Creative director and multimedia artist Graham Fink and D&AD CEO David Patton were first time judges at this year’s annual Ocean Outdoor Digital Creative Competition. Here are their views on current creative in the UK and its growing role in digital Out of Home.
1/ Some people think there’s been a decline in UK creativity, blaming the digital tide, AI and other factors. Is this your view?
Graham Fink: I do think there’s been a decline, and that makes me sad to say. Britain has always been capable of truly world-leading work. Brave, funny, irreverent stuff that took you by surprise.
I don’t think the talent has gone, but we seem to have become more cautious. More people in the room, more data, more nervousness about getting it wrong, and too much trying to please everybody.
But I’m still excited when something brave comes along. I just want to see more of it.
David Patton: I don’t believe there is a decline in UK creativity, but I do agree the creative environment has become a lot more complicated. We have ever more channels, unlimited content and enormous pressure to produce work much more quickly and efficiently. The danger is that the drive for speed and volume dilutes effective creative thinking.
Having said that, we shouldn’t see technology as the enemy of creativity – the UK has an extraordinary creative culture and some of the best talent in the world. Used well, technology and AI tools give creative people amazing new opportunities to explore and tap exciting new possibilities.
2/ Out of Home — posters as they were — have long been a creative favourite. Is this still the case with digital now taking over the market, or has this yet to be fully exploited?
GF: Yes, posters have always been one of my favourite media. There’s something pure about them. A big piece of art on the streets. You’ve only got a few seconds to stop someone in their tracks, so you need to be big and bold.
Digital should make that even more thrilling, because now a poster can respond to the world, whether that’s weather, time, context, even a plane flying overhead. That opens up a completely new creative canvas.
But too often we’re still just making posters move. The really exciting stuff is when the technology becomes part of the idea itself.
So yes, I think on the whole we’re still only scratching the surface, which arguably is a good thing because it means there’s a huge amount left to discover.
DP: Out of home is an amazing creative canvas and a powerful influencer. The classic poster requires creative discipline and beautiful simplicity because you have a few seconds to communicate an idea and capture someone’s imagination. Digital brings another layer of creative depth because it enables the screen to respond to time, location, weather, realtime events etc. In short, it means that the poster can be an active participant in the environment rather than just sitting within it.
3/ In judging the Ocean Digital Creative Competition what did you make of the overall level of ambition and execution?
GF: There were some real highs, and I enjoyed the debates. Strong opinions are a sign that people care.
One thing that was striking this year was how AI lets you present ideas so beautifully. Almost everything can look impressive. But sometimes the polish is stronger than the actual thought. So we had to keep asking: is there a real idea underneath all that sheen?
The best entries absolutely had one and showed what digital OOH can become. But it’s clear to me there’s still so much untapped potential.
So I’d encourage even more people to have a go next year. Be bold, be curious, use the technology, but don’t let it do the thinking for you.
The tools are ready. What we need now is guts.
DP: I was really impressed by the overall statndard of ideas. The strongest work still contained a very compelling creative idea, but took advantage of location, context and immediacy to create something relevant for that particular time and moment.
The key learning for me was never let the technology overwhelm the idea. We’re only beginning to explore what we can do with this new medium and the one simple creative ambition that should always remain is to create work that couldn’t have existed anywhere else.
