Visual Story Telling
By: Mehmet Turan
Tags: Design, Retouching, Advertising Agency, Creative, Freelancers

I’ve been in photography for a very long time, and in last five years, I’m trying to survive in a fiercely competitive market as an advertising photographer and post-production artist. In addition to that in the previous three years opened my company to the international arena and providing image post-providing service worldwide. What I see is that as long as I’m locked in a local market, I’ll be far more vulnerable, there are far more opportunities globally than ever before. Internet and fintech enable us to find fulfilling creative work and allows us to maintain lives where we live.

Photo by Debby Hudson on Unsplash

I used to write in Turkish on Medium before, and English is not my native language, but I’ll try my best. I decided to write in English because I decided that I’m no longer just interested in my local market. Therefore, it will be far more fun to communicate with an international market.

I plan to write on anything to do with creatives, retouching, and post-production work. I see a lot of work from creatives all around the world. I keep them but why keep them only to myself. Also, I try different services to promote my work and grow my audience, therefore, can share my experiences with those services, both good and bad.

One of my latest discoveries is a portal named Working not Working. They describe themselves as a site trying to take the guesswork out of freelancing — for both independent professionals and the agencies that hire them.

They hope to streamline the process of hiring and getting hired through a social network-like platform, and some handy tools. It was created by Justin Gignac (right), freelancer, artist and former art director at agencies like Toy, Fallon and Ogilvy & Mather and fellow Ogilvy alum Adam Tompkins, CD at DraftFCB who also worked at Amalgamated. Since I’ve started using them for last one month, it’s early to write my experience with them. Though they have a friendly user interface and useful content, it’s not a site to find creatives and work for creatives.

The reason I wrote this first article is an online magazine they publish. The article is named Top 50 Companies Creatives want to work with. Of course, this list is based on a survey made with creatives inside the portal in 2018. What I noticed at first look at this list overwhelming number of companies based in the US. Does that mean US companies are more creative and encourage creativity? Fifty companies is a long list to discuss on for the full list, please check the link above but for a quick review let’s check top 10. Number 10 on the list is Ideo. A well-known design company, possibly one of the top three regarding design. You may find Ted talks from their founders on the Internet. Ninth on the list is 72andsunny. I know their work from Barilla campaign. Their motion ads are good, but in my opinion, they do not have much creativity in graphics and still images.

Eight on the list is Netflix, no surprise there and I guess everyone knows who they are. Although their sole existence depends on motion; tv series and movies they heavily use still images. They show a different movie art for the same film depending on subscribers’ habits. I love movie posters since childhood, and probably they are one of the best setting tools for a film (Personal note: I should write about best movie poster designers in the future). Seventh on the list is Pentagram, a design firm from the UK. This is the first time I hear their name (totally my ignorance). Opposite of 72andsunny Pentagrams graphics and still image portfolio is substantial. It looks they have mastery in fonts.

Sixth on the list is Google Creative Lab, another division of Google I hadn’t heard of before also learned that they have a program called Creative lab 5. It’s explained as each year, Google Creative Lab invites five exceptional creatives to join a paid, 12-month program. It’s called the Creative Lab Five; Google Creative Lab is a group of interdisciplinary thinkers and doers. We are designers, writers, business leaders, filmmakers, animators, producers, creative technologists, and much more. We are a small team that pushes for an impact that outweighs our footprint. Fifth on the list is Droga5, an independent agency I’ve seen their before. And all of a sudden I see a drastic change and increase in still image quality. Out of the first ten so far most robust still life imagery is at Droga5.

Third and second on the list is Apple & Google. Not much of a surprise there. Regarding still imagery, I like Apple’s visuals much more and at least this part of the world I don’t see much Google visuals. I know they have a lot of UX work plus a lot of graphics work such as doodles they are limited in my opinion but creative for sure. Google is one of the massive companies I did some job for and for sure they are a big brand. One thing is certain both companies do a lot of creative work with independent artists.

Second on the list is Wieden+Kennedy and they are the advertising agency of Nike which is on the top of the list. To be on top of the list, both companies should be creating content appealing all creatives. I like Nike’s images that cover the front of their shops. Beautiful pictures that I can easily hang on the walls in my home and if you have time I strongly suggest you watch Wieden + Kennedy’s commercials. They make you watch them. One final thing as far as I know most of the post-production of Nike’s visuals are done by Happy Finish. One of the largest post-production firms and I highly recommend to visit and review still life imagery portfolio they show. Also, it’s an excellent place to learn the names of some master level retouchers.

For who would you like to create something for?