Who would you like to be, a Swiss army knife or a forged Japanese kitchen knife? Both have great “skill” sets and have been on the market a long time. One is a generalist, a tool with many features which can be used in many ways. You can cut, open cans, … you name it, but all features are compromised in functionality a little bit in order to fit in a knife, you will have a hard time cutting sushi with it. The Japanese kitchen knife on the other hand is great for cutting raw fish for sushi and sashimi – but fails when you want to open a can.

In graphic design we have the same problem. Should a graphic designer become a generalist or a specialist? Print and web design, or specialize on social media. Dig deep into php programming or have just the right understanding of the technology?

Management gurus around the world write books where they postulate one year “only who specializes survives”, and the next year “the generalist is the fittest for survival”. How can this be?

In reality there is often space for both the generalist and the specialist – like in the knife metaphor I’ve made. The Japanese knife can survive because it’s niche (cutting) is wide enough. A specialist who chooses a too narrow niche will fail in the long run – just imagine, who would need a knife for dinosaur meat today?

It is good to be specialist when…

• A new technology you master becomes popular
• Complicated solutions require in-depth knowledge
• There are only a few specialist in your field

It is better to be a generalist when…

• Technologies change very often
• You have gained your wide range of experiences through real world projects
• Most of your clients need personalized solutions achievable with standard tools
• You cover a wide range of clients and projects
• You are in a leading position and have to oversee many different aspects beyond one specific field
• You know specialist you can hire when things need a specialist

Should you hire a generalist or a specialist?

In my opinion generalists are especially for smaller agencies and companies the better fit as full time employees. Specialist can be contracted to do special jobs. As an employer you want a motivated and flexible staff. It is far easier to move a generalist to another field, than to lay off a specialist and search for a new specialist.

This is even truer in today’s internet times. Let’s take “social media experts”. Many of those social media specialists master the technology behind Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare etc. but lack the marketing background and design experience. Successful campaigns are not just about one channel.

Web technologies are even worse. Frameworks and programming languages are growing exponentially in number and complexity. Mobile applications, the new hype, is just as bad. iOS need C++ (a special version obviously), Android Java, Windows Phone 7 C# (speak C sharp). Let’s be honest, it’s a mess.

You can see, unless you specialize in that area, that especially for programming jobs (and web site programming as well) are best done by specialists on contract.

Foto curtesy by capcase

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.

Most of us designers and art director use systems based on DAM every day without noticing it. If you search for images on a website like Getty Images or Corbis you use the web frontend of a DAM. Actually every website has it’s own DAM where it stores the images. But what are the new capabilities of modern DAMs and how can they help you in your daily work. Here some ideas.

Digital Asset Management is one of the hot topics in the last months. It’s actually nothing new, the first thoughts about it came from the “office without paper” movement, where everyone imagined that bringing computers into offices will kill the paper. We all know that the opposite happened. In graphic design the use of DAMs (digital asset management) is becoming more than just an image library, they become a integrated tool. Here are the differences between the two main systems interesting for graphic designers.

Image Library – Providing assets to external partners

If you get overwhelmed with requests for sending images, logos and designs to clients the easiest solution to this time consuming is a Asset Library. This is the classic approach to digital asset management. You create your assets in a first step and upload selected assets to a library. This library can be searched and accessed by partners and they can download the assets in various formats (for print or office use for example).

There are various levels of features such libraries can offer and range from simple to complex.

Pros

• Easy to setup and organize
• Many vendors (even free open source solutions on the market)
• Fast implementation

Cons

• No integration with design workflow
• Duplicate content
• Manual update of assets

Integrated solution – the DAM as centralized data hub

The new generation of DAMs are not only a file storage with a web interface. They integrate with your design workflow and other application and are therefore the central repository. Is the “single point of truth”. Much like the CRM (Customer Relation Management) is the single point of truth for the sales department, the DAM is where all the assets you as a graphic designer work with are stored.

This means that you store your images, indesign, xpress, illustrator, word documents etc. into the DAM and open these assets directly from your application. No need for downloading and reuploading. It’s a substitute to the file system and has many benefits.

Depending on the system used they can be integrated to the CMS of your websites, push and pull data from a translation memory, avoid duplicate content, do version control, workflow management (for review and approval) and deliver from one source multiple outputs.

