’s no time to think, analyze, bicker with ourselves, to do anything but just explode with raw imagination. I love it all. Love moving at the speed of light, from this to that and that to this. But do I miss the fussing and the fidgeting? Totally.
You know what I think? I think we’ve gone too far. We preached the gospel of the idea and we preached and we preached and we preached. It’s the idea, stupid. It’s not about the font or the picture or this green or that blue or any of that. Why, if only the idea was big enough, nothing else mattered. Everything else was frosting. Inconsequential at best. Detrimental at worst. I believed that. I was one of the preachers. I believed it and I wanted it and I wouldn’t let go of it. But an idea is only as big as the clothes it has on. The nuances that give it heart. The subtle things that make it walk and talk and blow our minds with its beauty.
I miss Geppetto.
Originally published in Communication Arts November Design Annual 2007
I am so glad someone sees things like I do.
In college, the professors always praised me for thinking about design as a solution to a problem, instead of just decoration or art. I would obsess over the right, the best idea before I even started a project, and I usually ended up being one of those people that handed in their work as the spray glue was drying, cause I had to get it "just right".
Of course, 8 months into my real world job and I have almost abandoned all hope of smart design. With clients & AE's expecting instantaneous turn-around (cause with computers it is possible) there is simply not enough time to do something that is both smart & beautiful. Cause when you get right down to it, I am expected to do attractive, get the job done work, before I am expected to do limits-pushing, perfect work. And this is really, really starting to depress me. I've taken to doing personal projects, usually illustrations to practice technique and develop some different styles, so that maybe I will get to a place where I never think about design, just ideas. Wouldn't that be ideal?
My problem with most design today is that it is really pretty, lots of vector art and Photoshop layers, but it doesn't mean anything. It doesn't automatically connect the product to the audience in a moment of
Presto! that's it! It may sell us a feeling or an image, but I got my degree in Communication Design, because I want to
communicate through my designs.
I really do like my job, every now and again I get to work on something fun, it's cool to see my work around the city and my co-workers are constantly entertaining. I just wish I had time to do something right, something perfect, not just something 'done.'
Anyone have any freelance they want me to obsess over?
image is a poster I designed in college
