Art Is the Answer

The sweetest days are those in which some thought, conversation, quote, idea, image starts occupying your mind and just doesn’t want to leave. It keeps climbing to the surface of your consciousness until you give it enough attention. It lingers in your mind, searching for capacity to be considered the way a fruit fly lingers in the kitchen, searching for sweet oranges.

This most recently happened to me as a result of a conversation with a fellow marketer and entrepreneur. We were discussing the transformation marketing has gone through in the last couple of years to serve the customer by being helpful and fun. During our discussion, my conversationalist genuinely remarked, “Art is the answer.”

“Art is the answer.”

I haven’t stopped thinking about this simple statement ever since. How on earth is art the answer? In many ways, I guess…

Good writing lies at the heart of good marketing, and is itself a type of art. Math, which requires not only precision but also abstract thinking and imagination, is a type of art. Design, experiential learning and multimedia projects are art. Artful can be the way you communicate with customers and deliver information in various formats. In the end, art isn’t about a specific discipline or industry. It’s just an approach to life: investing passion in your work, being eager to do it under any conditions, and aspiring to make it better.

While this observation isn’t earth-shattering, it does reveal the potential for anyone to be an artist. As author Neil Gaiman said,

“Make good art. Make it on the bad days,
make it on the good days, too.”

This also poses a request to all the art majors out there: expose your art to the world now. Find a way to make it real even outside the classroom because others are hungry for your art. The way marketing departments have started hiring journalism majors for business blogging, art talent will be recruited for complementary positions. That shouldn’t come as a surprise. Art has the power to create an experience, to inspire and build relationships. This is what companies need.