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End of the Journey
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Since the highschool years, I have found myself a creative person. I am interested in every field of art: music, photography, film making, drawing and design. Also, I am a socialized person, dare to chase my dream and try my best to achieve my goals, therefore, I never give up. As a senior Professional Communication student with lots of practical experiences, I have chances to recognize myself: understand my strengths and weaknesses, develop my skills to solve every single problem I face and immerse in what I love to do.
I want to become...
Art directors set the visual direction – and eventually guide all visual elements of a customer's advertising campaign and art directors in every creative department that related to marketing are all similar (Bogart 1995). In the digital creative industry, a successful art director requires multiple needed skills: communication, strategic thinking, design experience and time-management. Thus, according to Goodby and Silverstein 2020, to become an art director, practitioners need to have a well-prepared education, design occupation experience such as illustrators, copyeditors, storyboard artists, graphic designers, or other positions in the fine arts field, and finally, the creative portfolio represented their unique styles in art work.
As a practitioner, I am step-by-step learning from a national well-known art director to become more professional with my portfolio. My inspiration comes from Ben Pham, who currently an art director at MTP Talent by Son Tung MTP, is known for numerous music videos with special art visuals such as Co Chac Yeu La Day (by Son Tung MTP), Ke Cap Gap Ba Gia (by Hoang Thuy Linh) and DreAmee album (by Amee). Because my highest intelligence in the previous self-doxxing part was music and visual, therefore, I feel interested and dive in studying the art direction to be totally impressed by his talent. Learning from his portfolio, I have created my portfolio into a more viewable and reachable visual with only a thumbnail for each product, then after clicking on the thumbnails, it will lead to my project's detailed descriptions. In this way, I can easily show my audience the overview of my products.
Source: Captured from Ben Pham's website <https://www.benphamm.com/art-direction>
Learning from his portfolio, I have created my portfolio into a more viewable and reachable visual with only a thumbnail for each product, then after clicking on the thumbnails, it will lead to my project's detailed descriptions.
I learned a lot!
Thanks for ICP with the realistic chances to work with the real client and our team to believe in me for the art director and design position. Participated in my favourite role, I tried my best to bring the most suitable creative concept and video ideation for the project.
For the creative concept, as shared in the half journey a few weeks ago, we chose "Be Our Inspiration" creative concept to create the next media strategy. After pitching to the client, I received the compliment for the concepts and key visual ideas, thus, I kept it for my final execution with lots of improvement, fixing more in details to make the perfect visual which is the well-combination of creative concept 01 and 02. As a real production house, the creative team has to have solidarity with the account and media planner. I let them finish the list of visuals and contents first, then as an art director and designer, I gave them feedback and started brainstorming the elements for key visuals and content strategy. For my knowledge and experience working in the industry, it is necessary to follow the brand guideline of the client, therefore, I followed the theme colors and Museo font of RMIT and added my own creation to not only fit with the client but also express my own style. Moreover, my design posts mostly included the key visual of the miracles in different shapes and sides for the consistency in identity artefacts.
![[ICP]_A2_Showcase_presentation_ BEEZYAGE](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/50dedf_8bd6ae50088f42e3b5245705fbc7029f~mv2.png/v1/fill/w_600,h_338,al_c,q_85,usm_0.66_1.00_0.01,enc_avif,quality_auto/%5BICP%5D_A2_Showcase_presentation_%20BEEZYAGE.png)
Regarding creative people's common traits, I spend more time brainstorming, finding inspiration, creating mood boards, sketching and making decisions rather than immediately doing the executions. For new Adobe Illustration tools and techniques, I searched for the tutorials on YouTube to study. As my time management to balance every event in my life, I usually spend more than a last day before soft deadlines, focusing on making executions with the most passionate mood, which is one of the important factors to create the best outcome in design. I find it is really exciting for me when working under pressure. In spite of spending the last day before soft deadlines, I am never late because I really know myself as a team member and my parts can affect our team process.
As my time management to balance every event in my life, I usually spend more than a last day before soft deadlines, focusing on making executions with the most passionate mood.
Final story board inspired by Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, combining with RMIT University life.
In addition, I have a chance to practice my skills in creating scripts for a 2-minute promotional video. As the client’s comments, they really love the idea of mixing sound at RMIT for the video, however, we could not find the way to develop it. After being stucked for the old idea, we let it stay behind and think out of the box for the new idea.
In a "Creative Radar" workshop at RMIT, Huynh Vinh Son - a senior, 12-year experienced Vietnamese copywriter said that we should never stop at the very first ideas, keep unsatisfied and continue to create new things. Then, I pop up the idea to use Maslow's Hierarchy of needs to deliver the top desire of human beings, especially the target audiences of mine. I find it a different and unique idea that other teams did not have, so for the first time, I really confidently pitched my idea to clients.
Promotional Video making process - Behind the scene, I had chance to play the camera operators role in 02 scenes.
Project making process from BEEZY.
I was really happy when receiving our client' compliment for a brand new idea from others. However, there were many parts of improvement such as the confusing in the beginning scenes that did not input the inspiration enough for the target audience to understand.
In the last showcase, I finally can “wow” our client with the visual execution. Those comments including most of the positive feedback of the development and some point of improvement in the video had become encouragement for me and my team. In the course, we finally can get a DI from Dr Lena and the result is somehow worth our effort and no-sleep days.
How will I go to where I want to be?
In 12 week of practical learning, I improved a lot as an art director and designer. As many people said, an art director does not need to know everything, nevertheless, I feel excited when I can execute my own ideas, even though it is not 100% perfect. I find it is satisfying practicing in my dream position in the advertising industry during ICP course and being an important part for my team.
Furthermore, in the semester break, I will read more books about art directors, get inspiration from famous works and keep updating with the advertising industry to study others’ innovation. In addition, I registered for the Design and Art Direction: New Bloods Awards 2021 by myself for the highest level of challenging and creativity.
For design skills, after finishing my Bachelor Degree in Professional Communication, I plan to attend more extra design classes to develop my technical skills and maybe I will study animation to challenge myself. For the digital portfolio, I will keep updating my projects and make my audience grow with me.
References
Bogart, MH 1995, Artists, Advertising, and the Borders of Art , The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, US. <https://books.google.com.vn/books?hl=en&lr=&id=Gw5QvfTS6vAC&oi=fnd&pg=PR9&dq=art+director+in+advertising&ots=U28OQMLIOV&sig=6J4GwzfG4nGNV6TlvlUy6O7Ll6Y&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=art%20director%20in%20advertising&f=false>
MasterClass 2020, ‘How to Become an Art Director in Advertising’, MasterClass, 8 November, viewed 15 January 2021, <https://www.masterclass.com/articles/how-to-become-an-art-director-in-advertising>
McLeod, S 2013, ‘Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs’, Highgate Counselling Centre, viewed 9 April 2020, <http://highgatecounselling.org.uk/members/certificate/CT2%20Paper%201.pdf>.
Pham, B 2020, 'Art Direction: Portfolio', Ben Pham, viewed 14 January 2021, <https://www.benphamm.com/art-direction>