Hasta La Creative!

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Advertising Agency: Leo Burnett, Dubai
Executive Regional Creative Director: Malek Ghorayeb
Creative Director Art Director: Yayati Godbole
Associate Creative Director Copywriter: Abraham Varughese
Art Director: Mahesh Salgaonkar

Via [ Dubai Lynx ]

Advertising Agency: Team Y&R, Dubai
Executive Creative Director: Shahir Zag
Creative Director: Komal Bedi Sohal
Art Director: Komal Bedi Sohal
Copywriter: Shahir Zag
Photographer: James Day
Retouching: Core Digital, London
Account planner: Nadine Ghossoub

Advertising Agency: FP7, Oman
Creative Director: Noufal Ali
Copywriter: Arun
Art director: Noufal Ali
Graphic Designer: Sanoop Ramachandran
Additional Credits: Ajay Menon, Manish Rodrigues, Pradeep

By ArJun Mukherjee, Bates 141, Kolkata

There’s suddenly this great divide. Art Director vs Designer. It has almost come to the point where it feels that each is a specialized area and one of them is not supposed to delve into the perimeter of the other. Every other day we hear good art directors starting up his or her own design agency frustrated with the cuffs slipped around their hands that limits any creativity whatsoever.

Who’s the culprit? The agency and the system of course.  Hand on heart the scope for experimentation has hit rock bottom in ad agencies. Expect for some patli gali work any brave effort draws jeers and in this hard times it is best encouraged to stick to the tried and tested. On an average print work is unpalatable and indistinguishable. Mediocrity dominate the white pages and the less said about logos and fonts  the better. Talk about brochures and even interns find it an unglamorous thing to do and web… hey isn’t that the digital agency’s job anyway. So what does the art directors do? They slog away, following templates, following last year’s successful campaign, following what the strategy head says and following the client’s scribble on the layout.

Check out the websites of the biggest advertising agencies and see the amount of drabness which sticks out like fish bones. Except for some great films which in most cases are the legitimate children of good production houses there is nothing to talk about. On the other hand Indian design agencies are having limitless fun and it’s reflecting in the cutting edge stuff you can see in their portfolio. And mind you all of them are released work, done for an actual client who is happy about it, have backed it and paid for it. Vivek Sahni Design, Lemon Design, Fisheye Design are creating eyeball bouncing stuff not to mention the path breaking  canvasses by biggies like Bosedk Designs or Ray and Keshavan.

There’s no overnight solution. Ad agencies have to look inwards to create great work and one of the steps is to put the zing back in the art person’s life. Give him the freedom, appreciate when he breaks out of the box, recognize his analytical brain when it comes to understanding a brand and more importantly don’t disassociate him from the designer in him. These are the same guys who slam down their resignations one day to start a design house of their own…firstly it’s a shame to stand back then and say ‘wow this guy was good’ and most importantly it’s a loss which advertising can’t cope up with.

Read more of Arjun’s writings here and here

Advertising Agency: P9 Integrated, A Division Of Percept, Mumbai, India
Creative Director: Paras Kanani
Art Directors: Kunjal Nirwani, Vishal Thakur
Photographer: Vikram Bawa

Client: Aquatech International Corporation
Agency : Pratisaad Communications Pvt. Ltd. Pune, India
Creative Director: Abhijit Joag
Art Director: Girish S. Rapatwar
Visualizer/Illustrator: Girish S. Rapatwar

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Advertising Agency: Lowe Mena, Dubai, UAE
Creative Director: Mark Lewis
Art Director: Sherif Mokbel
Photographer: Graham Tooby
Copywriter: Wilton Ackeer

Via [ Ads Of The World ]

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Creative: Wael Atilli, Kharabeesh Productions

Via [AdsoftheWorld]

Rathin from JWT Bangalore sent us these amazing spots that are on air right now and we all loved them. All three of them!

Advertised brand: ING BANK
Advert: CHINA SHOP/CHASE/SPY
Agency: JWT BANGALORE, INDIA
Creative Director: SENTHIL KUMAR, TINA SACHDEV
Copywriter: RATIN DASGUPTA
Other additional credits:
Director: RAMAMURTHY S
Production house: NIRVANA FILMS

Spot 1: Chase

Spot 2: China Shop

Spot 3: Spy