DAY 73: Creative Freedom

One of the requirements of a graphic design student is to constantly be on the lookout for advertising campaigns using creative slogans and messages.  I recall spending hours on the commode, paging through my mother’s magazines, identifying intelligent concepts that would form part of my “Graphic Design Bible.”

I was sifting through some old boxes the other day, and stumbled upon my ‘encyclopaedia’ of paper-trimmings.  Those books had a permanent spot in my art case, as I constantly referred to them in an attempt to mushroom an original idea or design. 

For a brief moment, I visualised myself sitting opposite my peers, working as a team to achieve the perfect end-result.   In fact, one of my campaigns – an above-the-line promotion for a series of cocktail drinks, was inspired by legendary photographer Annie Leibovitz’s nude portrait of Demi Moore.  One of the prerequisites of the advertising brief highlighted the target audience as “male,” between the ages of “eighteen and twenty-five,” with a mild “sexual undertone.”  Needless to say, my creative freedom soared to a new level as I expeditiously worked overnight, producing the finest branding campaign for the “Harvey Wallbanger,” “Jungle Juice,” “Blow Job,” and “Screaming Orgasm” concoctions.

Armed with my inventive designs and my “gift-of-the-gab,” I entered the boardroom ready to present my suggestions to a group of ‘open-minded’ people.  But as fate would have it, Murphy’s Law would place me at the centre of a firing range – with a stern, conservatively-British female, entombing my thoughts.  My sexually explicit designs proved to be “too outrageous” for a society that had recently abolished apartheid, endorsed human rights, and eradicated sexual discrimination in its entirety.

But my colleagues had praised my campaign as a “breakthrough in the world of advertising.”  The ‘sexually explicit’ undertone was eventually approved by their censorship board, and the series of adverts finally made their way into selected publications in South Africa.

My “Graphic Design Bible” serves as a reference to several ingenious and infamous ideas from the advertising world:

Nike’s campaign boasts that “Tiger Woods plays with his own balls.”

An American tabloid distastefully reports that a “One-armed man applauds the kindness of strangers.”

A cancer-awareness campaign cleverly suggests that “Smoking reduces weight – one lung at a time.”

Burger King demonstrates how a woman holding a phallic-looking sandwich with her mouth wide open, will “blow your mind away.”

Creativity is that delicate combination of elements that result in new ideas and innovations.  Man owes his success to his creativity. No one doubts the need for it; it is most useful in good times and essential in bad.

Weight for me tomorrow. Paul

Paul Lambis is the author of “Where is Home?” – A journey of hilarious contrasts. 
For more information on Paul Lambis, and to order his book online,
visit www.paul-lambis.com