So what does vision have to do with advertising?

(From a Jay Fields & Company web site sketch)


Given the rush of our times, it's easy enough to perceive the graphic arts--and everything to do with branding--as a steaming, frenetic, Mac-based, overnight kitchen works.

I'm reminded of the "Let's do an ad" New Yorker cartoon where four ad-types luminesce in delight.

I'm also thinking about Witold Rybczynski's recently published biography of Frederick Law Olmsted, A Clearing in the Distance, and the grounded sense of practicality Olmsted brought to landscape architecture--along with his intuitive understanding of what something will look like and feel like twenty years, fifty years, one hundred years from now.

Much in the way of Olmsted, much in the way his great park designs--like Manhattan's Central Park, Montreal's Mount Royal or Boston's Back Bay Fens--were indeed public art, it would seem for a brand to last the creators of that brand would best have feet in two worlds; the one being the world of the New Yorker cartoon, the other being the world of "what can be," the world of imagination, the world of vision.

The benefactors of visioning--whether it be Olmsted "seeing" Central Park and sparking the imagination of New York City commissioners in the mid-19th century or an agency presenting a long-range campaign--are not only the targets of the communication itself but everyone engaged in the process of "becoming" what the communication expresses or implies. Make no mistake: communications reflect intention, energy, grace and vision. Without consideration of "who are we" and "who we want to be," thoughtless, marginally strategic communications can actually bury a brand, or at the very least, do it serious bodily harm.

Along this line of thought, it's arguably reprehensible for a design group or agency to respond to a client who needs something yesterday without considering the effect on the brand and the total context within which such an emergency exists. Further, any designer who is new to a brand needs to understand where that brand has been so that, with new work, any reasonable foundations can be cherished and enhanced rather than automatically blown up or relabeled as lost civilization. For marketers and stakeholders of any stripe, the manual in the glove compartment says: respect the brand, respect where the brand has been; and, above all, respect what the brand can be.

The American Institute of Graphic Arts has recently studied and refined the language of process, drawn from case studies with many successful designers and from conversations with executives at IBM and Herman Miller and Hewlett-Packard and other companies (as reported in Communications Arts in May of '03).

AIGA articulates three phases in arriving at approach--defining the problem, innovating and, finally, generating value. Under the first, the team defines the problem it is trying to solve, then envisions the end state. As CA reports, "Knowing what victory is becomes vital as you embark on the journey of solving the problem." And, "If you've ever been part of a team that seemed lost, it's likely they skipped this step."

Talking about a step under the innovating phase, about enabling the team, the article explains, "When integral to the project, designers can help the team work as a team by helping them make choices, envisioning different outcomes, seeing the 'white space' between and connecting divergent views and approaches."

And, in a step under generating value, called "choosing the best solution," there's this: "(Designers) can often be the pivotal voice in this stage, helping to argue for the best overall solution. We can visualize the case, see different sides of the problem and lay out a path for making a commitment to a given solution."

Inherent in this model for creativity and decision-making is the notion of vision. It can pull up to the station as part of a brand discovery process, as part of long-range planning, as part of on-going conversation and dialogue between team members. But mostly, it has to show up--and the more articulate, the more inspired, the better.

Years ago, as part of a creative team positioning the City of Asheville, a long-term process that kept getting more and more refined, our communications began to fall into the elegant arena of a place that had the finely-hued sophistication of a true city fully surrounded by breathtaking wilderness--both environments a delight to the spirit. Our original campaign, in fact, used the line "It will lift your spirit," the topography borrowed from the cover of Harper's Magazine, the spokesperson George Plimpton, a great choice to represent the tone and voice we wanted to convey.

In its finest hour, a well-presented brand represents an appreciation for "what is;" it sustains the earth, makes a difference, engages customers in an experience that will bring them back 20 years from now or even 50 years from now.

Given that opportunity and that sort of perspective, well yeah, hey--let's do an ad.

