The 1 Thing Aspiring Creative Directors Need to Know
Joel Hladecek, Worldwide Creative Officer, EF Education First
Professional creatives, designers, and artists in any medium, staff or freelance, tend to share a common career goal: after entering the workforce and working in our chosen field for a number of years, we imagine naturally progressing to directing, where we will be inspiring teams of people in doing what we have done. We may further imagine rather loftier goals than that, but surely directing is part of our journey.
Although often eager to achieve the goal, few creatives are aware of the hidden barrier–the wall–that sits between their great talent today, and the job of directing, and they therefor fail to prepare themselves adequately for the role.
Let me state emphatically, the hardest thing any talented creative person will ever have to do in his/her career–and truly nothing is fraught with more hidden challenge–is to face that moment of transition from being a person who makes things, to a person who directs people–who make things.
…the hardest thing any talented creative person will ever have to do… is to face that moment of transition from being a person who makes things, to a person who directs people — who make things.
I have watched and mentored countless creatives through this transition, and at 53 I still continue to face the challenges of this transition myself. As such I can report that upon finding yourself in a directing role, many of you will find yourselves incredibly unhappy, or won’t be any good at it, or both. At least not for more years than you expect.
And that’s because directing is a completely new medium. Directing has almost nothing to do with the creative medium you are an expert in today. With some amount of unexpected pain you will have to let go of reliance on so many of the expert skills you have acquired, and as when confronting any new medium, you will have to confront the lack of knowing the basics. You will find yourself virtually starting over in your career.
This is because, despite all reasonable expectation and intuition, directing is in no way a natural progression from wherever you are as a creative today.
Despite expectation and intuition, directing is in no way a natural progression from wherever you are as a creative today.
Your Private, Intuitive Director
As a maker of things, a designer or artist, your work-flow is often intuitive and non-verbal, you feel your way. You make decisions and solve problems as you feel best without uttering a single word or articulating a thought. If the work isn’t quite right, you know it at a glance. You don’t have to articulate why — you only need to make adjustments.
This private, intuitive director builds strong pathways in your brain. Tends not to fuss much with those parts of your brain responsible for speaking, social empathy, articulating and explaining.
And this is important because although this way of working can lead to great success as a creator, it does precious little to develop the skills of a director.
Directing: The Art of People
Most assume that because they know how to design or make things that they are suited to direct, succumbing to the illusion that directing is merely a progressive step.
However, what you suddenly discover is that you’re standing there facing new materials and a set of strange new tools. The materials and tools of the director’s trade are interpersonal relationships, people’s egos and motivations, analysis and diagnosis of creative, strategic and emotional conditions and the requirement to articulate every bit of that with words. Words. Words.
Words. Words. Words.
Remember that intuitive director? That one who worked so confidently, and without ever a single utterance, instructed your hands to create great works of art? That director must suddenly speak, must stand on a public stage and articulate every thing it thinks and does — with words alone — in such an attenuated way that it encourages the trusting ego of a young designer, or that passive-aggressive, defensive ego, or the gentle, sensitive ego over there.
Every creative I have ever known underestimated the difficulty of this way of working. Was surprised by how awkward these disconnected mechanisms of control were. It’s just so different. And initially it led them to feel unskilled, uncoordinated and sometimes entirely mute.
They were almost universally surprised by the discovery that they were starting over. Which is ironic because, truth be known, a large number of us became artists in part specifically because we were not good at interacting with people!
But it’s understandable since we’re all quite used to being directed ourselves, and as the receiver of someone else’s direction, it just doesn’t seem all that hard to do. Maybe in part because good directors and clients appear to do it so effortlessly, and the bad ones (of which we encounter many more) suck at it in ways that are plainly obvious. When we witness such plain weakness, we feel naturally emboldened that we can do better. “I would never do that if I were directing”. The problem is, this game isn’t about doing better than the bad ones. The game is about doing it objectively great. And doing it great means, among other things, that you must be terrific at analyzing, motivating, challenging, inspiring and most of all, communicating with people.
