In case you missed it, I wanted to show you this piece that appeared in a recent issue of AdWeek, which I thought was most relevant and reflected well the philosophy here at Portfolio Center. We have many alums at Goodby Silverstein, and they all fit this mold… their talents and capabilities are multi-purposeful and convergent such that they can work within any genre to communicate a message.

Rich Silverstein, the creative director at Goodby Silverstein, understands the value of new media. As well, he understands that because we are in an information economy, the world is becoming progressively complicated. Portfolio Center has appreciated this for years, realizing students are going to have to become more skilled at reducing complex concepts into simple, understandable elements. As communicators, our students are taught to think like architects, as the ability to be systematic, integrated, and standardized becomes a major part of any need within the creative world.

One medium just won’t do… Our grads will be required to create scenarios for one medium and then repurpose that brand experience across multiple platforms.

The convergence of our world will demand the creatives of tomorrow have a capability to create consistent visual messaging that escalates across any number of distribution channels. Students must obtain these interdisciplinary skill sets to be successful into their futures. Yes, as McLuhan noted, “The global village has become tribal.”

Collaboration will also play an increasingly important role for designers, writers, and art directors, because there are more parties involved in the process. We’re looking into a future wherein designers play integral roles in massive projects.

Within the advertising agencies, the old commissioned media based models for generating income will completely disappear—have already, by and large—in favor of a profitability that will be derived from proof points which insure measurable results. Clients will require very specific returns on all projects and work done.

Portfolio Center students graduate with portfolios that reflect their capabilities and opportunities in a comprehensive, integrated way. Ultimately, they leave here with, as Rich says, ‘more than one arrow in their quill.’

Enjoy the article below…

WHAT’S NEW IS OLD AGAIN By Rich Silverstein

Remember art school? You’d have this ugly, green tacklebox filled with pens and pencils, rulers, paint, pastels, Rapidographs, ink, scissors and erasers. It was everything you needed to change the world. You were encouraged to use your imag- ination to explore new directions and nothing was off limits. For the first time in our young lives we had nobody to tell us what to do. For most of us, our lives changed forever.

Well, fast-forward to today and welcome to the World Wide Web: a great, big, wonderful sandbox to play in. Welcome to a second chance at art school. Thank you Adobe, Google and YouTube. We now have a new tacklebox: a beautiful, glossy, white one filled with photography, typography, filmmaking, editing, sound design and animation that is needed to make a creative soup.

No longer are we handcuffed to the network’s time limits or their blatant double standards towards censorship. We can free a still image and make it flash. Typography becomes even more powerful by animating it. We can produce small films that are festival-worthy.

Most amazing to me is how little new hir- ing we’ve had to do relative to the new medium. What has happened is a vast outpouring of creativ- ity from all areas of our company. Designers are be- coming art directors; art directors in turn are designing Web sites. Film producers are becoming animation experts. Writers who only wanted to produce a 30-second commercial now work excit- edly on long-format films in the multifaceted envi- ronment of a complete Web site. If you can create a rich banner, you can write a 30-second commer- cial. The rules have changed.

Now this didn’t happen overnight; it’s ac- tually been building to a boil over a two-year pe- riod. At first we separated our Web designers, writers and producers. We didn’t give them a clever production company name, but they were off to the side. Now that we have empowered everyone to challenge the norm, the walls have come crumbling down and it’s like a shot of adren- aline has hit the company. Because of this magical medium, I can only think that the future of adver- tising is actually in a healthier place. In fact, 50 per- cent of all our creative output is Web based, and we have won more awards from the One Club and Cannes for interactive than the so-called traditional media. All of this in only two years: now that’s mov- ing fast. The genie is out of the bottle and we’re not going back.

I myself was slow to embrace the Inter- net because I was distrustful of being able to cap- ture real emotion and unable to give up the comfort of holding ink on paper. I held these as sa- cred truths to everything I know about communi- cating. But, I came to realize I didn’t have to give up very much to be able to do so much more. The speed with which a viral film runs through YouTube and into popular culture has convinced me of the Web’s importance. This is powerful stuff. Agencies have been talking about creating content for the last few years. Well, I think our time has come.

Now, I want to make it perfectly clear that this is not creating for the sake of creating. The idea will always be king and the balance between artistic execution and the selling of a product is still the norm, but now we have a deeper environ- ment to exploit it.

We are truly a lucky bunch of people who actually get paid to play instead of paying tu- ition. This is a great opportunity; let’s not mess it up. Let’s bring out our new tackleboxes and get the standards really high. This is a new medium that we’ve been training for our whole lives. This is why we went to art school in the first place.

ADWEEK www.adweek.com

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