Some worrying, some not. Some new, some not. All opinion*
This is not the full article yet - I’m going to piece it together bit by bit…
1. Demise of the ‘craft’ of creativity.
1.1 Feeling the rush.
No longer are young designers/art directors prepared to spend many years listening to others and taking advice, honing, refining and nurturing their talent, skill, trade and craft. In the same breath, senior creative personnel, due to the ‘immediate’ times that we live in, often don’t have the time to give ‘really constructive’ feedback on work. Training is also often overlooked, as there is always so much more work to get through. The old adage ‘A stitch in time, saves nine’ is rather appropriate.
1.2 The rise of the Long Term Freelancer.
A by product of the huge increase in work for digital agencies, is the huge increase in demand for freelancers. As a short term solution freelancers are a great way to ‘fill the gap’. However more and more, agencies are retaining freelancers on a long terms basis - but still paying them at freelance rates. This has a number of negative effects, on not only creativity but also agency life in general.
They sit next to permanent staff, do the same work and socialize together - soon enough permanent staff start to think ‘hang on, that freelancer gets paid 2/3/4 times more than me for the same amount of work - I should do that…’, worse still some freelancers, due to their talent, start to get the juicer briefs leading to antagonism among full time staff.
Secondly, Freelancers stay for 6 months then leave - in many cases freelancers are the source of knowledge on a particular client - the agencies output suffers from the loss and suddenly stable relationships can start to falter.
*based solely on my own observations
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