The Perfect Blend of Art + Science: Lan Zhang, James Huerta, + Danny Wang, Havas

por India Fizer , AdForum

Havas CX helia
Marketing direto/Telemarketing/ Database marketing/CRM
London, Reino Unido
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Havas New York
Publicidade/serviço completo/integração
New York, Estados Unidos
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We chatted with James Huerta, Executive Director Creative Technology at Havas New York, Danny Wang, Group Director of Technology at Havas CX helia, and Lan Zhang, Creative Technologist at Havas CX helia, about the intersection of art and science in this multidisciplinary role.

 

What does the role of a creative technologist entail?

Lan Zhang: Creative technologists are solution-driven makers at the intersection of design and technological tools. This multidisciplinary role is to connect dots between imagination and actualization. They are often tinkering with deliverables outside traditional creative frameworks and building prototypes or tools with code and other technical necessities.

Lan Zhang
Creative Technologist Havas CX helia
 

James Huerta: Technology is usually considered to be mostly a “systems thinking” discipline. Creative technology is a hybrid practice that requires the creativity of an artist mixed with the technology skills to execute on that vision. It’s a mashup of art and science, but the science is generally in service of the art.

James Huerta
Executive Director, Havas CX Havas CX
 

Danny Wang: Technology is about providing solutions to problems. In creative technology, creative excellence is the main goal to be elevated and achieved by applying the necessary technology and technical skills from a creative technologist to achieve a creative vision.

Danny Wang
Group Director of Technology Havas New York
 

 

What kind of skills do you need to be effective in your role?

JH: Effective creative technologists need to be able to build proofs of concept quickly, and maintain the good product development practice of testing the riskiest assumptions first. It’s not all about prototyping, but it’s a key element because most creative technology projects have at least some aspect that has “never been done exactly that way before.” 

DW: Utilizing design thinking to expand the initial creative concept to the concrete details of a meaningful digital experience, proof of concept and iterative prototyping that validate and translate creative designs into engineering views.

LZ: Creative technologists should be quick learners and critical thinkers who strive to stay informed and curious through research and making, especially in today’s fast-changing, ever-evolving digital landscape.

 

Where do creative solutions intersect with functional design?

DW: Functional specs should be the blueprint of an experience. Through creative explorations, proof of concepts and prototyping, the baseline functionality would be met and expressed with creative solutions in a meaningful and enjoyable way.

JH: One of the things that excites us most about creative technology’s role in an agency is using our skills to create more flexible and scalable brand design systems with creative coding and generative art techniques. Brands today have to show up clearly in so many contexts, and generative design systems give a lot of options for how scale and motion can be applied, whether on a website or within a large live activation. The brand system we created for ADP in 2019 was an example of this, including a machine learning style transfer that allowed us to programmatically apply a branding layer to all kinds of assets, from photos to videos.

LZ: From ideation to execution, having a user-centered design mindset and embracing an iterative design process is crucial for ensuring a functional design output. There will always be more than one design solution, but a good and functional solution requires planning, extensive research, prototyping, testing, revisiting, and iterating.

 

What’s the most challenging aspect of the creative technologist role?

JH: Good creative technology requires constant research, skill building, and learning. Fundamentally, “good” art and computer science doesn’t change, but the languages and methods we use to achieve outcomes are always evolving. Being at the forefront of the latest techniques in 3D, mixed reality, and IoT hardware are just some of the requirements to do the job well.

LZ: Like what James said, adapting to the new tools and technical innovations is challenging. One needs to be constantly learning, iterating, and experimenting. It is also challenging to think critically about new technologies and resist the temptation to embrace them fully. Digital or analog? Virtual or real life? Is one better than the other? These are always valid questions in any creative technology endeavor.

 

How do you see the role expanding with the introduction of the metaverse?

DW: The introduction of the metaverse is a leap toward reshaping the digital experiences from 2D to 3D and allowing people to connect in increasingly more life-like ways across the internet at scale. It provides great opportunities for creative technologists to learn and apply their creative thinking and technical skills to produce 3D content and experiences enhanced by spatial audio and human-like real-time interactions to reach broader audiences who already participate in large metaverse platforms such as Meta Oculus, Sandbox, Decentraland, Roblox and Minecraft.

JH: The metaverse is an opportunity to leverage the 3D skills and experience that many creative technologists have been honing throughout their careers. If anything, the metaverse might be the medium through which most people actually start to understand the role of creative technologist. Our hope is that everyone continues to think outside of the metaverse buzz too, since some of the best ways to experience the work of a creative technologist is in the physical realm.

 

Are there any passion projects you’ve worked on that you’d like to share?         

We’re very proud of our work for Treasury Wine Estates and their Stags’ Leap wine brand.

The Stags’ Leap “Take The Leap” AR experience takes the user on an immersive 360-degree journey by traversing through 3 worlds inhabited by an animated, leaping stag. The worlds expand from the bottle, and as the user explores different worlds and environments guided by the stag, they are presented with interactive hotspots to continue their path, animations of various animals and scene elements, and sound effects.