Since the piece came out, several senior agency figures have expressed similar concerns to me. The Mac, now an essential tool for art directors, has also undermined them. The curtain has been pulled back; the mystery revealed. Clients know how easy it is to make changes, so they keep asking for them. The layout is not The Layout but just the opening gambit in a painfully drawn out process of negotiation. It was ever thus but, if a client knows that changes can be made both quickly and inexpensively, it becomes that much harder to argue against them.

I suspect that the current situation would both anger and dismay Paul Arden, one of the great advertising art directors, who sadly died last month aged 67. Arden was not known for suffering foolish clients gladly. Former colleagues (many of whom have contributed to our feature from page 65) remember a perfectionist who could be as maddening as he was generous - he was famously described as having a "whim of iron" - but who was utterly committed to producing the finest work possible. At Saatchi & Saatchi during the 80s and early 90s, Arden's group of copywriters and art directors produced the best advertising at what was then the best agency in the world. Even more remarkable was that Arden had not one highly successful career but three. In 1992, he left Saatchi's to - as so many creative directors have done before and since - start up a production company. Arden Sutherland-Dodd won the Cannes Palme D'Or in 1998 for winning more awards than any other production company at the festival that year. And then in 2003, on deciding that he wanted to become an author, he marched off to the Frankfurt book fair and came back with a publishing deal. His books have since sold over a million copies.

Recent weeks have seen a slew of advertising documentaries on British television supporting the bbc's showing of the Mad Men series. Most have focused on a golden era for British advertising that stretched from the early 70s to the early 90s: neatly mirroring the time in which Arden was working at agencies. But what of now? Our Annual, published with this issue, provides an unrivalled survey of the current state of the creative nation, with excellent overseas contributions thrown in. And despite the worries of the art directing fraternity, it shows that graphic design and advertising are still producing remarkable and beautiful work.

And the future? From page 35 Eliza Williams looks at the modern day Mad Men, a new generation of New York ad agencies who are pushing into uncharterd territory. Some might say the work of agenies such as Droga5 and Campfire is barely advertising at all, certainly not advertising as Arden knew it in his heyday. But it is innovative and exciting and that is what Arden always wanted to be.