Leading Creative Teams: Management Career Paths for Designers, Developers, and Copywriters

229 Pages·2017·7.31 MB·English

by  Eleazar Hernández (auth.)

Leading
Creative Teams
Management Career Paths
for Designers, Developers,
and Copywriters
―
Eleazar Hernández
LEADING CREATIVE TEAMS
MANAGEMENT CAREER PATHS FOR
DESIGNERS, DEVELOPERS, AND
COPYWRITERS
Eleazar Hernández
Leading Creative Teams: Management Career Paths for Designers, Developers, and Copywriters
Eleazar Hernández
San Antonio, Texas, USA
ISBN-13 (pbk): 978-1-4842-2055-9 ISBN-13 (electronic): 978-1-4842-2056-6
DOI 10.1007/978-1-4842-2056-6
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016956457
Copyright © 2017 by Eleazar Hernández
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To Kathy…
Who gave me the freedom to explore my creative
ideas and the support to act on them.
Contents
About the Author. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .ix
Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .xi
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .xiii
Chapter 1: Start with a Blank Piece of Paper . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1
Chapter 2: Leading a Creative Team. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Chapter 3: Leading an Advertising Creative Team . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
Chapter 4: Leading a Design Creative Team . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
Chapter 5: Brainstorming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
Chapter 6: Creative Exploration Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
Chapter 7: The Art of the Critique. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
Chapter 8: The Art of the Pitch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
Chapter 9: The Art of Copywriting. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
Chapter 10: The Art of TV and Radio. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
Chapter 11: Career Trajectories to Creative Leadership . . . . . . . . . . . 159
Chapter 12: Invest in Your People . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171
Chapter 13: Don’t Just Take It from Me . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181
Chapter 14: The Final Nutshell. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217
About the Author
Eleazar H ernández i s the owner and Creative
Director of Hernández Design Company ( her-
nandez-design.com ). He has specialized in award-
winning branding, identity, product, packaging,
retail, and web designs for national and inter-
national clients. Over the past 20 years he has
produced breakthrough brand design strategies
for clients such as Anne Klein, Steven Kretchmer,
New York State Museum, Planned Parenthood,
Kaiser Family Foundation, Univision, the Dallas
Cowboys, and Vivente Tasty Foods Mexico.
Hernández has received numerous awards from
many major design and advertising publications in the United States and
Europe and was named one of the Designers to Watch by Graphic Design:
USA magazine. He has lectured extensively to student and professional groups
on the business side of design and his own creative process. He has also
judged numerous design and advertising competitions on the local, regional,
and national levels.
Acknowledgments
Thanks go to the friends and associates who I have worked with over the
years that helped provide the inspiration and experience that led to this
book. Teammates and leaders that I worked alongside while enlisted in the
US Air Force, in particular, James Person, Mark Bennett, Armando Espino,
Kenneth Horton, and Franklin Wheeler, Jr. My design professor and mentor
Louis Ocepek. My creative, advertising, and marketing friends and associates
Tara Ricard, Paul Knapick, Katie Diduch, Andrew Anguiano, Kazim Fahim, Olga
Garces, Mary Carmen Ruiz-Sesssions, Charles Davis, Jennifer Katz, Christopher
Pawlik, Steve Young, Dora Guiterrez, Kay Rangel, Ramon Hernandez, Kristina
Leh, Jona Haga-Camacho, Jimmy Nichols, Alex Alvarado, Paul Lazo, Rick
Holcomb, Nathan Post, Chad Wooten, Frank Guerra, Beth Wammack, Carey
Quackenbush, Victor Noriega, Barbie Rugen and Tita Sartorio.
Big thanks go to friends and associates whom I interviewed for the book or
who provided graphics, including Claudia Camargo, Colin Harman, Elizabeth
Grace Saunders, Kevin Lane, Kim Arispe, Lisette Sacks, Monica Ramirez Nadela,
Todd Henry, Jessica Walsh, and Debbie Millman.
Thanks to everyone at Apress, most notably Robert Hutchinson, who helped
me get this project off the ground by graciously responding to my initial (and
somewhat rambling) e-mail. Thanks to Rita Fernando for being my guide and
gently keeping me on track throughout the process. Thanks also goes to Linda
Laflamme for editing the book and providing humorous and insightful recom-
mendations that helped ease me into the world of publishing.
A big thanks goes to my parents, Mildred and Eleazar, who while they may still
be a little unsure of what it is I actually do for a living, are nonetheless proud.
Yes, Mom and Pop, I can make a great living from drawing stuff!
Thanks to my kids and their spouses, Ryan, Ashley, Adam, Kate, Joanna, and April.
Shout-outs to my grandbabies (I know, I look surprisingly young to have grandba-
bies) Eloise, Gwyneth, Oliver, Max and Violette—your Poppy loves all of you!
Finally, a sincere and heartfelt thanks to my amazing wife Kathy. She has sup-
ported every crazy career idea I’ve had, from wanting to be a doctor or an
architect, to a professional wrestler (yes, a WWE pro wrestler), an art histo-
