Sometimes things just won’t work. You made a nice communication concept, build a campaign and everything the execution was impeccable. But when you and your client look at the results they don’t meet the expectations. Now what should you do? Normally we would think that we would try harder – but you shouldn’t.

The misunderstanding

It’s a common misunderstanding and our language and how we we all have been brought up leads us into this. You have to get “through”. You have to “win over”. We have to “resist” etc. This concept of being stronger than our counterpart to accomplish our goals is common in all our life. To make an everyday example: Everyone tells you, that if you want to conquer a woman, you have to show your interest, buy her flowers, call her often and in the end eventually she will fall for you. We all know that this happens only in movies and that in reality she will be more likely to be annoyed or drop you of for the next best guy who doesn’t care less if she diggs him or not.

To make a long story short – we think, that if something doesn’t work we just have to try harder. But as you can see, just by doing more of something that doesn’t work doesn’t make it work. Taking down a wall with bare hands doesn’t work just because you punch harder.

The solution

To get out of this situation is fairly easy and difficult at the same time. If something doesn’t work, stop doing it. Try something different – maybe even exactly the opposite. This doesn’t mean that if you do advertising, you should not advertise – but if you try to sell out a product throwing one sale after another you maybe off better if you make the product high class or you limit the availability.

It may seem counter intuitive – and that’s good. If something is counter intuitive it’s different and if something is different it catches the eye. Getting the attention is one of the main goals in advertising and graphic design, so if you get that a good part of the job is accomplished.

Now it’s obvious that you still should have a valid product and have done your “homework”. If you have the wrong product for the right audience and the right communication, then you still will not sell. You may want to change your target group instead of changing the product.

A famous example of such a shift is the post-it from 3M. You know probably the story. The original goal was to make a new strong glue. The result was a weak glue which doesn’t leave traces when removed. A failure for the intended target group, but by changing the use and therefore the target group it became a success.

In short: If something doesn’t work the way you planned it, take a few steps back and look around. There is maybe another way you can go.

Image by dots and spaces

Trainees or intern as they are called are part of the responsibilities an art director has. I’m not talking about the bad habit of using trainees as regular workers, sometimes referred to as “precarity” or “underclass”, but about the trainees coming from schools doing a few weeks of internship to learn about the real work in an agency.

I had in the past problems finding the right jobs for the trainees as I was caught up in my daily routine and when they actually showed up at my desk I wondered what would fit. I therefore setup a routine for finding jobs around the year to have them ready. Find out how I did it and the 3 rules for successfully managing a graphic design trainee.

The simple job blackboard

During the year you come around quite a few low priority jobs which are easy to do and you postpone them because they are boring, time consuming and other jobs are more important. Instead of keeping them on your todo list make a separate todo list for your trainee. If you have co-workers make this trainee-todo list public, so they can add their jobs too.

Three simple rules

1. Categorize jobs by difficulty
   When you setup your job blackboard give the single jobs a difficulty level, let’s say simple, medium, difficult (for a trainee) and give the trainee only jobs he/she can master. It saves you and the trainee from frustration. Yes, they should learn something, but you can be sure, that something you claim to be easy for the trainee is not.
2. Split long jobs
   Some jobs are easy but take a long time. Try to split repetitive jobs into junks to avoid that the motivation of trainee. Don’t treat your trainee like a mule – you would split up the job for yourself don’t you? If you have more than one trainee is good practice to split longer jobs among them to avoid envy.
3. Don’t multitask them
   This is fairly new. Against previous studies whom claimed that the young generation can multitask more easily because they are the so called digital natives. Professor Martin from Westwell Flinders University, Australia, found out something very interesting:

   
   

   
   

   WESTWELL: Strictly speaking, there’s no such thing as multi-tasking. What we do is switching our attention very quickly between doing one thing at a time but interspersed. Now what we find is that actually young people are less able to do that because of their brain development. The area of their brain that deals with this switching between two tasks isn’t as well developed in younger people until their early twenties compared to older people. So actually older people are much better at multi-tasking than young people and I’ve done some research to demonstrate that, to show that. Younger people claim that they can stay on task when they’ve got multi-media, so they might be you know trying to read a book or do their homework whilst they’ve got music playing and whilst they might be instant messaging friends or you know something like that, so they’re consumers of different media at the same time. They may claim that they can multi-task in that way, but the evidence is telling us that they can’t and actually the performance on the task at hand, particularly the primary task – let’s say doing their homework – is actually diminished by trying to deal with all these multiple inputs at the same time. (taken from the BBC Podcast Analysis)

It’s therefore good to avoid to rush to the trainee every 15 minutes with a new task and to not have them read the email all the time. Make a daily plan and introduce new tasks only on breaks.

Finally I just want to say a last thing about the extended benefit of having trainees. Finding graphic designers who fit well into your organization and the projects you work on is often difficult. Often you hire someone to find out later that he can not adapt or doesn’t have the right capabilities. Trainees, especially if you have the opportunity to have the same come in for a couple of years, can not only be judged but you can also train them to your needs, make them fit well in your organization and develop exactly the skills needed. This is a huge advantage and can boost the success of your projects. So invest into your trainees and you will be rewarded.

