When Newbies Inspire

Creatives can be inspired by any number of influences. Nature. God. And for some people, recreational medications seem to do the trick.

But the thing that most often inspires me to create great work is reviewing the great work that’s already out there. When I was wee copywriting student in ad school, we were encouraged to soak up the latest issues of Archive Magazine and the Communications Arts advertising awards annuals for the express purpose of getting us into the mindset to do great work, ourselves.

We’d look at the current works of Fallon and Goodby and Weiden, while visions of One Show pencils danced in our heads. And with every turn of the page, we were reminded that people out there were finding ways to produce work that made us all proud.

Cut to umpteen years later, and I still find myself being inspired by great work created by others. The irony is I no longer turn to the awards annuals to find it but in the very halls of the advertising schools where I once walked and concepted, myself.

I recently attended a portfolio review at CreativeCircus, an advertising school in Atlanta, Georgia, where I had the pleasure of meeting more than two dozen wide-eyed creative wanna-bees who had just weathered two years of the same boot-camp style of concepintg instruction I had survived so many years ago.

And the work was exceptional.
 

How can I qualify this statement? Easy. The student work I reviewed made me jealous. Yeah, you read it right. Jealous. It made me wish I had thought of something like that, and yes, their spec campaigns included a few brands I had worked on in my career.

And that gave me a reason to pause. Back in the day when I had my nose stuffed in an advertising award annual and saw the amazing work being created, perhaps I was jealous of those creatives back then, too, just as I was when recently reviewing the student work.

Jealousy inspired me. Who’d of thought it?

So the next time you’re feeling creatively blah, go check out the ad school websites and see what the creative students are up to. Yes, you’ll feel a tiny hint of jealousy when you see the work those young whipper-snappers have created. But in the end, you’ll feel very much inspired.

I know I do.