Two examples

To make an example how this can benefit in your daily work. Let’s imagine we have a integration between the DAM and the CMS of the website. On the website you offer product brochures for download. Normally you would make the PDFs in Indesign and upload them to the CMS. With the integration you have the Indesign document and all images in the DAM and the CMS requests the PDF from the DAM. Therefore when you update the brochure you do not need to update the website.

Another example: You have 100 brochures that use the same logo. The logo is redesigned and you just have to update it once in the DAM, all 100 brochures now have the new logo.

Sounds like magic – but there are a few downsides. These systems are quite expensive and need a good planning. This systems are right for you if you have thousands of assets and many of them are reused over various projects or if you want to generate a centralized pool for single design departments. Thinking ahead for in the areas of structure, metadata and workflows are key to implement successfully such a system and to get a ROI (return of investment) you need a high user volume.

Pros

• Integration with design workflow (Indesign, Photoshop, Xpress) and other systems (CMS, CRM, translation memory)
• Very flexible and configurable systems are common
• No duplicate content (saving time, storage and money)
• Centralized management of all assets related to the design workflow

Cons

• Relatively expensive
• Only a few vendors offer usable integration to Indesign & Co
• Good planning necessary
• Conclusion

Both approaches here presented are valid for the uses they are intended. The library is a good start and it’s widely used. The new repository approach is quite new and implies major changes in the way you work. A good analysis of your needs is the best base to choose the right solution for you. It’s important that you do the analysis before you look at the systems because you might fall into the trap: “I want this tool because it has this cool feature”.

In future lessons I will show you in some case studies how this new DAMs work in practical use and the differences between some of the most popular systems on the market and if you have any questions feel free to post them into the comments.

Why should an art director be bothered with file structure, server setups and all this organization stuff? Isn’t this the business of the IT-departments? Well, yes if you are in a big agency and you have an IT-department and even then only for the “physical” part. At the end of the day you and you team have to work with the files every day, not the IT-department, so it’s time to get in charge. Here a few tips.

Art Directors are in charge

We agreed that the art director is the head of the graphic design team – so he is in charge to provide the tools for the team to work at it’s best. If you look at the history of graphic design computers you will see that networking is one of the later evolutions. The high cost of this graphically powerful PCs (at the time mostly Macs) made the single user platforms. And later on the networking between Mac and PCs (on which most networking products relied) wasn’t that good.

Since the introduction on OSX (which is a unix basically) and the more powerful networks this problems should arise anymore. It’s still true that the amount of data used in graphic design are big, but this in no more an excuse for not using centralized servers (at least as repository). So if you are not working alone think about this four principles:

• Get a server = Hardware
• Make a nice structure = Software
• Work only the minimum amount locally = habit
• Make backups = safety

Get a server

I want to be specific here. Setup a separate computer as a server with server software (it doesn’t matter if you use Windows, Mac OSX or Linux) and do not use a NAS (Network Attached Storage). And by setting up I PC I would really recommend to buy server hardware. You can start with a nice small Dell (you would be surprised about how low the prices are) and grow your server base as time goes by. Hardware made for servers is build to run 24/7 and are faster than any NAS you could find on the market.

To connect to the server use cables as wireless is still not fast enough and especially if you are more than just a bunch in your team you will feel the difference.

Last but not least – user access control. By setting up a server you can control who sees what. You can store all the important data in one place (where you can backup it) and still control that sensitive data is not seen by your co-workers.

Make a nice structure

Now how to build your structure can be more of an philosophical approach than you think. I had to do some serious structure layout for medium an bigger firms and I must admit that there is no single solution. I didn’t find any help in books and I figured out two scenarios which work fairly well.

• Project oriented storage (for small to medium amount of assets)
• Object type storage (for huge amount of assets – may need a digital asset management)

I will focus here on the project oriented storage. It’s fairly easy to manage as every project contains all the data needed. Much like the “collect all assets” in Undersign function. You may waste some disk space, but you can be sure that you can reprint a document even after a couple of years. It prevents you from looking for a specific file which you maybe moved to another folder by accident or because you where “cleaning” your file structure. It also prevents you from overwriting logos and images with newer versions. And don’t forget the time saving if you have to collect the data for your client.