The Sandy Schenck/Green River Story

(Written for my friends at Green River Preserve)

The approach road reels and unspools through rhododendron and blanketing stands of hardwoods and pines until it swivels off to become an even narrower lane. Suddenly, you’re on the property of Green River Preserve. It’s a place of ponds, lakes, streams, waterfalls and open fields; of screened-in porches, cabins and lodge rooms; of boys and girls in the midst of discovering a different world, oftimes the one inside themselves.

Every summer this nature and science camp, south of Brevard, welcomes gifted and talented children into an atmosphere defined by respect for self, respect for others, and respect for all living things.

Its success flows from the initial inspiration and strategic decisions of naturalist Sandy Schenck who, upon settling on the perfect piece of ground, literally and figuratively, has gone about positively changing the lives of youth for more than two decades.

The Schenck family purchased the thirty-four hundred acres, now called Green River Preserve, in the early 1950s as a place to spend weekends and summers fishing, hiking and exploring the Green River Valley. As a child, Sandy learned how to track, hunt, milk cows, churn butter and cook on a woodstove from people whose families had lived in the valley for generations. Through their passed-down stories, he absorbed a reverence for the land and valley history.

Leaving behind the known world of camping

In 1987, Sandy left a career in business to fulfill his lifelong dream of starting a summer camp on the Preserve. After touring camps from Georgia to Maine, a conversation with a child psychologist about the needs of very bright children planted a seed that would later blosssom into Green River.

Sandy wondered: Why not offer “gifted and talented” children a piece of wild mountain geography where they can grow both as naturalists and individuals? In asking the question, a new kind of experience was born; a reinvention of what a summer camp can be and the beginnings of a “wilderness school for gifted children.”

For starters, Green River is a noncompetitive camp, perfectionism being an issue particularly relevant to gifted populations. Campers learn noncompetitive skills—like canoeing, rock climbing, pottery and fly-fishing—all alternatives to competitive team sports.

The focal point is experiential learning. Naturalists at the camp, called “mentors,” are men and women of exceptional character who love teaching and love the outdoors, among them foresters, geologists, biologists, musicians, and artists. Going with the flow of a single day’s activities, a camper could easily run under a waterfall, crawl into a cave, explore an archeological site, track wildlife, taste an edible plant, and stomp feet to the rhythms of Appalachian banjos and guitars.

Hiking into astonishment

A snake-like line of back-packed 12-year-olds rattles up a non-existent path moving over and under fallen trees, some four feet in diameter, across boulders and tumbling creeks.

The group’s mentor, Naomi, scarcely taller than her students, rounds everyone up to encircle an outcrop of wild ginseng. She talks about how this curative plant strengthens the body and about how rare “sang” is, these days, in the mountains.

The destination is Uncle’s Creek Falls, a crashing column of white water.

Once there, some of the middle schoolers, up from Charlotte, join the ranks of past Green River “Polar Bears” by standing under a long flume and repeating something about being frozen 10 times. Around to the side and up the shank of a hill, a boy climbs next to a lichen-covered rock and finds a salamander. He yells back to his partner, “Look at this! Look at this!”

These kinds of experiences richly reflect the camp’s mission: “to provide a challenging and nurturing learning experience and to inspire a profound appreciation of interconnectedness, ecological respect, and the joy of living.”

Staying consistent with that mission is particularly important with gifted populations, given the many sizes and shapes of giftedness. Children can be gifted academically, linguistically, artistically, musically, scientifically, or in many other ways. In that light, and to de-emphasize competition, the ending score of all games is “fun to fun.” There are no teachers, classes or super stressy races or tests, only naturalists and counselors and lots of activities.

Lives changed

In the end, Green River makes a difference in children’s lives, whether or not they have seen a wild turkey, a deer, a bear, and a venomous snake during their summer stay—the camp’s “Grand Slam” of sightings. And the GRP experience is never forgotten.

“More than anyone or anything else in the world I am who I am today because of Green River Preserve,” writes a South Carolina camper.

