Observation is Key

My name is Evan Wickersham and I’m a senior at Temple University in the copywriting concentration.

Before reading, ask yourself this question. How do I find inspiration?

I’d be willing to bet that most if not all of us find inspiration from things, people, or places we’ve observed.

Throughout my time at [ 2 one 5 ] Creative as a graphic design intern I was given a plethora of tasks that I really enjoyed being a part of. However, the most important task I had this whole time was not assigned to me by somebody else. This task was assigned to me, by myself.

This task was observation. To me, observation is essential when it comes to entering an office environment for the first time, especially as an intern.  My first few days were extremely intimidating, simply because I had no idea what I was doing or what I should do when I was done my assignments for the day. But, I quickly learned about this magical little thing called observation.

Between my assignments, being in meetings, or networking with other employees I took time to observe everyone. I observed how they communicated, how they worked, how they came up with ideas, what ideas they came up with, the list goes on and on. This was extremely valuable because not only did I learn more about the dynamic of an advertising agency, but I also learned a great deal about myself and where I fit into the puzzle.

I learned that despite having skills in graphic design and having years of experience in it – that my true love is copywriting. I love sitting down for hours and writing headlines or developing a concept that can be stretched out over an entire campaign. Simply put, I love using words to build things.

I wasn’t given a lot of opportunities to work on copywriting since that wasn’t my role, but just recently I was given an opportunity to work on a campaign as a copywriter and I’m enjoying every second of it (this doesn’t mean I don’t love doing graphic design work as well). However, I feel as though I’m actually exercising my true gift, which is less about physical execution and more about ideas and, you guessed it … observation.

Observation is essential to a creative person’s career. The more you observe others the more you will learn, adapt, and grow as a creative. I think this is something as students we might take for granted, because we are so worried about getting an internship and trying to impress them so we get a job. I think it’s easy to get so caught up in this “race” that we forget what we learned or even worse we didn’t learn anything because we didn’t observe.