The first example of a structure shows all elements I mentioned plus a few more. This is suited for agencies with multiple clients. Notice the client is at top level followed by the year. This will help you when you search and navigate through the file structure. I also inserted the tracking number (you remember to always track your jobs) leading the project name. This is also a big help when you have to search for the job and when you make backups and archives.

The second example shows an inhouse graphic department. Here you have only one client and your work will focus more on recurring project types. So the top level is based on this project types. A classification by year is here not always useful, as some projects will last longer or are valid for a longer period of time. The taxonomy (the difficult word for a structured and controlled vocabulary) for such an inhouse agency file tree will discussed next week when we talk about DAM (digital asset management).

Work only a minimal amount locally

Now that you have a server you should work on your local harddisk only when you are handling huge files. To be sure to not lose any data I have even installed on the working machines RAID Systems. So if even one disk crashes I don’t lose the work I’ve done. Synchronizing local folders to server folders can be a solution, but only if you work alone on a project. If more than one person handles files in folder and you have to synchronize 2 local machines to a server then it gets troublesome.

Make backups

Finding the right backup strategy is also quite difficult. But it is really important that you have a “strategy” – I mean by strategy that you should have a routine, daily, weekly, monthly and archiving. The more you can automate the better, but don’t rely solely on automatic backups. I have a mixed strategy. Daily differential backups on tape. Weekly complete backups on two different external harddrives and weekly differential online backup. The external harddrives are stored one offsite (in a bank) and one locally for restoring.

Make the single folders small enough to make them stay on a DVD for archiving. Archiving of project you know you will not touch anymore keeps your server slender. But I don’t archive only on DVD but also on other harddrives as well.

Looks like a lot of trouble for keeping your data safe. Well, for me there is nothing more annoying than redoing a job because I lost the data.

Following rules is not often seen as something positive in design. “Break the rules” and “Be different” are more common to be heard. And while it’s true that design should be different and break the rules to attract attention, it’s advisable that you establish a few rules if you want to get along with you co-workers.

We had in the last weeks a few meetings in our department where we tried to polish our teamwork and we established these 5 simple rules:

1. Language - No tongue is discriminated and everyone can express thoughts, opinions and present in their mother tongue as long as all involved understand everything. If someone has problems to follow, everyone helps to avoid misunderstandings.
2. Feedback - We follow the feedback-rules for positive and negative feedback.
3. Information - We inform ALL members of the project team about changes, improvements, new ideas, conclusion and everything else concerning the project
4. Competence - We respect the fields of competence of the co-workers and believe that they are willing to do their best for the project. It is though allowed to discuss about the solutions and bring new input.
5. Reaction - We react promptly upon requests (from inside the department or from outside) by confirming that we have received it. We also give a statement on how we are going to proceed.

The first rule about the language is quite important for multi-lingual environments, in my case German/Italian. Sometimes firms tend to prefer one language over another, in most cases the smallest common ground, and cripple the interaction. You probably can express yourself best in your mother tongue and you may be even capable of transmitting your ideas in a simple way that foreign-language speaker can understand it. On the other hand if you are forced to use another language to express yourself you maybe miss the point without noticing it and misunderstandings are quite often.

Another good thing about allowing more than one language is that you can avoid the “YOU have to speak my language in order for me to understand you”. Everyone knows that he has to understand the other languages of the department – the more the better.

This approach, to start with the conclusion, works best for small design teams and firms that upgraded their marketing department with an art director. They reached a point where they feel the need to get to the next level – in quality and organization. Most of the times, the art director role is not full time. I mean by saying this, that the art director is not just directing, creating and reviewing, but is also part of the execution. He is not only part of the workflow, but he actually finishes projects himself. This is no limitation, and with time the execution part will become smaller and smaller eventually. This sets the art director on the same level with his team and this is even more true if this role is filled by a designer formerly in the team. This is very important and is one of the main distinctions between the two approaches I’m presenting here. The art director is not above the team, but on the same level and part of the team. So how does it work?

