A few weeks ago, I noticed this online from the great creative Gary Goldsmith. Gary was starting a new ad school--having for years helped run Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California as Chair of Creative Direction.
My experience of Gary goes back almost fifty years. Nearly every young person in the ad industry in the 1980s who was looking to move up through the industry one shaky rung of the ladder at a time had heard of Gary. Gary had landed at DDB--when DDB was still DDB, when giants out-numbered ceiling tiles, and seemed to be single-handedly doing more great work than the rest of the industry combined.
His work, btw, wasn't just good. It made you look at how you did work. It made you want to work harder, smarter, better. It made you proud to be on the outskirts of the same business Gary was in. You can see some of Gary's early work here, if you poke around a bit.
There are so many ad schools in the world right now. In fact, to my cynical eyes there seem be more people education others on advertising than there are people educated in advertising. It's like there are a million driving instructors and no one knows how to use a turn signal.
But I know Gary as someone of wisdom. He doesn't do things without thinking them through, and without a flexible process to make sure they work. Gary and I have spoken through the years about his work at Art Center--particularly his "Crashvertising" modus operandi, and I've always left the conversation a better person that I was when I started the conversation.
I quickly wrote Gary a note.
Would he like to be featured on Ad Aged? Could I interview him.
He wrote back in seconds and seconds later, I sent him a list of potential topics we could talk about. The next Monday, we had an 82-minute Zoom, that could have gone on for 82-hours.
While I amn't by any stretch a professional interviewer, I tried to ask Gary tough questions.
1. Like why an ad school when the future of the industry we both love seems so bleak?
2. With so many ad schools what makes Makers + Mentors different?
3. How did Gary start teaching? And how has he kept it up for almost a half-century?
4. What was the ad that got him to DDB--and what happened next?
As I said, I'm no journalist. This might not be the most orderly of interviews. But Gary and I had a good time talking--sharing, and learning from each other.
Over the next couple of days, I'll publish our discussion. My advice though, is my advice in almost all things. Read. Read Gary's work. Read of Gary's influences. Read what Gary is trying to do and teach.
You can only lead if you read.
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AD AGED: When I first was introduced to you, we were very much younger, not in person, just by reputation. I heard about this guy at DDB who did these amazing ads for a student book for crayons. And I just went to your site, your personal site, saw those ads. And I guess my question is, or questions are, one, would those ads work today? I know the answer, but I want it from you. And two, are you fearful? Let me ask this in a provocative way. Are you fearful of people saying, well, that Gary Goldsmith man, he's living in the past. Why does he have 50-year-old ads on his portfolio site? But just in terms of background, and I obviously have a point of view on this, but I'd love to hear it from you.
Would he like to be featured on Ad Aged? Could I interview him.
He wrote back in seconds and seconds later, I sent him a list of potential topics we could talk about. The next Monday, we had an 82-minute Zoom, that could have gone on for 82-hours.
While I amn't by any stretch a professional interviewer, I tried to ask Gary tough questions.
1. Like why an ad school when the future of the industry we both love seems so bleak?
2. With so many ad schools what makes Makers + Mentors different?
3. How did Gary start teaching? And how has he kept it up for almost a half-century?
4. What was the ad that got him to DDB--and what happened next?
As I said, I'm no journalist. This might not be the most orderly of interviews. But Gary and I had a good time talking--sharing, and learning from each other.
Over the next couple of days, I'll publish our discussion. My advice though, is my advice in almost all things. Read. Read Gary's work. Read of Gary's influences. Read what Gary is trying to do and teach.
You can only lead if you read.
--
AD AGED: When I first was introduced to you, we were very much younger, not in person, just by reputation. I heard about this guy at DDB who did these amazing ads for a student book for crayons. And I just went to your site, your personal site, saw those ads. And I guess my question is, or questions are, one, would those ads work today? I know the answer, but I want it from you. And two, are you fearful? Let me ask this in a provocative way. Are you fearful of people saying, well, that Gary Goldsmith man, he's living in the past. Why does he have 50-year-old ads on his portfolio site? But just in terms of background, and I obviously have a point of view on this, but I'd love to hear it from you.
AD AGED: Crayola is the category.
Gary Goldsmith: Exactly. And on a separate note, the other reason those ads are important to me is that when I did those ads, that was actually the first time I really “got it" and felt like I had done something good.