Directing Someone Else’s Good Idea To The Target
Aside from turning interpersonal relationships into creative solutions, there is another aspect of directing that is often a completely new, even alien, experience: Encouraging someone else’s creative voice and ideas to occupy the space.
For someone who has come to define his/her creativity through one’s own internal voice and hands-on action, the act of letting go of creation, while still being responsible for the outcome, of motivating someone else to create great work in their own creative voice — not yours — is initially a daunting challenge.
…motivating someone else to create great work in their own creative voice — not yours — is initially a daunting challenge.
As a director, you must accept that your creative team is not merely there to serve as your “wrist”; to make that 10% smaller, move that a little to the right, to execute in the manner or style that you would if you were doing the work yourself. Your new job, by and large, is to help the creative team invent their own solutions that solve the strategic problem.
And it’s not because, as a director, you won’t have great creative ideas or the opportunity to develop them, but because, and this is just a plain fact, the work ultimately won’t be yours. It can’t be. The work is, quite simply, created by somebody else — and it must be allowed to be.
What you will discover is that the very best work, almost without exception, will come from their heads–not yours. Your artist holds the brush, and her heart needs to move it.
Example of the Actor
There is a close corollary when directing film and theater actors.
A bad theater or film director, among other things, will give the actor a “line-reading”. A “line-reading” is when the director instructs the actor to speak the lines of dialogue with specific emphasis. The director literally acts out how the actor should speak the line, inflection and all. This, perhaps obviously, is micromanaging, forced, and almost never results in a realistic, believable performance.
A great film or theater director will never have to tell an actor specifically how to say a line. That does not mean that one won’t manage to get the actor to say the line differently however. Our hypothetical great director will sit down with the actor and discuss the character — he may revisit the character’s back story, the impact some childhood event may have had on the character’s current emotions. A dramatic event, the context of the scene. The director may further even sense a personal conflict in the actor himself, one the director must emotionally counsel the actor through in order for the actor to tap into the emotion of the scene. Armed with that context, feeling, and emotional therapy the actor is empowered to do her job, to lose herself in her real emotion, to use her own instrument, mind and body, to become the character. When the actor is truly in character — when she believes what she says, with the emotion of her back story in her heart — the performance will feel real, and it will be consistent. And any inflection and emphasis on that line of dialogue, and all the others, will come from the actor alone, and often this performance will have completely unexpected attributes that the director couldn’t have conceived.
Well, to me, the same is true for all great director / artist teams, no matter the medium. Designers need to understand the goal, the intent, the strategy, the feelings that the piece needs to convey. The artist will likely need emotional counsel from time to time- sensitivity to the challenges she faces. And the director must trust in the voice of that good designer. If not, if instead one says “do it like I do, do this, do that”, if in exasperation a director sits down and creates a piece of work to show the designer how to design, this is essentially a “line reading”; it is weak, it is cheating. Most importantly, it undermines the designer’s own ability to be great- to do the best work she can do.
…if in exasperation a director sits down and creates a piece of work to show the designer how to design, this is essentially a “line reading”; it is weak, it is cheating.
Often new directors do gravitate back to their creation tools, simply because sometimes it is just how they think. It’s how they have grown up solving problems and communicating. The art-making tools are a new director’s comfort zone. Even if you don’t think that’s why you’re doing it, it is usually the reason. It feels safe. You know where you stand when you wield illustrator or photoshop or whatever your comfort-tool is. You have power there.
Conversely, when you let go, when you donn the director’s straight-jacket and try to merely talk… well, what does one do? How does one “create”? If the work isn’t right, how does one get the team from point A to point B? How does one get the artist to change the art without telling her exactly what to do? Does one repeat the original direction- again? Does one simply reject bad ideas? Does one compromise? Does one make forms, or charts, or plans? Does one come up with ideas for off-sites to motivate the team? Does one make sure everyone has the best equipment? What’s the job?
Every new director has to find answers to questions like these. But the answers come more easily when you embrace your team’s creative voice; allowing it to occupy the space over your own.