How can you lead them if you are not above them. Well, you lead by merit and competence and not by status. If you are choosen to be the art director your boss thinks that you are the most appropriate candidate – in the best case your coworkers think the same. If not, you have to prove it, or induce them to think you are the better designer they can learn from. Imagine and present yourself as the coach who wants to bring all your coworkers on a higher level. Having a coach is nothing bad – every highly successful sportsman has a coach his whole career. The difference to a sports coach (who are mainly retired sportsman themself) you are not retired yet, so you can still prove your value. As a coach you can give advice and even better you can decide the amount of rewards you give to you coworkers.

Gaining value

One easy way is to ask the opinion on your work. I know what you think, by doing that you just enforce the same-level-thing. The trick relies in asking opinion about nearly finished great work. Something they can not say anything bad, so they will say: “Cool, I cannot add anything to this.” They brag about your work instead of you. Its leading by giving good example. Giving good example by doing great design work and by asking opinions. Another good way is sharing your new findings. Lets say you stumble over a site with great inspirational videos – send an email to your coworkers and tell them. You will become “the” source for new, inspirational and design related information – this source is also called authority and an authority is always leading.

Reviewing the work of your team

There are two main scenarios we have here. First, you are the original creator of the designs and your team executes it or develops derivates. Derivates can be folder or other projects that have to fit into a corporate design that you designed or you have to supervise. Reviewing this projects is not so hard. As the original designer you are in charge, you know how it should look like and you know if something fits or not. But be warned, you have to brief your coworkers correctly and you have to explain the reasons why they should change a design if it doesn’t fit. You cannot get mad about something you didn’t explain in the briefing and they didn’t get it by themself. Be polite and use phrases like “Why don’t you try to …” or “I would stick to the corporate design, …” or “I try in this cases to …”. You should induce them to try your solution. They keep a copy of the layout they did and then you look what works best. Often they realize it without you reviewing the work together. Reviewing design jobs this way is a clever way to give the coworkers the feel that they did the whole project and they learn how to do it while doing it. Be aware that you cannot blame your coworkers for not coming to you to show their works – this will happen over time when you gain status through value and merit. You will have to go to them and ask them if you may have a look at their work because you are interested.

Now lets see the other scenario, where you want to improve the quality of the projects with your competence. The difference to the first scenario is not big but decisive, as you no longer are the one that actually “knows” how the finished product should look like. You must enter the mind of your coworkers and think where he is heading to. You have to do this without going through the whole briefing process of course, but it often helps when you ask before reviewing his work what the he gives you a short-briefing. You then review the design, which is maybe halfway done and imagine how it will look when its finished. Find out if its ok, both graphically and conceptionally, and if it is then compliment him and go ahead to the next. If you think that something is wrong you have to tell him, but again as in the first scenario imagine yourself as a coach not the king of design. If there are conceptional issues address them first, there is no point to talk about graphic design when the whole idea leads in the wrong direction. Incorporate your comments into a story for example by telling how on a similar project you did the client got mad because you forgot about X or Y. Another way is to ask him how he had come to this concept and then ask if the target group will understand it. This way you are driving your complaints to the target group, they are the stupid ones, not the designer. Very powerful, because he will change the concept to comply with the stupid target group and not to comply you. Its important to get into a conversation about the subject and to not fall into the “You do it because I know it better”. On graphical issues works more or less the same, blame the target group if the font is too small, or the budget if he wants special features that you think are too much. By shifting your mindset into being a coach you not only get the results you want, but you invest into your team and they will pay you back by remembering the comments you made. This comments will become part of their mindset and you don’t have to say them over and over again, they make them to themselves.

Giving and receiving credit

The most difficult part is to balance the amount of credit you and your coworkers get. If you claim all the credit for yourself you will spoil all your efforts in becoming the leader by merit to your coworkers and if you let all the credit to your team, then your boss might think that your position is not necessary. In my opinion you can work on three levels. You have to advertise yourself, compliment your team when they work well (positive reinforcement) and when you present the work of the team use the word “we”.

Advertising yourself means talking about the projects you work on and what off-project ideas you had. But you have to talk to “outsiders” to make it work. By outsiders I mean your boss, high-level coworkers from other departments (if you are in a inhouse agency) and even clients (if you have time and can give out the information). Don’t blow in your own horn, talk like you have an interesting story you want to share. The occasions for this talks can be before and after executive meetings (you are a head of department, so you should be there), conferences, informal client dinners, etc. If you want to lead you have to be with the leaders of the company anyhow, so why not use this opportunities.

