John A. Lack Presentation

One of the things I remember about the late 80s and early 90s is the song "Video killed the Radio Star" and immediately connecting that single chorus line with MTV due to its amazing marketing and identity logo team. Meeting John A. Lack, the man behind MTV, ESPN2, and Nickelodeon, is like going back in time for me. My childhood was all about watching MTV and Nickelodeon and both were huge staples in any early 90 kid's childhood, when kids ditched running around outside for sitting infront of a tv set. It was a change in society, the beginning of a new generation. And the reason that happened was people like John A. Lack, thinking years into the future, catering to his audience and taking chances on new ideas.

The one huge thing John Lack wanted to get across in his presentation to us, his aspiring creative-driven class, was to listen and only listen to your audience for ideas. This is how all of his tv networks were so successful, even the fact he even got into tv in the first place and changed a whole generation, was that he actually listened to his audience. He saw what they were attracted to, heard what they wanted, and went after making things happen. He wasn't afraid to being a pioneer for tv and making it bigger. I don't even think tv would be what it is today without creative thinkers like John Lack. I think we as designers and creative thinkers need to get outside of our own boxes, listen and observe more about the people around us (our "audience"). The idea of asking open ended questions to potential clients is a good way of opening up. But its also good to keep things fresh, new, and innovative; so its not a bad idea to be inspired by whats going on outside of our own heads and looking at the general audience of our products and designs as well.

The last thing I think is pretty important is to always try to take chances and try to always stay ahead of the game as much as you can. This is why Apple is usually so successful. While their marketing strategy helps them immensely with their success, its generally the fact that Steve Jobs thinks of a design 20 years ahead into the future and slowly works towards his final conceptual design. Lack's example of this was how he had offered Steve to create and sell a phone version of his products in the 90's and Steve turned down the offer saying one day in the future he might have his own phone, which he put on the market in the middle of 2007. Maybe we're not product designers and only go into logos, or advertisements, or whatever. We can still think on this conceptually as, 'well, I have this cool idea, but how can I make it better?' and always looking to improve and think bigger about whatever we create.