Panel Transcript: Hello, Images, Meet Text
In November, mediabistro held a seminar called “Hello, Images, Meet Text: Understanding the Interplay of Art Direction and Editorial,” with Julie Taraska, the articles editor of Home magazine, Frank Anselmo, an art director and writer at BBDO, Janet Froelich, the creative director at The New York Times Magazine, Seth Greenwall, a photography lecturer, Stella Kramer a photo editor who has worked in the New York publishing world for 15 years, and Paul Makovsky who is a senior editor at Metropolis.
Julie Taraska: How do the editors and the art directors work together?
Frank Anselmo: Okay, well, I work with another art director. He’s also a writer. We come up with ideas and when we come up with an idea that we absolutely love whether it’s for a commercial or for a magazine ad, we show our creative director. And there’s other teams presenting to my creative director so he’s the first big sell. So if he loves our idea – and he’s not one to fall in love with every idea – he’ll show the chief creative officer which oversees all the ideas of the company I work for and if he loves it, he puts it in this corner of his office and then after he sees everyone else’s work, he compares them and just picks out his favorites and then maybe the client has a chance to see it. If the client likes it and buys off on it, then we’re ready to produce it and that’s when we get the media department into it and we start talking to magazines, newspapers. It’s totally different with television because a director gets involved and that’s a whole separate thing. But with print, you work with an art buyer; we have an amazing art department. We can ask for a picture of Elvis on a toilet and they’ll find it somehow. And if they can’t find it they’ll make it happen cause we have great photo re-touchers and anything’s possible because when the client’s paying for it, you just make these things happen. That’s kind of how we sell the ideas. Editors just get involved really at the end, once it’s sold. So it seems like 99 percent of the job is selling the idea and then you just follow it through.
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