Complimenting your team is fairly easy. When you review the work give compliments if they do it right. Don’t make them feel, that they finally did comply to your standards, instead you should praise them to get the positive reinforcement. Yes, praise them even for “correction” work. If you did your reviewing job correctly you didn’t force them to do it your way, therefore when they do it by choice you can compliment them. Its safe to compliment about the whole project and not on the single items they corrected. This way you praise them for their work and not for complying to you.

Presenting your work to your boss/coworkers and clients is a wast field. Its too much to cover right here, but I advise you to use the “we” always. It spreads the responsibility to your team/agency and gives the impression, that the agency doesn’t rely solely on you. But you are presenting – so must be the leader and saying “we” will show you in the correct light.

Conclusion: Growing teams and agencies can benefit from a coaching art director. The management expertise an art director needs to master this task is closer to its natural passion for the job. An art director who loves his work wants to share this passion and therefore is suited to be more of a teacher then a boss. But it sure helps to improve skills on how to relate to the coworkers. A good read in this purpose is Working with Emotional Intelligence. Its cheap and literally full of examples. It will help you so much to find the what it take to lead without being the “mean boss”.

Pros:

• Status by merit (lasts longer)
• Distributed credit and responsibility
• Performance and quality improvement for the whole team
• Good working environment
• Easier management technique for creative people
• After a period of time the art director can concentrate more on creativity and research

Cons:

• Status by merit (you have to improve steadily)
• Virtual hierarchy – is only implied by status
• High demand on emotional intelligence

This two approaches to establishing your role as an art director come directly from my experience and I’ve hoped I made them clear. I must admit that the coach-approach worked better for me and brought me to the point where I could really invest time in research and innovation. The more I helped the other to become better, the more status I gained and the more time I could spend (I had to review less) in finding new products, trends, techniques, you name it and the more status I gained again by knowing about this new things. So give it a try and if you have questions put them in the comments I will get back on you as soon as possible.

Not every advertising agency or design/communication/marketing department of firm need an art director. But when they grow (in size or quality) they create this position sooner or later. At this point they will hire an art director or promote one of the graphic designers already on board. One of the main difference between a graphic designer and an art director is its “leading role”. This leading role extends into leading the graphic designers working with him on the projects. Team-leading and human-resource management is not usually taught in schools and universities – at least not in the design oriented colleges I know. They are sometimes part in post-graduate studies for managers. But how can you establish your leading role as an art director if you have been promoted or you are on your first assignment and have to lead a team? Here some insights from my personal experience.

The foundation

There are plenty of ways to lead a team and none can be considered “the best”. There right way depends on so many factors so I will present approaches. You have to choose and adapt them to meet your needs. I will try to make some examples to clarify the concepts, but if you have doubts feel free to contact me or put your questions in the comments. For now I will present two approaches. Both approaches need strong “leading” characters to fill the position of art director. The art of leading people can be a natural part of the character or can be learned. The first approach meets more the classic agency environment and the second works best for inhouse agencies. I may expand this series (putting everything in one lesson was too much) in the future, so if you want to share your experience feel free to contact me.

The strict hierarchical approach – aka King of the Hill

This old-school approach, the one you can see if a advertising agency is portrayed in TV and film, sees the role of the art director above the graphic designers in every sense. He is the only one who creates, judges, presents and gets the glory. He is the boss of his team, deciding not only what jobs a graphic designer does, but also his salary and if he gets fired. Everything passes through his office, the way in and the way out. He sketches everything, the graphic designer transfers the sketches into designs. The art director reviews the designs and after a correction cycle presents them to the client or to the contacter.

This model seems straight forward and has no obvious downsides – but here lies a big mistake. This approach was established in a world where the graphic designer was a trained person who stitched films together or transferred type from Letraset foils. A manual job, much like a tailor adjusted a pattern for sewing but does not design a dress. Today this “manual” process does not exists anymore, the graphic designer is now more in charge and more and more responsibility has been attributed to this role (color management, image resolution, layout, digital delivery to name a few technical ones). This added responsibility gives the graphic designer more self awareness and he wants to get the reward for his work. The result is that the art director is a limiting factor, a bottleneck or a oppressor (I exaggerated the terms) for the creativity of the graphic designer. This leads to often to bad results and costs in the end a lot of money, since the projects are tedious and need more time to be executed.