Skills and Credibility
With all this talk about “hands off” I hope I haven’t misled you to believe that a director does not need a solid foundation in the hands-on skills in her/his background. Having watched so many directors from different fields and backgrounds, I’ve come to realize that those who have done the work before, who have solved problems like these many times before, who might otherwise be able to sit down, take up the tools and do this job now, these directors are almost always better. (Again, assuming they apply the knowledge, but withhold from personally doing it!) They know what their team is going through. A director who lacks such direct hands on skills neither understands the nuanced challenges the team faces, nor tends to command respect and belief from the team. The extent to which the director or client has not done this type of work is the extent to which the creative team will likely doubt the integrity of any direction that has been provided.
It’s why clients and directors who lack creative or hands-on backgrounds but who provide creative comments are notoriously lampooned and ridiculed by creatives in all fields.
Authority without experience. Creatives are a cynical lot. And few things trigger their cynical response more than an inexperienced client or director giving feedback.
Creatives are a cynical lot. And few things trigger their cynical response more than an inexperienced client or director giving feedback.
And this brings me to the last main challenge for most directors.
Navigating the Corporation
Even the title triggers measured sighs and eyes to roll. But this is another arena that often comes as a shock, and where great directors can excel.
Almost all creative jobs exist within a company. Very few of those — even among ad and design agencies — are truly designed to nurture creatives’ needs, disciplines and sensibilities. And it’s here, in the organizational world of profit and loss, of business plans and strategy, of budgets and Excel spreadsheets and executives who wear khaki pants and ties, that the last few creative directors sink or swim.
Nothing elicits such a strong show of cynicism as when corporate machinations impact the creative team. If you run a company you are all too familiar with the fear, uncertainty, and discontent that seems to plague your design teams. You feel they often make unrealistic demands, disconnected from what it takes to run a business. They complain when things change, they always seem to look on the dark side when the company grows or changes, never seeing the positive.
But you need to know, your creative teams are not just irrationally “whiny”. They behave this way because creatives, by and large, really are victims of the corporate world.
creatives, by and large, really are victims of the corporate world
See, the reason creatives enter the fields they do is because they were designed for that. It’s how their brains work. And “being designed for that” often (though perhaps not always) also means not being designed for other types of roles: strategy, management, accounting, and sales for example.
Unfortunately for creatives, creating great artwork and design does not automatically explain or justify its many benefits to the business. The disciplines and skills involved in being a great creative does not make one great at conceiving and arguing for organizational change that will both improve the work they produce while making the company more money. Not the way, say, salesmen can. Or strategists can. These guys can assemble a compelling presentation, compare the numbers, they can effectively argue and debate and show how the bottom line will improve by funneling more money and resource to their departments in ways that make their lives easier and allows them to do better work. They are verbal creatures. They think in quite literal, logical terms. And they can sell in their ideas. Their job skills actually align with organizational operation.
But creatives generally don’t have those skills. They tend to be non-verbal thinkers, led by emotional sensitivities. They create objects and artwork that none of the rest of us can fully explain but that we love and appreciate. They probably didn’t go to business school.
So it goes that when things happen in a company — when teams move, get reorganized or budgets and schedules are allocated, the creative team is usually carried along for the ride in whatever way some executive, armed with reasoned arguments from other articulate teams, decided was best. Often this results in non-optimized conditions for the creative teams. When they are lucky the creatives have a team of executives that look out for them. But anecdotally-speaking, this is most often not the case.
So creatives the world over are literal victims of the corporate system. And they act like it.
This is where a solid director has an opportunity to make a difference. Navigating the corporate world — selling into the business — justifying the need for greater budgets, schedules, resources. And defending the creative product itself in the face of dissension.
If you can do all this, your creative team will do better work. And to me there need be no more reason to do this part well.
But what exactly does any of this have to do with the creative skill that brought you to this role?
Very little indeed.
It’s just another unexpected challenge that most directors discover after the fact, and struggle against for years.
