The shift from print to digital felt like losing a part of the craft

I started in advertising back in '98 at a small agency in Portland, and back then we spent hours tweaking headlines for newspaper ads (like, real hands-on stuff with markers and paste-up boards). Over about 5 years, everything moved to online banners and social media, and suddenly the focus was on click rates instead of the cleverness of the copy. It was jarring to see the same clients who used to care about a full-page layout now just wanting a 300x250 pixel ad done in an afternoon. Has anyone else felt like we lost some of the artistry when we went digital, or is that just me being nostalgic?

3 comments

3 Comments

drew_bennett2419d ago

Ngl, that last point about speed and metrics is the real kicker here. When you got a client breathing down your neck for a 300x250 ad that has to get done by lunch, you start cutting corners just to make the damn deadline. How much of the craft dying is actually because of the tools changing, versus clients just not wanting to pay for the time it takes to make something good anymore?

gibson.sarah19d ago

oh man, totally agree with you. I remember spending a whole afternoon getting the kerning just right on a magazine spread and the client actually noticing and appreciating the difference. now it's all about the numbers and nobody even looks at the words, they just want something that pops off a tiny phone screen. we definitely lost something when speed and metrics took over the craft.

mark_mitchell19d ago

totally agree with you" - well actually i gotta push back a tiny bit on the "nobody looks at the words" part. people do look, but they're looking way faster now. like the real craft now is making something that reads good in half a second while someone's scrolling on the bus. it's not gone, it just moved to a different place. good kerning still matters for headlines on a phone, it's just that the whole layout has to work at like 3 inches wide instead of a full spread. the old school print skills are still useful, you just gotta apply them to way smaller spaces.