Conclusion: If you have graphic designers in your team which have a personality, are passionate about design and believe that they can contribute to the creative process this model is not for you. If you have graphic designers who are “clerks” who like the 9 to 5 thing and do this job with the same passion as they would every other office job this may be the right approach for you. You are in charge and have the responsibility, they are the workers.

Pros:

• Easy to overview hierarchy
• Leadership is implied by the position
• All the merits go to the art director

Cons:

• The art director can be seen as the “evil boss”
• Responsibility of the single team members is limited
• The art director is in charge of all projects (bottleneck)
• Every project going wrong is blamed on the art director
• You need to be responsible for the personnel

The next lesson features the “coach” approach, my preferred way to see the role of an art director, which is most appropriate for art directors recruited from a existing design team.

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.

How many times have you seen a folder, website, brochure with poor text? How many times you read a headline and thought what is this all about? How many times did you stop reading a text because it was tedious to read? I’m sure many times. These texts are not written by copywriter but by the client himself. As a graphic designer you don’t care much about the text, it’s not your business – as an art director you must care about it. Here are some tips on how you understand if a text it’s good enough and how you convince your client that is worthwhile having a copywriter do the job.

Copywriting is a job on its own

Like being an art director or graphic designer, being a copywriter is a job of its own. It’s more than just writing grammatically correct; it’s about tailoring the text to the medium to transport the message. It’s very similar to the graphic job, just with other tools. By that said it’s obvious that a client whose profession is to develop/sell products or services is not the right person to write the texts. Neither is the secretary or a journalist (unless your project is a house organ).

Advertising text is not the same as a technical description

Most of the time you will get texts which read like fact sheets or are technical descriptions which are suited for the experts. Most of the time all facts and topics are treated as if they have the same importance and the texts are therefore dull. As with all advertising you can transport only one message which has to be single minded. A good copywriter tailors the text to transport this one message and incorporates the rest in order to strengthen this message. You see, there is clear difference between simply describing the features of something and transmitting a message to the audience with the description.

Half-ready texts needs to be reset

The worst thing is, when your client thinks he can actually write. This results in halfway-technical and halfway-old school-advertising texts. You can recognize them easily. You find the company and product name hundred times in it (written in capitals), many bold text phrases (everything is important) and a lot of words like “new” “best” “never seen” “amazing”. The sad thing is that the strong points of the product get lost and you have to reset the whole thing and get a briefing to be able to find out the structure und the facts which matter.

Copywriting comes after the creative brief – but the copywriter needs to be there first

In most cases the creative brief is made not only for the graphic design part but also for the copywriter. But like I said in a lesson, the creative brief is a compressed form of the briefing which helps you stick to the track. You need to be at the briefing and so does the copywriter. You maybe want to get the help from the copywriter to write the creative brief and convey with him about the direction the whole project should go. It’s important that you both now what you are talking about. You may be surprised how valuable it is to have the copywriter with you as you proceed with the project. You can decide with him how much text you need or want for example – your job is to make the text fit into the layout and the job of the copywriter is to write a text which stays in the layout. The communication between you and copywriter in this sense is crucial.

Get valuable partners

Every professional has his strengths and his weaknesses. The same is true for graphic designers, art directors and copywriters. Some may be perfect for technical products, others for consumer products or cosmetics. Not only graphical appearance must comply with the audience, also the words, and the language. Some creative professions are already more open to classify themselves, like photographers for example, its common that a photographer states that he does only fashion. I haven’t seen this happen yet with copywriters and it’s your job as an art director builds the network and understands what the strengths of the copywriter are. Ask them what they enjoy most writing about, get to know them and the writing style they have. Get to know more than one, so you can bring the right copywriter to the right job. And finally if you have to do jobs in more than one language (of which you may not speak or understand some) is sure you can trust the copywriter.

Now that you know how important it is to have texts written by a professional you can approach your client accordingly and “sell” the copywriter to him. But to get good results you need to communicate with the copywriter and how to do this will be part of the next lesson.

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.