Remember when Joseph Gordon-Levitt played the hopeless-romantic wallflower in 500 Days of Summer? When he was Robin in Batman? Don Jon? Remember when Justin Timberlake started acting? When Michael Jordan played baseball? There is great debate amongst artists whether it's best to master one art form, or be a dynamic artist, getting one's brush wet with many different media. But when tackling this question, I believe the most important thing not to be the medium chosen, but the potency of the message. And in order to assert your message, it is best to choose the appropriate media for the audience.

It's taboo to even utter “art” and “advertising” in the same sentence, let alone equate the two. But I think the fact that they are similar should no longer be a criticism and is actually working to art's advantage at this point in time. The difference between art and advertising lies in intention. Intention is, as I've stated in previous articles, what defines art. Both art and advertising attempt to pitch an idea. But advertising's motive is solely to make money, whereas art's is to encourage critical thinking and for the audience to become a manifestation of those ideals. We're lucky to be artists in a time when it's a fad in our young demographic to be “quirky” and “alternative.” Everyone loves Zooey Deschanel because of this, and as a result, she's become exceedingly famous. We can apply the same strategy to our art to successfully deliver a powerful message to a receptive audience.

If an ad agency is trying to sell a toy car to a little boy, they aren't going to make it a soccer mom mini-van or an old man's Cadillac. It's going to be a bright, shiny, fast racecar. The medium an artist chooses to create a piece should be viewed similarly to this: if one is trying to portray an anti-establishment message, they're not going to create a tri-fold brochure. It would more effectively take the form of graffiti or a documentary. There is an array of mediums to choose from, each of them with diverse malleability to create a desired effect. An artist should take advantage of these and use them to create the most powerful representation of the message as possible.

Audiences who are part of the fad of individuality/ uniqueness may not be in the mentality whole-heartedly at the start — often it's an adaption of the ideals to fit into a clique — but what is interesting about this fad is that although many people begin for superficial reasons, they often find reasoning to stick with it: yoga and eating vegetables makes them more fit; meditation allows them to focus better; reading makes them smarter; dressing how they want makes them more confident. It is my hope that when people view the art that this fad brings them to, and it's presented appropriately for them, that they'll take off their green canvas bomber jackets and pillowy scarves, and stay a while.
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