“writing” and “art directing” in the land of advertising…

The last couple of weeks have (for la) involved writing about 20 scripts plus rounds and rounds of revisions, and (for me) more than one 50+ page deck of layouts looking for that perfect design to help Kraft sell more salad dressing.

True, our job descriptions are “copywriter” and “art director” respectively, but we spend so much time sitting on couches thinking and brainstorming ideas that when it comes time to really do our disciplines it often feels like a chore! We can only write and design for SO many consecutive hours before our muscles become unbearably cramped and our faces shiny and our hair knotted.

It’s fun to wallow in the specific woes of our job descriptions! This infographic sums it up pretty well:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/lscribbly/6283868537
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lscribbly/6284449408
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lscribbly/6284449408
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lscribbly/6284449518

Borrowed from bigorangeslide.com

Some LOL truisms:

• “asian man bicycle carnival royalty free” – Yep, that sounds about right. Sometimes it seems like image searching takes up about 85% of my day.
• “master final logos revised copy 6 updated v4.ai” – never put the word “final” in your filename, it will never ever be true.
• finance asking people if they did their timesheets (I believe lali is about three months behind on that one…)
• finance asking them again (yeah, we’re on probably every timesheet-related email blast.)
• photoshop crashing – yep
• judging other peoples’ writing – yep
• art director [insert dramatic crying] – I think I cry at the office at least twice a month. Does that sound accurate, la?
• copywriter – actually, la takes offense, she has 193!!

I can relate more to this infographic than la can because she doesn’t actually have an unfinished novel or screenplay in her desk, but a few months ago we found out that Glenn Sanders did, when he quit Chiat to become a screenwriter. Go Glenn Go!

If you want to see another funny infographic JUST about copywriters, click here.

Well, I’ve burned enough precious comping minutes sharing my feelings with you lovely people, so I should probably get back to Photoshop. My current task? “What would this design style look like for the brand in a year? Two years? On holidays?” Yes, for real.

xo, li