As a supplier of creative resources to the creative industry, Artisan works directly with studios across design, advertising, multi-media and in-house corporate and Government. There are a few things that we have picked up from having our fingers on the creative pulse, as it were.

We have been hearing from design studios around Melbourne that large projects are being segmented into manageable components. This has been a flow on effect of client timings being more flexible and budgets being stretched across longer time periods. The workload in studios seems to be more manageable of late, not as many studios have had staff burning the candle at both ends. Hopefully this is an indication that with the pace of work slowing down we are working smarter and not harder.

Looking out wider into the design industry, the industrial design sector is still keeping an eye out for the multi-skilled and ‘all rounder’ designer, this can be said of the design industry in general. There are more technically skilled people sending their CVs and folios to us, this would partially be attributed to a slow in manufacturing in Australia.

The apparel industry is seeing movement of skilled people, with shuffling from established companies and new players in the market moving up. Fashion studios are going to be getting busier with buyers now coming back from overseas with inspiration for our upcoming seasons. This should see an increase in requests for freelance support to help pick up the slack.

Packaging design has been extremely busy of late, as it always is, with existing products having an update to their look. People are looking for value more than ever now and as a reflection of this more supermarket brands are expanding their house brand offerings. More products means more packaging design, which means more requests for experienced packaging designers and finished artists.

Regardless of the economic climate, the Government always has a need to communicate with people. With this in mind, Government departments have been fairly consistent with their creative requirements and Artisan has begun to see more project based short term projects start to emerge. The corporate sector is now in the process of allocating budgets for the financial year 2009 – 2010. August is starting to look like a busy period, which should continue through the following months. This will lead to an increase in freelance and contract opportunities as the workload builds; this type of placement is also a result of many studios working around head count freezes.

The advertising industry has seen a change from just having a set core focus to offering an integrated creative solution. The impacting factors vary from client requests for their agencies to be able to manage their increasing number of components that make up a campaign to agencies wanting to maintain the creative control over all of these components. What will be interesting to see in the future of advertising is if this will result in agencies trying to be too many things to too many people and lose focus on what they excel at or if they will evolve into a new hybrid agency that has a broader range of expertise.

A change that Artisan has noticed in the agency world is a shift from a large number of finished artist and Mac op roles towards projects that require specialist and boutique skill sets; such as high end designers, pitch collaborators and freehand illustrators. The advertising team at Artisan are gearing up for a busy September and October, this seems to be the word on the street from a number of players in the field.

A vital part of an integrated communication solution is the digital component. Communication avenues are displaying results on how consumers relate to the digital space as an advertising platform. One of the more dominant trends that the digital team have noticed is that many companies and brands are trying to gain appeal and improve consumer loyalty by using social media. Digital agencies are also exploring the value in having a strategy for attracting target audiences more effectively to websites, be it their own or for a client. Artisan has noticed an interest from companies in general bringing on board digital strategists to improve their SEO (search engine optimisation).

All in all the vibe out in the industry is positive, with the second half of the year looking to move along at a healthy pace and get busier as the months go by.

Here at Artisan all of us are in touch with the creative community and ongoing trends. If you want to know more about what’s occurring in the industry at the moment we are available on 9514 1000.