Seven lessons in creativity

Graphika Manila is the Philippines’ premier multimedia and design event. The influential conference is in its seventh edition, and, since 2006, has connected the country’s creative minds with the best visual designers in the world.

This year’s convention happened on Aug. 11 at SMX in Pasay City. Speakers included Gmunk, the visual effects maven behind Tron: Legacy, New York animation studio Psyop, freelance Filipino-American creative director Jerome Austria, Sydney-based advertising network Droga5, Pinoy illustrator JP Cuison, Floridian illustrator Hydro74, and young Manila-based web and graphic design team, Create.ph.

Their talks celebrated original work and inspired an audience of over 3,000 people. Graphika Manila’s attendees ranged from students to professionals  dreamers and doers  and Supreme took part as the event’s proud partner.

With pearls of wisdom about art, creativity, media, and even business, here are the seven biggest lessons we learned at this year’s Graphika Manila.

Start your career by putting your work out there

“Whether it’s just doodles you do, personal stuff, just keep posting your stuff online. It doesn’t matter if you’re the best designer in the world. If nobody sees (your work), how will they know?” said 22-year-old Create.ph founder Christian San Jose.

“I put my work on DeviantArt, and it helped me get exposure and turn my personal work into something that made money,” San Jose continued. “Clients approached me through my website and through DeviantArt, and eventually, I got to work with Kobe Bryant, Dwayne Wade, Usain Bolt, Usher, Nike, Quicksilver, and Design By Humans.”

Hydro74, aka Joshua M. Smith, agrees. His clients now include Nike, Adidas, Lucas Films, Levis, Harley Davidson, but “It wasn’t until I uploaded two or three projects to a site called Geocities that a couple of record companies set me up,” he shares. “That’s how I got involved in design in the first place.”

Bradley G. Munkowitz, or Gmunk, the visionary artist who worked on the concept, design and execution of holographic content for the film Tron: Legacy, also revealed that he got that gig after “publishing (his) projects, going to conferences, and putting the work out there.”

Embrace criticism

Many of the speakers admitted that fear of criticism is often what keeps artists from sharing their work with the world.

“As much as you get praise, you’re going to get criticism,” said Psyop creative director Gerald Ding. “Be comfortable failing. It’s really important to be able to take criticism and remove yourself emotionally from your work.”

“Take the criticism,” noted Christian San Jose. “Bad comments, good comments, take all of that in and use all of that to make your next work better.”

Find your own voice

Illustrator JP Cuison is a two-time Philippine representative to the Cannes Young Lions International Advertising Festival, but he has met the reality of the advertising business: “Sometimes you can’t do what you want to do,” he lamented.

“So, I looked for a venue to bring out what I want,” Cuison shared. “I saw a video of American Artifact about gig poster artists. I said, ‘Maybe I can do that,’ because I was depressed with work, frustrated.” Cuison found his niche, and has since worked on storied posters for Up Dharma Down, Razorback, Meiday, B-side, Rogue magazine, and the hit 2011 film Ang Babae Sa Septic Tank.

Other designers shared their quest for identity. “I struggled with it from the beginning. I tried too hard to be other designers. I tried too hard not to be myself.” Hydro74 said. “And then I realized one day that I have no voice. As a designer, having your own voice within your work changes everything. So be who you are and strive to be the best at who you are.”

In order to find one’s voice, Hydro74 has this advice: “You don’t want to do freelance right away. Everything I learned wasn’t through freelance; it was through the trials and errors of working for agencies and working underneath people… If it weren’t for those experiences, I would not be a successful freelancer. So, full-time freelance should only be reserved for when you have the capabilities. Now, moonlighting while you’re working  make sure you talk to your employer first  that teaches you a lot more. That’s how I got started.”

Never think you’re good enough

Jerome Austria, who is with Coca-Cola, and has served as co-executive creative director at Wieden+Kennedy NY, began his talk with the following quote from American radio personality Ira Glass:

“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste,” Glass once said. “But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you.”

The Glass quote continued, “A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work.”

A common thread between all the Graphika Manila speakers is a certain discontentment, despite any success. Hydro74 revealed, “I see flaws in everything I do.” Gmunk, meanwhile, said, “You can’t just sit back and be like, ‘I’m awesome!’ That’s not in the vocabulary.”

Austria summed it up best: “The key is, never think you’re good enough. If you think you’ve got it all figured out, you stop learning. And that’s where your career ends.”

Find what makes you nervous

Speaking about an advertisement he did for Volkswagen, Jerome Austria shared the uphill battle it was to get it made. “Nobody knew if it could actually be done,” he said. “Nobody knew if it was going to sound like shit. There was a lot of fear involved, like, ‘Is this going to be a total flop? Am I going to get fired?’

“The longer you work in this industry, the more you realize that that feeling is natural, and those are the things you need to chase,” Austria continued. “As we get older, there’s this tendency to grow old and stop taking risks and I think it’s really important that you always stay naïve and curious and humble… The late Steve Jobs said, ‘Stay hungry and stay foolish… You need to chase the projects that are going to make you scared. Because the people who make it in this industry are the people who gamble big.”

Creativity is changing

Revolutionary advertising force Droga5 was represented by their Sydney CEO Sudeep Gohil. The agency has been behind social projects for UNICEF and the 2008 campaign of US President Barack Obama, and their clients include Kraft Foods, Microsoft, The Coca-Cola Company, and Hennessy, among others.

Gohil shared how his company is taking the future by its horns. “The nature of creativity is changing,” he said “The communications landscape that we all live within has changed fundamentally. It’s not about promotion anymore; it’s about communication. And communication is about having a two-way conversation with the people who you’re selling products and services to.”

“Back in the day, the creative person was sort of the smartest person in the room,” Gohil continued. “Think of Yoda as an example. It doesn’t matter whether you understand what Yoda is saying or if it makes any sense  you just go, ‘I don’t understand what he’s saying but he’s a genius so he must be right.’

“But things have changed. The actual role of the creative person now is all about being like (Entourage’s) Ari Gold. It’s all about connection, tenacity, and the ability to make things happen. That’s the most important thing to remember in this day and age,” Gohil declared.

Collaboration is critical

In a world that is increasingly connected and increasingly inundated with information, Sudeep Gohil says that in order to stay competitive, collaboration is key.

“(But) most people have the wrong idea when they think about collaboration, what it actually means, and how they go about doing it,” Gohil stated. “We rarely think about working with people who are very different from us, but diversity should be celebrated instead, because that’s what helps us come up with new ways of thinking and new ideas.

“Collaboration is not about like-minded people working together  that doesn’t necessarily get you anywhere. It’s really about opposite people working together with a common goal,” explained Gohil. “Genuine collaboration is not about going to a place where you’re just kind of playing around the edges. It’s actually about being totally uncomfortable and thinking, ‘What can we do that’s genuinely different?’”

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For more information on Graphika Manila, visit www.graphikamanila.com. To get the latest updates, follow @GraphilaManila on Twitter, and like http://facebook.com/GraphikaManila.