Leo Burnett MENA organizes region's first art direction workshop

Held consecutively in Dubai and Beirut, the workshop brought in Steve Dunn, one of the world's most awarded art directors, for a two-day hands-on exercise designed to help Leo Burnett MENA produce even more arresting communications that help clients meet their business objectives.

Farid Chehab, chairman and chief creative officer, Leo Burnett MENA, drew a link between the creative processes behind winning a Cannes Gold Lion and those required to win a Nobel Prize.

"Both creatives and scientists strive hard to devise innovative solutions to their given problems. We will better serve our brands by ensuring our creative executions are even more distinctive and impactful and thus more strongly stand out from the clutter," Chehab said.

With sessions on typography and image exploration, as well as a prepared video showing Dunn and his colleagues talking through the process of art directing a print commercial, the workshop provided the theory as well as the practical experience necessary to build skills.

Raja Trad, CEO of the Leo Burnett Group of Companies, MENA, said,

"At the heart of effective integrated communications consulting are arresting visuals - whether in TV, print, outdoor, POS, ambient - and effective messages that result in both near-term sales growth and long-term brand building."

Participants were divided into 12 teams and worked on several briefs, first focusing on typography, then on image and finally bringing both together in a competition for the best project of the workshop.

"Our people are the energy behind our success as an agency and our clients' successes in the market. As such, value-added trainings and workshops are an essential part of how we operate and what we offer our employees," said Maher Achi, chief operating officer for Leo Burnett MENA.

Achi added that the team developing this first-of-a-kind art direction workshop recognized it needed something special. "We wanted to add the presence of a master in creative art direction to the program to give our teams an unrivalled opportunity for hands-on interaction with and critique from the best in the business."

The art direction workshop is the latest training that Leo Burnett MENA has provided its employees in the past year. Other activities include a multidisciplinary integrated communications workshop, team-building activities, a leadership training workshop for senior managers and extensive Leo College training modules.