There is a sincere divide between managing the talents of your artists and guiding the talents of your artists; each industry falters in it’s own special way, and each industry sees the same common patterns — whether it be fashion design or the advertising sector. The underlining camps of interest will tell you a contrast of either: the designer’s too wild and needs to be corralled [versus] the designer needs to broaden his or her design techniques. Regardless, while design is personal, Creative Directors should take care to influence their own opinions or they’ll find too often they stifle creative design.
Taming talent
More often than not, the intentions of a Design Manager is to pass on the training and skill that was, hopefully successfully, passed onto themselves. By building leaders in the war on ‘look’ we also build future allies and life long friends; a network of ambitious talent always looking for the next theme or the next technology or the next technique… that never ends. I mean it sincerely – the cliche of ‘life long learner’ is cliche because it’s deeply true. The talent you train today will someday train you on XHTML 3, lead you to greener pastures from your dated pdf-x standard, and above all, guide you into the new generation. That is your first warning in creative direction: clipping the wings of your talent will stale your career… and you would deserve it. The young artist who surpasses their teacher is an a-typical story for the commonplace the story has become in our culture.
Of course, it’s self righteous to assume mentoring is simply a pedestal for your own career aspirations – it’s barely a brick in the wall, and the point of this path is the next generation… but it’s hard to escape the fact that Creative Direction does indeed become a reflection of your own emotional development, artistic growth, and leadership skills. We are in a highly opinionated business, bound by years of theory and personal taste – Creative Direction is not immune.
It is important to understand, then, that your goal is not to clone yourself. It’s all you know, and we’ll forgive you, but the result of your guidance should never be an artist with talents that largely reflect your own. Sure… they’ll be influenced; so much as the idiosyncrasies of our friends and family wear on us. But mirror images of your art does not create an individual with individual ideas that grow individual designs.
So how do you tame talent? You don’t. You feed it. You may tame a career production artist into understanding the technical requirements of the job at hand, but the idea of controlling design in what you define as ‘design reason’ is egotistic and poorly grounded at best. You might as well start your own sales empowered evangelical following because you’re entertaining the same ideal: hard selling your beliefs on another persons beliefs. Besides, respect is a result of the influential, and we’re in the industry of showing face.
Building talent
So how do you influence talent? Do you pour the foundations of theory on them and suggest a roof to design their own? Can you build talent… sure you can, to an extent, and as long as there’s ambition behind the talent.
For every 40 designers or IT reps I interview, I usually find 15 with pure talent. I’m lucky if one of them has ambition. More times than not, I’ve chosen ambition over talent. You can never motivate another person is the heart of the problem. Money will ease their concerns but won’t end with more drive. Praise may get them through the hour but it won’t lead them when their left to manage themselves. Ambition, or the strong desire to better or achieve, is a human trait individual to… well… the individual. Anyone who’s ever told you that your job as a Director or a Manager is to motivate your team has never taken a course on supervision or lead a successful team. Your job is to create an environment that is ‘motivational’ and ‘healthy’, but it is not to motivate your members – that is their path to choose.
Now I’m not naive to assume that all talent can be built – but all talent can be built upon when given the will to succeed. The fine line is understanding the balance, again, of building in the image of your opinion versus building the individual before you. Your artist must define their own goals, and put in the leg work to achieve those goals – but you can be a guide, and you can help them cross the bridges that need attention.
So how do you build talent? Building talent is just common sense – providing your prospective talent with the tools and information to use those tools. Websites, books, demonstrations of techniques, thorough explanations of techniques. Recommended Do’s and Don’ts – followed with why and how. Writer’s block is simply a weaker vocabulary than needed to complete the article – it is the same for design. Most artists have the image in their head, the craft on how to create it is mote to pass.
Coaching talent
While there are many differing opinions of management models – I have almost always found ‘coaching’ to be more successful with creative orientated personalities. The Coach chooses talent, and guides that talent to their individual success. The talent looks to the coach for knowledge of the game and technique, the Coach looks to the talent to enact their master plan with success. Coaching, by model, favors self starters with self defined ambitions – and allows more room for creativity to flourish; typically because there are firm rules, but rules spaced widely enough to allow for individual expression and growth.
Allow your talent to reach your plan by coaching the direction, not firmly defining it. For example: A client’s logo design for us would begin with my explanation about the company inquiring about the logo (both historical and current information), their target market, the image they’re interested in conveying, and any budgeted rules that define the solution. I’d ask that each designer mockup their own vision over the next few hours, and meet later for either a group or one on one discussion about the successes and what to look for next round – where all of us would meet to merge or grow the idea or ideas we felt reflected the task.
Six years ago, I probably would have started that discussion with my own sketches on the board within a group, and most likely tainting the unique vision of the designers on my team with predefined conceptions of the creation I was after. I would not be coaching in that process, I’d be firmly defining the direction and leaving little wiggle room. Some projects may require this sort of discussion – but typically these are the projects that are forcefully art directed by clientele (which you should question accepting in the first place), production art, or art mirrored from a previously designed branding identity… but not when the very cost your client pays for is unique creation.
Individual Achievers and the Manager
It must also be understood that some people are not managers… they are individual achievers, and vice versa. Some Managers do not, or will not, have the level of skillset that their talent conveys – they may not even have the extensive experience. The talent of the manager is dealing with people, funneling requests, and bringing order to the daily chaos that is business. Individual achievers may not excel at managing or dealing with other people in this manner, and their talents are as a lead player – like a star running back with little interest to coach, but every interest to play and to play with their opinion. Understanding this will help you mentor your designer; not every one will become an entrepreneur or a Creative Director as you would… some will always be a high level designer by choice and by definition. Therefore, the status of a Manager is simply a parallel career path to the individual achiever – one is not ranked more successfully than the other.
Management Reflection
To go full circle, the lesson is always reflective of the teacher. What effort, heart, and will you put into supporting and leading your young, and old, students, will undoubtedly teach you to grow as a manager and as an artist yourself. Invite your designers to review and openly discuss how you’re helping them, and ask them what it is you can do to help them more. You may find that the daily grind of business can blind you to the needs of the talent around you, jeopardizing your business and your own outlets for supportive development. Above all, Creative Direction is counter productive when it stifles the talent around you; that talent includes you.
More specifics on Creative Direction and Management to come…