rian, or a Preclassic Maya archaeologist. Through it all, she has always been
my source of support and guidance. My partner in crime, the Wonder Woman
to my Batman, the peanut butter to my jelly, the straw in my soda… my girl.
I love you. Thank you.
Introduction
Working your way through the ranks to creative director is a goal of many
creative men and women in the design, advertising, interactive, or other cre-
ative industries. In my experience I have found that there are typically two
paths taken by those who make it to creative director: straightforward or
circuitous.
Those who have made it via a straightforward career path have gone from
one rank to the next over a series of years with relative ease. These creatives
appear to have been born with a silver pencil in their mouths. They seem
to have the Midas touch for finding and developing great ideas. They have a
knack for finding the smallest nugget of insight in brainstorm sessions and can
develop it into a full-blown successful campaign. They seem to have it all.
Creatives who have made it to creative director via a more circuitous route
take hits here and there. Their career paths resemble a rollercoaster ride
of high and low points until they finally reach creative director. They may
have jumped to different agencies for promotions or taken risks joining an
agency with a bad reputation only to depart quickly upon learning the agency’s
negative reputation was well-deserved. They may have tried to work with
an in-house creative team, only to find it less than satisfying and somewhat
rote. They could have gone out on their own with dreams of grandeur, but
succumbed to taking any client that walked through the door in order to
remain afloat and pay their bills. These creative directors are just as talented
and capable as those on the straightforward path; they are simply a little more
adventurous and willing to take more risks.
Is it always one path or the other? No. It could be a combination of the two.
In fact, the majority of the creative directors I know tend to fall somewhere in
between. Regardless of which route you happen to take, I’m not going to try
to make you believe that it’s going to be easy. It will be hard work. You must
be driven. Driven to succeed. Driven to lead. Driven to produce the best, most
insightful, engaging creative possible—at all times. There are no free passes
when you’re a creative leader.
Unfortunately, there is no magic bullet that is going to help you all the way.
You can’t just read a book and believe that you can follow every piece of infor-
mation to get what you want. I can point you in the right direction, but not
draw a detailed road map. Why? Because you will encounter specific nuances
in every job that will be unique to you—your temperament, your creativity,
your experience, your personality, and your skills.
xiv Introduction
Learn from Everything
My personal journey has been exciting and frustrating, fulfilling and disheart-
ening, exhilarating and infuriating. It has been 20 years of a constant duality. On
one hand I have met great people who have taught me about creativity, leader-
ship, supervision, presentations, team interactions, and much more. They have
helped me grow and improve. On the other hand, I have also met and worked
with huge assholes who have taught me how not to lead, how not to critique,
how not to interact with people, how not to gain trust, or how not to share
the credit. Whether experiences have been positive or negative, I learned
from every encounter, every situation, every success, and even every failure.
To be a successful creative director, you must be a student of the industry,
a student of life. When you look out into the world, what do you see? Do
you really look? Successful creative directors are students of life. They are
impacted, influenced, or inspired by virtually everything. The best creative
directors also know how to inspire this kind of behavior in others.
Be a Great Leader
To be a great creative director you must also be a great leader, not only of
your creative team, but of the agency as a whole. This isn’t something that
comes naturally to many people, and is in fact one of the biggest deficits I
have found in some creative leaders. One of the benefits of my time in the
military is that I was required to take leadership and supervision classes as I
progressed up the career ladder. There isn’t anything like that for creatives
who are being promoted into positions of leadership. I wish there were.
There are how-to manuals for designing websites, collateral material, posters,
or ads. There are lots of books with multiple subjects regarding the creative
process, or retrospectives of work produced by creative directors and their
teams, but there isn’t anything out there that actually helps creatives prepare
to move into leadership.
When creative professionals move up the ladder they are expected to take
up the additional responsibilities of leadership while maintaining the skills that
led them to the promotion. However, the truth is that just because someone
is a good art director, doesn’t mean they will be a good senior art director.
Likewise, a good associate creative director won’t necessarily make a good
creative director. There are skills that must be developed and understood to
be able to move up the ranks successfully, but sadly there aren’t any compa-
nies (that I know of) that actually provide training to people moving up the
career ladder. That’s where this book comes in.