Love What You Do
Like all things, with sufficient time, the transition to directing often eventually works itself out if you enter with your eyes open, aware of these otherwise hidden factors, and committed and always willing to learn and adapt.
If, however, you love your art–if you love creating–if your heart thoroughly enjoys wielding the maker’s tools, my emphatic recommendation is: don’t be too eager to leave that behind you. Because in many ways, that is what directing results in.
…if your heart thoroughly enjoys wielding the maker’s tools, my emphatic recommendation is: don’t be too eager to leave that behind you. Because in many ways, that is what directing results in.
Indeed I have counseled a number of young directors to return to their original creator roles; roles where they’d excelled and been happy. In every instance these people were happy to return. It was such a relief, and the whole ordeal was liberating in a way as it allowed them to focus back on what they loved without the burden of feeling like they needed to make that particular kind of hierarchical progress. It allowed them to focus on growth and advancement of a different sort. On the improvement of their art and skills. To become better creators.
If you consider “being a designer” for the rest of your career limiting, it could be that you are defining “creative career growth” under a false pretext. You might take some time to consider that many creative masters have gone their whole careers, having had great professional success, and even great fame, without moving into so-called “director” roles. A whole generation of legendary designers for example, would not have dreamed of being anything but. Paul Rand, Saul Bass, Dieter Rams, so many more, people for whom the discipline of design defined who they were and how they advanced in their careers.
Leaving a discipline that you love in pursuit of some sense of “seniority” or a quick promotion to a leadership position can be a hollow, unfulfilling journey. And if you’re truly great at what you do, trust me, leadership opportunities will come to you. Control will come to you organically, later in your career. But because you love, and are therefor very good at, what you do.
There is nothing “lesser than” about being great at, and committing to, the discipline you love. Indeed, that is how you will find joy, and therefor more often how you will make the biggest impact on your career, and even the world.
There is nothing “lesser than” about being great at, and committing to, the discipline you love. Indeed, that is how you will find joy, and therefor more often how you will make the biggest impact on your career, and even the world.
Conclusion
To recap, there are four main qualifications you’ll end up confronting, if indeed directing is your calling. You’ll have to:
- Know the art and have mastered the hands-on skills. If you can’t make things yourself, if you haven’t done it before, you don’t really know what your team is going through — you’re guessing — and therefor can’t expect to direct well. Having these skills behind you is how you will relate to your teams, how your feedback will carry credibility, and more importantly how you will gauge what they are and aren’t capable of.
- Become an expert in interpersonal relationships. People are now your medium — where the art form itself no longer is. You must be able to read people’s concealed emotions, you must intuitively know what they need from you and from others to do great work. Your own ego has little place here. You must have nothing personal to prove, you cannot be defensive. You must be a therapist and a leader. If this one qualification doesn’t come naturally to you — directing may not be up your alley.
- Direct with context and words, not “line-readings” and hands. You must be a strong speaker, you must be able to form and articulate thoughts that are valid and make sense. You must wear the director’s straight jacket, able motivate and redirect your teams without doing their jobs for them — your team must be allowed to own and invent the solution. They must be allowed to create the art. If you do it for them, and it does not manifest from their consciousness, they’re ongoing performance will be weaker. If they are supported in solving the problem, they will do the best work of all.
- Navigate the corporate organization. You will have to defend your team’s creative ideas in such a way that clients, and executives can buy into the creative executions. This is about much more than the “pitch”. You need to be able to explain to them how it improves their business. You need to defend your team when corporate changes are likely to impact them. You need to be able to wrangle the corporate machinery to your team’s best interest.
This is directing.
It’s all about the art — but the art is not your medium.
The Director’s medium is people.
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Are you a Designer or Art Director?
I have two open positions for world-class talent at EF Education First’s Central Creative Studio, in unbelievably beautiful Lucerne, Switzerland. You’ll help set the brand, creative attitude and design, across every medium, for the worldwide company. And there is no other company like ours. If interested, please connect with me on LinkedIn.
