Last night I watched part of a movie, “What A Way To Go.” The subject matter was serious, very well documented, and the presentation was poetic.

My friend asked, “Do you think that movie was done artistically?” I said, emphatically, “Yes.”

The movie, which consists of a collage of images and interviews, has a consistent background ambience created by music and old movie clips.

However, I mentioned that it looked low budget, and that perhaps it was taken with someone’s home camera. This doesn’t matter to me at all, and did not take away from my enjoyment of the movie or how artistic I think it is, but my friend, who also thinks highly of the movie, felt I was being insulting.

I tried to explain that I was just making a observation, based on seeing many movies, that if the producer created more movies and had better equipment, it would appear more technically “slick.”

Technical skills are very important at DDA, and DDA’s writers, graphic designers, web designers, and videographers pay close attention to them. Although technical skills may be grasped intuitively by some people, if not, it’s no problem, because they can always be learned.

From my work illustrating academic textbooks before I was hired by DDA, I learned many technical copywriting details, like what is the proper minus sign to use in an equation, to add a space before and after an equal sign, and to use straight instead of curly quotation marks for measurements.

DDA’s writers know the rules of grammer, but what makes their writing interesting is their creativity. Likewise, as a designer, I must be aware of rules about typography, what font size to use on websites, how to photomanipulate an image, and what colors are best for certain markets. But all of these rules would be useless if they weren’t fueled by creativity.

Here at DDA, we are all driven by a desire to create interesting and quality work, and that provides great motivation to learn the technical details!

Using the computer as a common medium for printed design, website design, and video has resulted in each specialty influencing each other. Whatever our specialty, each of us has become somewhat of a multimediast.

For example, printed design sometimes looks more like website design through the organization of its content. Article outlines are often designed like website buttons.

Websites use callouts like in printed media, except they become buttons. Flipbooks (virtual books that can be flipped through, complete with page turning mpeg sounds) have become popular on websites.

Video is frequently used on websites in the form of a spokesperson.

Illustration construction and deconstruction (like Harold and the Purple Crayon) has become popular in video.

What does this mean? I like to think of it like multiculturism. Different media worlds getting to know each other, curious, and finding appreciation for what is unique and getting excited about what is similar. Ultimately, it’s a bigger playground!

After such a full-filled weekend, it can be difficult to get back to the grind early Monday morning. I’ve grown accustomed to my inability to wake up smiling on Monday’s and compensate for it by relying on a number of reminders that I’ve put in place to ensure nothing falls through the cracks and everything gets addressed in a timely manner. From post-it notes to calendar and email notifications, the system I implement works well for me. It is a system that allows me the peace of mind in knowing that I can come into work, have a cup of tea, and know exactly what project or issue needs my attention.

Our full-service advertising agency is a busy environment Monday-Thursday, 8:00-6:00. As such, one needs to stay aware and informed at every level in every department, including programming, copywriting, website development, graphic design, photography, videography, animation, and more. Each of us uses our own unique system that enables to stay on target and focused on critical topics. Consequently, I am able to wake up Monday morning a little easier and a little less frazzled to enjoy the day and the projects at hand.