Yes, there are no art directors anymore. At least it's hard to find new generations of them, and the ones that are coming out think more about tools and trends than about the basics of art direction. 

Perhaps we are focusing education on creativity, more on having ideas and how to sell them, which is fine, but neglecting other important parts of training such as art direction. 

We focused too much on knowing Premiere and four basic notions of Photoshop to be able to close that part and go deeper into what, in principle, seems to be the "most attractive" part of our profession: thinking. 

And it is curious that the attractiveness of thought is being imposed on other complementary disciplines from which it is also possible to think. Perhaps the speed of everyday life, of consumption and of life itself lead us to focus on the formats offered by the media today, to look at the new tools of TikTok, because we have to be in TikTok, which is a trend, or leave it and think about the metaverse or... And all this is outdated, tomorrow another format, another network or another medium will come out and, however, what will always last will be a good idea, a memorable copy or an excellent art direction. 

When asked who Gridnik was, few of the new creatives know the answer or know of the existence of Wim Crouwel's work and, nevertheless, any of his works are still current today, no matter what medium or format you put them in. And a good art direction lasts. And it's not only a question of graphic design, but we are talking about someone capable of creating as one of the five founders, the so-called Total Design, executing complex projects for industry, commerce, culture and governments, a trend that transcends design to become a reference in modernist art direction.

We can focus, both agencies and clients, on being on everything new that comes out, and yet Adele comes along and blocks all the vinyl factories, doubling shifts and not being able to keep up with the production of her new LP. Yes, vinyl. And also, by the way, she forces Spotify to remove the shuffle button because if she wants her record to be listened to one way, who are the market or the technology to decide for her? It's not the format that rules. 

Good art direction and creativity will outlive the medium and the format. We should reinforce the education of our next professionals not from now on, so that they don't arrive at agencies without having defined themselves or having a clear idea of whether they want to be copy or art. We should go back to talking about color theory, grid systems, typography, having a good foundation in illustration and photography, composition and not only having ideas, but understanding that all of that is also part of them. We are not talking about looking back, we are talking about visual culture.