Don't hire me. I love colour and am a menace with a watercolour paint set. Nothing is safe.
But there are those to whom art and taste come naturally, and they may well be employed by major agencies to make the logos and advertisements look good. We can be more beholden to them than we know, seeing clever and striking designs that firmly fix products in our minds - and hopefully take dollars out of our pockets to pay for them.
If you want a fascinating hour, go to the graphic arts section of the public library or the same area of a book shop and have a look at the texts that teach the subject - and the font books and advertising show-books that the trade uses to sell itself to itself. Don't feel sad that they all seem to be much cleverer than you on a page - there's been a very great deal of agonising gone into the advertising campaigns and client proposals. And there may also have been a good deal of in-fighting as one agency seeks to take a client or an artist form another.
But back to the colour. Illustrating new gear at Camera Electronic for this weblog page is fun, but there can be rocks and shallows:
a. There may not be too much new gear in the place at any one time. These past two years have shown this in all trades in all shops. If I fasten upon a new accessory with a glad cry you can be sure it is genuine - it's the only new thing in the place that day. We kinda want you to buy it to get the money but we kinda want it to show tomorrow as well...
b. The layout of the shop is busy, and always has been. It is far better now than when I commenced in 2008, but it can still be tough to get enough spare space to lay out the portable studio and get the shots. It's busy in the bits you don't see, too, so you have to be a good Tetris player to function well.
c. Some packs are not open - and its unfair to knife them apart just for a picture. The customers want to do that for themselves. I do diligently search for an opened box so that you can see what the things actually look like, but sometimes I just have to take a pack shot.
d. You're not supposed to open the canisters of 35mm film to see if there is any film in there. Take it from us - it's there.
e. You just get set and ready to take the advertising shot of the century and someone comes by and wants to get into the cabinet that you have the postable studio sitting upon. This is the same mechanism that brings the cat to the door when we have sat down to tea.
All this having been said, the new sheets of coloured paper from Officeworks and Jacksons are looking good. I just need to develop enough artistic taste to make them work with the products.
