Hey Whipple, Squeeze This, 6th Edition

13EVERYTHING THAT CAN BE DIGITAL, WILL BE: CREATIVE TECHS, DEVELOPERS, AND THE MOBILE FUTURE.

THE DIGITAL REVOLUTION IS OVER. (Spoiler alert: digital won.)

Today, as a writer or art director, you'll be expected to come up with everything from ads to mobile apps, tweets to augmented reality.

Note I said, “come up with,” not code. You don't have to learn coding or take every technical course on LinkedIn Learning. Being a bad-ass art director or copywriter still qualifies you for most agency creative departments, particularly the larger ones that also employ digital developers, as well as people in UX (user experience) and UI (user interface) designers. Art directors and copywriters routinely team up with all these specialists to tackle big projects.

As a traditional art director or writer, you may not be able to sketch wireframes or build prototypes like the technical people on your team, but you'll still need a good sense of how they do it and how to work with them. If you don't know when to involve them, when to lead, and when to shut up and take their cues, you'll be less effective as both a team member and as a creative. You'll have better digital ideas if you have a good sense of how they're brought to life, if you're what's called a “T-shaped” art director or copywriter.

Generally, the term T-shaped refers to employees who have very deep skills in one area (the downstroke of the T) and also possess some proficiency in other skills (the horizontal stroke). Understanding ...