Comics for Kids?

After wrapping up a great class with the students I have been working with at Seneca College over the past four months, we ended up chatting about the new opportunities arising for artists around the globe and across the business spectrum. My previous article talked (briefly) about the idea that many large business look towards the skills held by artists as a means of communicating across the broad range of various aspects of their operations through simple visuals. This is only one of many dozens and dozens of examples of how artists may look towards new opportunities.

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words?

Or it could be worth a few thousand dollars!  Here is an interesting (albeit short) article from FastCompany.com on the concept behind using visuals to help communicate ideas to large organizations, as well as more importantly, to flesh ideas out in short form.

Those of you in the animation industry, or other visual production industries, are familiar with the ‘thumbnail’ sketch as a method of creating ideas quickly that we can just as easily throw in the trash as we can build upon into the million dollar idea. This same thinking can be applied to businesses that aren’t creatively oriented, such as Wal-Mart, Microsoft and UPS. To name a few companies.

I’ve spent countless times around boardroom tables listening to and participating in discussions that involve some very complicated concepts, and a large part of the time, the discussion centres around understanding the concept at it’s fundamental level across the table vs. actually working on the concept itself. This is only one consideration for the above article. My suggestion to those of you working in the creative fields looking to expand your horizons: Look at articles such as this as a billboard from the right-brain industries! We need you to help us with our process. Can you?

Mayhaps.

- B

Let’s get Smart(ist)

What is Smart(istry)?  This is a little idea we’ve been working on to help address the changing realm of the creative in the emerging (emerged) industries.  You see the deal is:  many of us are talented artists, but when you start engaging your unique creative skills, you can become a smart(ist) – someone who is capable of delivering far more than pretty pictures.

Hopefully this blog will help us out.

Posts here will vary from tips on business concepts for artists, emerging industries for creative talent, ideas regarding your own career options, recipes, articles from leading business and ‘right brain’ sources as well as user content and feedback.

Let the thinking begin!

- B