After wrapping up a great class with the students I have been working with at Seneca College over the past four months, we ended up chatting about the new opportunities arising for artists around the globe and across the business spectrum. My previous article talked (briefly) about the idea that many large business look towards the skills held by artists as a means of communicating across the broad range of various aspects of their operations through simple visuals. This is only one of many dozens and dozens of examples of how artists may look towards new opportunities.
When I talk with other artists and creatives about their career focus and the world of opportunities available to them, I see a trend that tends to focus on the traditional pathways to career success or fulfillment, and only sporadically meet those who are embracing non-traditional methods. Through my own professional, and personal experiences, I continue to see a growing need for artists outside of the normal arenas. Though I might have thought that this was a product of my own perceptions, it appears that there is indeed an established and growing need for artists, and ‘right-brainers’, outside of cartoons, paintings, theatre and performance.
One of the chief authors who has helped raise this level of awareness within my own professional career, and allowed me to consider these ideas on a larger scale outside of my own world, has been Daniel H. Pink, author of ‘A Whole New Mind‘ and the recently released ‘Johnny Bunko: The Last Career Guide You’ll Ever Need’. The most unusual of these books is the latter, ‘Johnny Bunko’ which is a career guide written in the style of Japanese manga, which closely echoes the comic book format we are so familiar with as kids. ( I still have my issue #1 X-Factor if anyone is looking!).
Dan’s first novel, ‘A Whole New Mind’, follows closely after the concepts elaborated in ‘The World Is Flat‘ (Thomas Freidman which talks about the changing global economy and the potential effects it will have on Western industries). For the sake of not making this sound like a book review, ‘AWNM’ essentially provides an ‘answer’ to some of the problems posed in the ‘TWIF’; mainly that the so-called ‘creative class’ will provide the valuable services and commodity to replace that which is being lost to out-sourcing and automation. The main argument is that while it is cheaper to send work overseas, and to have computers manage more and more of our processes, there is a growing need in the Western hemisphere for products and experiences of substance and depth; something which left brain logical thinking has difficulty addressing, but the right-brain emotional thinkers can provide in abundance.
To prove his point, Dan released Johnny Bunko (which I haven’t read yet, although I will be at a Chapters tomorrow trust me). This is a career guide (left-brain) written in the style of a comic book (right-brain). It will be very interesting to see how well this book fares with the younger generation of students and professionals, as well as with the older generation of course, based on his theories in ‘AWNM’. To me, this signals another small yet significant shift in the perceptions of what uses arts in general can be applied to outside of the traditional channels.
This will continue to be a focus of postings on the besmartist.com website, however comments or additional thoughts to this post would be welcome! In the meantime, feel free to check out Dan’s article for WIRED magazine on the manga culture in Japan.
Ben
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P.S. – besmartist.com is looking for contributing articles from anyone who is interested in providing their insights into the life of professional arts as well as their observations on the creative industry and related subject matter! Interested? drop an email smartsforarts at gmail dot com
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