Date: 9th October 2019
Venue: Lecture Theatre 13
This talk was presented by Mr. Shaiful Ayisy Sharifuddin, the creative group head of LOKimedia which is a full-service digital creative agency. He talked about the differences between a creative director and an art director and their responsibilities, what skills a candidate would need in order to be valuable to an agency, being a strategic storyteller as well as a discussing on a few brands that he has previously worked with.
From what I understand, the creative director is in charge leading all the branding strategies which requires him/her to oversee everything being presented to the client. A creative director also sells the ideas to their client and handles the execution and follow-through of those ideas. On the other hand, the art director implements the ideas set out for the client by creating a cohesive aesthetic graphic designs which arouses a reaction from the consumer. Therefore, an art director is focused solely on aesthetics, whereas a creative director will handle strategy, campaign execution, art direction. A creative director may request a bold font to exude strength but an art director will know the names of the fonts that will work.
Understanding the differences between the two careers are important as we can then align the required skills that we have to an ideal profession. Hence, we need to recognize an improve our skills sets efficiently so that we can perform our jobs efficiently in the future. After identifying our skill sets as an individual, we should further improve them, from being closely related to “the specialist” or “the generalist”.
Mr. Shaiful has also listed a few elements of being a strategic storyteller that we could use as a guideline to succeed in this competitive industry which I believe we should try to achieve. Firstly, we need to develop relationships with the right people as this strategic action will help us broaden our networking reach. We should also be resourceful as it is another way to manage an efficient workload balance. Moreover, having a good vision and quality leadership skills are the future proof of the creative department & agency. Other than that, we must be able to present and sell not just the idea but also the brand by convincing people to understand your point of view. We should also hustle to make things work by pushing ourselves further so that we would improve our creative abilities.
Mr. Shaiful has also briefly touched on a few projects that he has worked on which are the Enfagrow A+ Brain Expo and the Uniqlo Regional Raya 2019 Campaign. I find these campaigns to be very creative and outstanding as the concepts of the campaigns has a meaningful story behind it.
This talk has inspired and motivated me to push myself out of my comfort zone and explore new skills to broaden my capabilities. This will give me a chance to authentically define myself and break free of the limitations of what others think of who I should be. Then, I will be freer to shape my career and my life as how I truly want it.
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