Sandy Schenck recalls another former camper and mentor, Chris Paul, who looked up from his work in the Peace Corps in Africa to discover an approaching figure wearing a red GRP bandanna—a small world, made smaller by the fundamental notion that man and nature are one, woven together, and that we are all potential leaders and stewards in watching over the Earth.

There are Woodcraft Laws at Green River, one of which has to do with Beauty. In part, it says: “Be a friend of all wildlife. Conserve land, forest and rivers.”

Recently retiring from direct management of the camp, Sandy Schenck continues to take on the evocation of this Woodcraft Law as a personal belief system and way of life. In recent years, he has settled parts of the Preserve into conservation easements, initiated the documentation of passed-down stories about the families of the valley (including a wonderful piece by cousin David Schenck about Joe Capps, who for years walked 28 miles each way to his mill job in Greenville, South Carolina), and inspired the creation of a public school program called “Muddy Sneakers.” In the fall of 2008, Muddy Sneakers provided a semester-long series of wilderness expeditions for roughly a thousand school kids in Western North Carolina.

All these experiences wend their way back to Green River Preserve and to the idea behind it, a place set aside from the crush and stress of daily life, a place that provides ballast for “nature deficit disorder.” Green River, in fact, is inclined to operate in sync with another of its Woodcraft Laws: “Be kind, do at least one act of unbargaining service each day. Be helpful, do your share of the work. Be joyful, seek the joy of being alive.”

A nice description, so far, of the life of Sandy Schenck.

(Sandy and his wife, Missy, remain executive directors of Green River Preserve, with the day-to-day direction of the camp now in the experienced hands of Paul and Beth Bockoven.)


Sidebar:

An ageless corridor, preserved.

The land occupied by Green River Preserve is bounded on one side by 10,000-acre DuPont State Forest, on another by vast lands under conservation easements established by John Ball. These protected parcels connect with YMCA Camp Greenville and Jones Gap State Park in South Carolina. All this wild acreage, which includes the Schenck family portion of some 2,800 acres, crosses the continental divide and forms a natural corridor for the movement of wildlife in upstate SC and WNC. Sandy Schenck has worked for years to keep this corridor open and unhampered by civilization. His dedication to keeping the mid-section of this natural area free from development speaks of a commitment to principles upon which the Preserve is founded. “We are guests of the land”, he says. “The plants and animals who live here are the real occupants.”

The Occasional Short Piece Dept.: A Night On Roan Mountain

Going into Grassy Bald on Roan Mountain one day in May, I met a man and his two dogs coming out. Actually I first met the man's skiddish border collie, then I met his master and dog two. I stopped to pet dog two when the man asked me if I was staying over. I said I was and he said it was really beautiful where I was going. To which I said I hope it doesn't rain. He paused for what felt like a considerable time, looked out toward the sky, and said, 'Nah, I don't think so.'

With that prediction at hand, I continued walking toward my vision of a clear night on top of a mountain, a number of miles from any kind of civilized thing.

At first I set up my tent next to a thicket of rhododendron. Then I thought better of it and pulled all my stuff over to a level spot next to a stone fire site that was obviously used a lot. It was flat and open and, I reasoned, less vulnerable to attack by bears.

The opening to my tent faced north, so just before I pulled myself in for the evening, I sat in the long grass and made a sketch of sunlight finishing out the day on mountain ridges to the north and east, each becoming dimmer and lighter in blue until the last in line could be easily mistaken for a low bank of clouds.

It had been gusty since I arrived but as soon as I got settled in, my nylon tent began to ripple and breathe like some gelatinous being. The walls would cave forward or fly backwards and my head would bob around inside as the tent sides snapped, buckled, and kited this way and that. I grabbed some 10 pound stones from the fire place and tossed them into the corners of the tent. Still, the prospect of sleeping seemed distant.