Gary Goldsmith: Honestly, George, I never really thought about it that way. I think it depends on the context. I have those ads on my personal website because they’re part of the historical body of work that I want people to see, whether it be my students or others. The site is more of a retrospective than just a “this is what I'm doing now”. But do I think that they would still work now? Yes, because I think they come out of an insight that's still true.
You could criticize them to say that they’re generic for the category, but there is no category.
AD AGED: Crayola is the category.
Gary Goldsmith: Exactly. And on a separate note, the other reason those ads are important to me is that when I did those ads, that was actually the first time I really “got it" and felt like I had done something good.—
AD AGED: Interesting. Can you expand on what it is you got?
Gary Goldsmith: It was getting the idea of the words not repeating the picture, the picture not just illustrating the words, but the two working together in a way that made a combined meaning that you wouldn't have had otherwise.
And I specifically remember going through this whole process of trying to figure out the best way to say it. With the first ad, I kept thinking, well, let's see, if a toy breaks, you have a broken toy. If a crayon breaks, you have two crayons. That was the first long-hand way I had of saying it. Which was, of course the idea…you break one, you have two of them now.
But then by going back and writing line after line after line, I came up with “Toys break, Crayons multiply. A much shorter, more succinct and memorable version of that same thought.
AD AGED:
And it's about imagination.
Gary Goldsmith:
Yes. And that was the first time that I thought, ok, maybe I could be good at this.
AD AGED:
Oh, interesting. You know, but before.
Gary Goldsmith:
Before that, I was struggling. I was looking at a lot of work in annuals like we all do when we first start. And a lot of the great work back then really spoke to me. I loved a lot of the work I was seeing, and I knew why I loved it.
But I couldn't do it.
I would start working on something, have high expectations, finish it and be disappointed. Even though I knew good from bad, I simply could not do work that I thought was very good. I kept trying and trying. More all-nighters than I can even count. Some stuff was okay, some stuff was pedantic, and then finally, I did that ad.
AD AGED:
And it's almost like it opened the doors.
Gary Goldsmith:
It's a moment, yes. And yes, I tell that to my students all the time. I always reference the difficult time that I had at the beginning…I want them to understand that it's not easy and none of us do it naturally. Keep pushing and your moment will come.
AD AGED:
Lets end today with a little digression, which is what I do best. I'm reading this book now, which is fabulous.
It's called "The Ancient Wisdom of the Mesopotamians." And it's like it's our Western and modern tendency to look at people different from us and say 'how could they have been so ignorant?'
4000 years ago in Mesopotamia, no one would ask if you believe in God or not--Because God was, just was. Right.
What the author is saying is we're being spoken to all the time. We just might not be able to see it. You might not be able to get the perception of the person who loves you and you don't see it. Or the craft you want to do, but it's kind of there. You just have to make the things align.
It occurs to me, When you say this is the moment it clicked, is there a similar clicky moment on why you're starting Makers and Mentors now? Is there a similar conjunction, a similar kind of epiphany in a sense?
Gary Goldsmith:
Yes.
There is, in the sense that, you know, I talk to a lot of students, not just my own students, but other students who know of me and send me their books…students who went to different schools than ours, state schools, private schools, art schools…and I talk to them and I learn about what they were doing in their programs as I try to help them. And one of the things that it reaffirmed for me was that in the program we built at Art Center at that time, we put together a carefully curated collection of great teachers. And I always continued to evolve the curriculum and bring in new and contemporary teachers. It was not a fixed faculty where every term was necessarily taught by the same people.
I'd hear about somebody doing some really good work in LA, meet with them and ask them (or beg them if necessary) to teach. Even if it was only for a term or two. That was back when we had to be in person. During and after Covid, when we went remote, it threw the doors wide open. Jeff Goodby, Jaime Robinson and Greg Hahn each generously agreed to join me on zoom for two weeks of Crashvertising. Dave Dye was kind enough to join us on zoom from London and taught for a few semesters. It created the possibility of building a program like we’re building with Makers+Mentors now, unencumbered by bureaucracy and with talented, contemporary instructors teaching from anywhere in the world.
Or I brought Dave Dye to teach when we could go remote because of Zoom.
Continued...soon.
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