A minimalistic approach uses as few graphical elements as needed to transport the message to the user. No decoration or other distracting elements are added. The message is the protagonist. The graphical elements to focus on the message can be simple shapes, but the result is a rich experience.

A design that is just “simple” on the other hand does not give you a rich expirience – it gives you the feeling that something is missing.

If you do a minimalistic design and you get the feeling that something is missing, then you probably (1) didn’t focus enough on the message, (2) the message is too weak or (3) cannot be transported through minimalistic design:

1. To much decoration or complicated layouts can blur your message. Get rid of graphic elements without a function.
2. Weak messages are often the main problem. Minimalistic means reduced to the bones and a message which is blurry and not focused can’t work in this context. Talk again with your copywriter and client if you can get a message with a tighter focus.
3. You cannot transport chaos with a minimalistic approach. Period.

As a conclusion we could say: A minimalistic design uses only graphic elements with function to maximise the message, simple design ignores the message to maximise simplicity.

Foto by Dirk Dallas

Brainstorming is the best known creativity tool, but still is one with the poorest result. Just because everybody uses it, doesn’t mean that anybody is doing it the right way. Even if you look around the web you will find no good source on how to get great results through Brainstorming. So let’s bring down some of the myths in order to use the tool the right way and get better results.

It has no rules

Brainstorming is not a license to mayhem – it has rules, just a few but very strict ones. Break one and the whole session falls apart. Here they are:

1. Time constrain (every session should be exactly 30 minutes, not more not less) The good ideas come after 10-15 Minutes, but after 30 minutes of Brainstorming everyone is done, believe me.
2. Build up an idea: Just one talks at a time – the next builds up on the idea of the first taking it further. If you don’t know how to take it further, write it down. Start with the next idea. This way you know which ideas to write down and when. The one who writes does just that and moderate – he is not involved in the storming.
3. NO EVALUATION – It’s easy if you follow the first to rules. As just one talks, the others can’t tell their evaluation Validating the ideas is made in a second moment.

If you follow these rules everything is fine. To optimize the results you might destroy some other myths.

Everyone can do it

Not only the most creative people can do it, but certainly not every person is right for this tool. It’s not the right tool to get people or departments “involved” in the design process. Most of the time is difficult for them to understand, that not every idea is good, payable, or gets the right message. You may want also, that the persons in the team trust each other in order to not be laughed at. If you have people in the Brainstorming which want to show off and stand out, you have to throw them out. No single member of the team gets the credit for the idea, as it is build by the idea parts of all the team.

It brings finished ideas

Brainstorming is the birth of an idea, not the end. After the evaluation, maybe three or four ideas may be tested for the best results. You cannot know out of the Brainstorming session if the idea really works or if it’s possible to do. So if you have to change it while you produce it, no big deal, but make sure that also the other members know it.

All participants evaluate the ideas

It’s not necessary that all the originating team is part of the evaluation process. In fact it might be counterproductive. The ideas should be evaluated in a second moment and against strategy, cost, RUI and other factors. If you see that an idea doesn’t stand up then get rid of it – it’s just an idea, there are plenty of them – just the best should survive. Some idea is great, but it’s too expensive. Try to save it, by finding out what makes the idea great and, then try to do it cheaper.

It has always a result

Brainstorming is made by people, so not every time you will have the same results and sometimes you get no result at all. Sometimes the topic is too complicated or because the team doesn’t play well together. So if you see that there has been no result don’t be frustrated but try another technique.

I found in a strategy presentation of a client a few nice inputs. Most of the time we stand in our own way because we don’t think like winner. There is a lot of literature about having success and so forth, but you can boil it down to this: Reframe

And here some examples:

Foto by marthax

Every graphic/online/media designer nowadays calls himself an art director (or worse Information Architect). Even the Wikipedia, the new holy grail of knowledge states, in a little confusing manner. Find out what is the difference between a graphic designer and an art director and what it takes to become one.

Despite the title, an advertising art director isn’t necessarily the head of an art department…

Well, let’s get straight to the point – if you do not “direct” at least a team, may it be of internal co-workers or external partners in a project, then you are probably not an art director. You might be a very good graphic designer, photographer, art-buyer, copy-texter,  image retoucher, layouter, producer,  but not an art director. Let me explain why.

Art directors are team players

An art director must have a good knowledge of the above capabilities. He must understand them, he has not to excel in them, but know how to use them accordingly. If he is not the best photographer for the job, he has to know who is and this not only by capabilities, but also according to the budget.

In smaller firms, most of the time the budgets are tight and therefore the graphic designer takes also the pictures and writes the headlines, looks over the production, printing … While this can result in very good quality for small projects, it also has on big pitfall. The outcome is limited to the capabilities and style of one person.

The Art director on the other hand,  has to have the big picture in his head, know where the whole production is heading to. Setting the style and tone for the project and is not limited to only his capabilities.

Step by step

Obviously there are not only the extremes – on the path from being a graphic designer to become an art director are many steps, where duties may vary and overlap. But the important thing to know is that the mindset changes when you are no longer only a graphic designer. You think differently and approach projects differently.

How to achieve this different mindset will be shown in the next lessons – little by little.