How to get the best work from creatives

​Have you ever thought of them as “performers”?
 
Creative types get a bad rap. Seems they just care about pretty colors or abstruse concepts that no one else gets, cares about, or have any bearing on your project and bringing in revenue!
 
Yet they’re essential. Imagine a company like Apple without its creative people. It wouldn’t even exist.
 
In this article, we’re going to talk about the creative people you might find working for you, their roles vs. yours, and—most importantly—how to get the best work out of them for your project.
 
An insider’s view.
 
Full disclosure: The author of this article actually is--gasp—one of those creative people. Past credits include quick-sketch portrait artist; newspaper cartoonist; art director, broadcast director, and creative director at a New York ad agency; among others. So the perspective on the “they” in this article will be quite intimate, rest assured.
 
Earning a living as a creative person is a privilege. For every person who actually does it, countless zillions either talk about doing it or act as if they know more about it than those who do. (Does this drive creatives crazy? You bet it does. But the most professional among them never show it.)
 
Being a creative professional is also a never-ending challenge. Think about the word create: “to bring something into existence.” Something that never existed before. A new take on your product, service, solution, or campaign. Something that hews to its value proposition. Something memorable. Something clever. Something fun. And all of those last qualities, of course, are subjective. And creative people, as it happens, more often than not, work for non-creative people—managers, account reps—and so their work gets shot down, all the time, by others who can’t accomplish the same task.
 
Combine this with the inherently sensitive personality that’s often the core of the creative’s psyche, and you can have a stressful and often thankless job on your hands. 
 
But now that you, as an outsider, understand that, you can take advantage of it.
 
Rights and roles.
 
We’re not saying you should “take advantage of your creative people.” You should do your best to take advantage of their creativity. And guess what? If you do, they’ll love you for it. Not only that, they’ll produce work that exceeds your expectations.
 
If that sounds paradoxical, think of creative people as athletes. They have a special skill. But they can’t sit back and get fat. They need to hone their skill, continually. They need to push themselves to be better; creative services can be quite the competitive sport. (Just think of all the professional awards, from the Clios on down, honoring them.)
 
So if the creative person is the athlete, then you’re the coach.
 
And coaching styles vary. Tremendously. But here’s the style we prefer, and it’s proven its mettle with countless graphic artists, designers, musicians, writers, photographers, cinematographers, actors, and more over the years:
 
It’s what you might call “the subtle performance challenge.” That’s another aspect of athletes/creative people: All their work is intended to be seen by others. While they may be shy in person, their work takes the stage for them, often boldly. So you want to describe what you’d like them to accomplish, with the barest framework possible, so that they’ll stick to the parameters of the assignment, yet unleash the best of their creative energy without any parochial restraints from you.
 
Sure, there are always “mandatories,” such as a logo or FDIC emblem, but you never want to impose style, color, fonts, attitude, anything. Let your creative person create. Challenge them to blow you away.
 
Here’s another tip: Try and keep them loose and prolific, especially in the initial stages of an assignment. Insist on ridiculously rough thumbnails and/or pencil and verbal sketches. Don’t force them to invest too much time in any one concept; the more effort they expend on a version that you must reject, the more they’ll resent the process (and you), not to mention the fact that you’d be misallocating your resources in so doing.
 
But this puts a burden on you: You must be able to “read” the thumbnails, and know where they’re going, asking the right questions to uncover their potential. If you feel uncomfortable doing that, then err on the side of having them developed in more detail—or find someone you can trust to do perform this vital interpretive/vetting role for you.
 
The payoff.
 
Done right, this process can yield awesome results. That’s one of the great things about bringing on creative people: you’re not constrained by budget. A great idea is a great idea, no matter who hatches it. Your job is simply to lubricate the process. 

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