I had resolved to stay put when, about 11 or so (I'm guessing since, whoops, I forgot to bring any kind of timepiece) I noticed the tent flickering as if a firefly had happened by. In a sudden panic, I realized it was not an insect, but a major electrical storm somewhere nearby. I thought: OK, I'm on a bald at about 6,000 feet, in the open, with the wind about to toss me in the air, in the path of a major electrical storm, meaning much lightning and rain. I'm a target, I thought. Do I pack up everything and try to get back to the car in the middle of a huge storm, across two open balds, with clouds sweeping the mountain, along dark footpaths that I didn't know too well?

In a sort of fit of 'well, do something!', I rampaged through everything in the tent, stuffing bananas, water color tin, oat meal bags, loose socks, camp stove, water bottles (I'd brought two), trail maps (for another mountain), sketch book, sardines, and extra glasses in my my pack. I shoved the pack on one shoulder, then grabbed the tent and hauled it across the long grass so that it came to rest snug against a room-size boulder with an alley underneath a man could crawl into. This tent site was far from flat and I shared one wall of the tent with the boulder, a fact that became oddly comforting.

I tossed my pack in and then myself, with everything sliding toward the rock on a fairly severe pitch. I figured if worse came to worse, I could get out of the tent and crawl under the boulder and last out the night there through the tempest that was on its way. I just remember thinking, 'Oh, Jeez, I've pitched my tent on the edge of a weather front on a mountain.'

Then, and only then, something dawned on me. Between occasional wisps of clouds floating by overhead, I could see stars. I flipped on my stomach and began watching the lightning storm. It was all happening beneath me. Up the valley, west to east, maybe 2,000 feet below, a war had broken out. First one side would fire a series of volleys. Huge cumulus clouds would light up in a sequence of illuminations. Then, to the east let's say, a series of answering volleys. Mega-explosions, sometimes eight, ten, a dozen in a row. The sky reverberated and the clouds danced with white light. It appeared very possible that the city of Elizabethton had gone to war with the town of Damascus.

And it wasn't a brief skirmish. On and on they fought, past midnight, past one a.m., and when I wasn't watching, I'd keep track of the parries and thrusts on the sides of my tent. Finally, at some point in the war, with my legs buckled against the boulder and my body sliding inexorably toward the depression at its base, I fell asleep. I remember a few raindrops hitting the tent, but I must have crashed at least for an hour or two before the next event.

There were times in all the whipping of the wind across the boulder and through my tent when everything would grow still and silent. One part of my brain had it figured out as the eye of a very rare mountain tornado. Another part took the viewpoint that maybe the wind was subsiding. At any rate, just in the middle of one of these odd silences, I un-scrunched my legs to full length and scooted my head outside the tent opening. Over top the blue nylon, the sky had become a spectacle. The handle of the Big Dipper did that sort of lazy pointing thing at what seemed to be several gobs of pinholes flaring out of the deep blackness. Every star, and there must have been hundreds, seemed like flakes of crystal up there, occasionally winking through a wisp of cloud passing over the bald. I was mesmerized. The war had apparently quit down below with no clear winner. Up here, above Grassy Bald, stars flickered messages from distances impossible to grasp. They were simply distances on the other side of the universe from this mountain--so far that my entire lifespan would be a wink in the voyage of light from even the nearest one.

The rest of the night I lay there, too lazy to change my tent site again, reveling in my charmed escape from armagedon. I tried to use my pack as a pillow with tiny successes, so tiny that I recall I was still working on the problem when I heard a distant bird cry and realized that the world was becoming a dull blue.

I had no idea what time it was and smiled when I got to the car and realized that I had made breakfast, cleared camp, packed up everything, and scrambled over the Appalachian Trail a mile or two, and it wasn't yet eight o'clock. Still, to be up then, with no one else on the path and the sun scraping across the ground, electrifying the green of the balds, vaporizing the ground fog, well, it is enough to know the earth has turned around another time and I am on it.

On my way down the mountain, I stopped at the little store, bought gas and a cup of coffee. The roads were puddled up and the gloss of rainwater hung on parts of the pavement. I asked the man at the store if it had rained down there.

He said, and this is a direct quote, 'I really don't know. I was in bed by 11.'