Make It Pretty, and Other Things You Shouldn’t Say to Your Creative Team

Do you work with creative people? I don’t mean people who have Etsy stores or wear deliberately mismatched prints, but people who produce creative work for a living: writers, designers, photographers, videographers and the like.
If so, you may have experienced the occasional frustration. “This stuff is so easy, why are we having these meetings?” “Look, here’s what I want, just make this.” “This is okay, I guess, but it’s not what we had in mind.” And so on.
Your troubles are at an end forever. Here are five rules for working effectively with your creative team:
- Bring a problem, not an idea
- Context is important
- Design is not about making it pretty
- Creative briefs are helpful and good
- Don’t ask for changes, say what’s wrong
(Do I know what I’m talking about? In my day job, I lead the creative team for the No Kid Hungry campaign, and we make all the great stuff that our co-workers use to raise funds, get media attention and feed more kids. Our co-workers are brilliant and committed and we love them, but we have had variations on these conversations many, many times.)

Here’s something that happens to me. Someone rushes in, excited, waving a handsomely-bound report or a screenshot of an infographic or whatever. “Look!” they cry. “I saw this on [rival organization’s] Facebook. It’s exactly what we need. But, of course, you know … in a different color.”
From my excited colleague’s perspective, this makes sense. That illustrated impact report looks great, and it would be ideal for the meeting coming up. We just need our own version. Like this one, but, you know, orange and with kids on it instead of windmills. They’ve saved me all kinds of work, when you think about it.
Here’s the thing, though. That enviable report was (one hopes) the result of a strategic plan. By jumping immediately to one specific idea, we’re short-circuiting that process. You don’t want a new creative asset just because it’s cool, you want it because you see how it will help you solve a problem or achieve a goal. In reality, there are infinite ways to solve that problem, but we won’t hit on any of them if we don’t think deliberately about what we’re trying to do.
Don’t give your creative team an idea to be executed, give them a problem to be solved. Maybe it’ll end up pretty close to the thing that inspired you. Maybe it’ll be something completely different — and better. Or maybe it’ll be good enough, but way cheaper or faster.
Which doesn’t mean you shouldn’t share the thing you’re exited about. Being able to see the video or infographic or pop-up book is super helpful for the creative team, especially if you can articulate what you like about it. Even if you move in a completely new direction, now you’ve got a common frame of reference.

Even when people step back and articulate the problem they want to solve, most of the time the information they share is pretty sparse. We need a group of decision-makers to make the right call, here’s the information, can the team make a nice brochure or something?
Now, you have all sorts of additional details and context, of course. You need the state library board to grant waivers for all municipal public libraries allowing them to replace 20% of the existing borrowing inventory next fiscal year, rather than the usual 12%, because that’s the only way the new curriculum and grants will work. And it’s going to be tough, because three of the five board members are suspicious of the idea because of that mess in the state assembly last year, ugh, that was the worst. (I made all that up, but you get the idea.)
It might seem unnecessary to share any of that with the creative team. Why would they care? They’re just making a brochure.
But there are going to be all kinds of inflection points and alternatives and possibilities when the creative team actually starts to make the thing you need. What’s the headline message? How informal should the copy be? What photos are they selecting? And so on. The more context you share, the better they can tailor the product to your specific audience and your specific goal. Oh, the state library board members are all over 60? Let’s bump up the size of that typeface. The key members are from a culturally conservative part of the state? Let’s use that photo of the little blond girl in front of a church on the cover.

Here’s another one that happens a lot. I’m in a meeting discussing a communications or outreach plan and there is some sort of print collateral required — a brochure, a one-pager, a report. The plan allows plenty of time to carefully craft and review the material, plus a few days for our design team to “make it pretty”. Or someone will say: “Here you go, Alex, here’s everything you need. You just make it pretty!” Or someone produces a document off the side of their desk and apologizes that there wasn’t time for the design team to “make it pretty.” And so on.
First of all, you should avoid saying this on general principles. Professional designers have spent as much time learning and practicing their trade as you have; don’t reduce it to something twee and superficial.
Secondly, and more importantly, you’re doing yourself a disservice by approaching design this way. Design isn’t about choosing fonts and setting margins, it’s about solving communications problems. The form in which you present information is as important — if not more — than the information itself.
The designer is there to make your work better — stronger, clearer, easier to read and absorb, with the most critical points front-and-center for your audience. If you treat design as a separate and final stage, like frosting a cake, then the designer can only do so much to help.
Bring the designer in early, give them a chance to think about a layout or visual approach or suggest a different direction. Deliver your “final” draft with plenty of time to hear and incorporate feedback on cuts or additions (it’s never additions). Don’t think of the designer’s job as making your piece pretty, think of their job as helping you make your piece as strong as it can be.
NOTE: This doesn’t mean waiting until the deadline and turning over unedited or half-baked copy, or making major changes once the piece is already in design. That’s no good. Also, print deadlines are real and implacable.

Nobody ever wants to fill out a creative brief. Ugh, what is that, some kind of form? Look, this assignment is super simple — they can finish it in the time it would take us to answer all these vague questions. This isn’t the Magna Carta, it’s just a one-pager.
But a creative brief doesn’t need to be elaborate. It can be a simple list of questions:
- Who is the target audience? If there are multiple audiences, which is the most important?
- What do we want members of the target audience to do?
- What do members of the target audience feel and think now? What do we want them to feel and think?
- What do we have to do to encourage the target audience to feel, think, and act the way we need them to?
- What are the emotional benefits for the audience? What is the rational support for what we’re asking?
- How will the audience receive the piece? (Mail, email, handout at events, etc.)
What’s the value in answering these questions? Two things.
First, it helps you think through what you’re actually trying to achieve. It’s easy to decide you need a video explainer for the new campaign, but a creative brief will give you structure to do critical thinking, to step back and think about who the audience is and what you need to reach them. Maybe it’s a pop-up book instead. (It’s never a pop-up book. Sadly.)
Second, it helps you get on the same page with the creative team. If they’re unclear about what you’re trying to achieve — either because you haven’t adequately explained your idea or objective or because they’re not paying attention — this conversation will reveal that. And its better to know that now than when you’re looking at a finished piece that the team has spent time on. A good creative brief solves problems before you have them. Plus it gives your team the problem (see rule #1 above) and the context (see rule #2 above) they need to help you be awesome.

You’ve given the creative team a clear sense of the problem and the context, worked through a simple creative brief and refrained from telling them to make it pretty. When you review the first draft, you’ll be pleased. Hey, this looks great! Those rules were extremely helpful!
But the first draft is never perfect. Your job now is to give clear, useful feedback that can make it better.
Unfortunately, feedback on creative work often takes the form of requests for specific changes. Make the headline bigger. Make the logo bigger. More exclamation points. More green. Let’s use a picture of a different kid. Make the headline even bigger.
That approach, though, shuts down possibilities. Instead of asking for a change, explain the problem. Why do you want the headline bigger? Well, it’s hard to read. That’s the problem. And the answer might be a bigger headline, but it also might be a different font or weight, a new layout, more white space. Why do you want a new song for the promo video? Well, the piece feels too slow. The answer might be a tighter edit or a different intro. You get the picture.
Okay, that’s everything. I can’t make any promises. But if you follow these rules, you will definitely be a hero to your creative team and every project you work on will be an enormous hit.
