A Great Way to Build the Fundamentals You Need to Succeed
Copying the greats is a good way to build the fundamentals that lead to greatness. Here’s some more great advice from Ogilvy on Advertising:
I asked one of our writers recently what was more important, doing your own thing or making the ad as good as it can be. The answer was, “Doing my own thing”. I disagree violently with that. I’d like to propose a new idea for our age: until you’ve got a better answer, you copy. I copied Bob Gage for 5 years, I even copied the leading between his lines of type. And Bob originally copied Paul Rand, and Rand first copied a German typographer named Tschichold.
Those were the words of Helmut Krone, an art director famous for Avis’ “We Try Harder” campaign. It always makes sense to pattern yourself after the successful people in your field, until you develop your own distinct style or approach. Since their work is easily available for review, you can isolate the factors that contributed to their success, and make them your own.
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POSTED IN: Living as a Freelancer, The Greats
6 opinions for A Great Way to Build the Fundamentals You Need to Succeed
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