"DDB News" June 1974
The 25th anniversary of establishment issue
| Mrs.Phyllis Robinson | Copy-Chief |
| Mr.Robert Gage | Chief Art Director |
INTERVIEWER: Bob, do young art directors just starting out ask you if life is a fountain or whatever the AID equivalent would be?
GAGE: I've talked to young people a lot, but it's never like that. I look at their work and criticize it. There used to be much more of that when I was actively the head art director, and when I was for that short span of time the creative director. Now I avoid that a lot, except within the group here, on Polaroid.
ROBINSON: But actually, Bob, when you were functioning that way and I was functioning that way there were some very important things happening. I think it had to do with respect for other people's talents-not trying to stamp them out with a cookie cutter... leave them, and give them an opportunity to grow in their own way rather than try to make more of the same.
That was very much felt in the agency, and was very much felt outside the agency. A new kind of respect for creative energies.
Writers and artists were no longer people who filled in a page or filled out a hunk of time, but were a creative force to be nurtured and shaped and directed, and were people who really had something to give.
(fin.)
