Josh Works
By Charlie Kondek
Director of New Media Relations
A lot of PR people don’t typically work with creatives. Normally, this species of communications professional is found on the advertising side. But at MS&L Digital we get to work on a lot of projects that might normally come through an ad shop or a web development firm, and we have a whole department of people that make things look good (designers) and make them work (programmers).
It’s always interesting to me to watch how the creatives, especially those on the graphic design side, behave, think and conceptualize. I don’t want to make too big a distinction here but a lot of the creatives I have known are very visual thinkers. They are always sketching, doodling, changing the font on the paper in front of them. This is not idle work to them, this is the outward sign of a designer’s mind. And it always amazes me how sometimes to “get” something they have to draw it out, to generate a visual shorthand of what’s being discussed.
This happened at our place just the other day when we were collaborating on a video that shows what our Multiloguer does. As creative director Josh Weston drilled down on what the video should accomplish, he quickly had to resort to filling the white board with visuals, words, and arrows to get his arms around it. As a writer, I’d rather organize things into words and sentences. But it takes all kinds, doesn’t it?
And, honestly, this touches on something dear to my heart. The communications professionals best poised to navigate the current industry are those that can work quite comfortably with people of different backgrounds. As the barriers between what is typically PR and typically advertising further perforate, being able to transcend these distinctions becomes critical, in firms or in people.
So if you haven’t spent enough time with creatives, you just might want to. Make sure they have plenty of white space to draw on.
- Date: 06.18.2010
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