July 11, 2005
Creative Director: Misconceptions of a job
How would you define a Creative Director? Is it a senior designer? A senior copywriter? Or is it a manager? Apparently the views about how the role of a Creative Director is described vary. In my opinion, there's a number of great misconceptions out there. On job searching sites like Craigslist you will find job listings for Creative Director, but it will never be the same. Companies are struggling in their attempt to define a role in clear words that apparently appears blurry to them.
It's not new to me that people have different conceptions about job descriptions in this industry. After all you'll also find Art Directors listed in movie titles and business cards of hair dressers. The communications industry is undergoing a transformation process. Along with changing media- and content demands, what used to be divided in advertising, design and web, whereas advertising and design were closely bound to the prepress industry, is now changing into one big chunk of companies offering their set of often overlapping services. It is not uncommon that a former advertising company now has a web department, a direct media or customer relationship department, a pr agency and even does their own media bookings.
A Creative Director, however, usually defines a management position. A person that's usually directing people and commonly occupies a leading position. In some cases Creative Directors are also Managing Directors of a company, or at least member of the management board. Being Creative Director, in my personal experience, involves by far more management and leadership skills than any other senior job in the communications industry. Unlike a Managing Director, a Creative Director is in touch with all three connection points on a social level of a communications agency:
- The Creative Department, people inside the company and freelancers
- Account managers and media booking people
- Clients
The Creative Director interacts within these three directions, trying to establish a fluent work flow, managing production cycles, getting calls from people who want to be hired, from recruiters, photographers and freelancers, and at the same time he/she is talking with other managers and presenting works to the clients. But the most important skill of a Creative Director is conceptual thinking. He should be able to write and hold his own presentations, with consequential thoughts and a single minded creative strategy. A Creative Director often finds himself in a role of a show master during client meetings: When the numbers have been discussed, the Creative Director takes over and presents the creative work, hopefully in a highly entertaining way. Which pretty much sums up the main reason why this job was always so much fun to me. It's a fast life and exhausting, but challenging you every day.
To promote the creative services of my own company, core, I started looking at portfolio hosting services like Creative Hotlist. It's one of many I'm going to use to post information about core services. Creative Hotlist knows the job Art, Creative Director. So there is no Creative Director without background in Art, which is a common misconception. In my career I've met a number of Creative Directors who had never had a drawing pencil in their hands. As a matter of fact, most highly qualified Creative Directors I met were former senior copywriters in advertising.
It goes further. When you're filling out your profile at Creative Hotlist, you can select Project Management and Writing, but not Concepts or Presentations. The whole experience matches with the one of job offering sites such as Monster. It's clear to me that those who create the database can't add all kinds of jobs offered in the big big world. Creative Director, however, is not such an exotic job that it would lack a clear definition.
Posted by Henning von Vogelsang at 06:02 AM | Comments (0)
September 18, 2004
Freedom of expression
k10 is a website hub for designers around the world. It's well known in the scene, but I personally found I rarely get 'real information' out of it. However, right atop there is an announcement about copyright issues.
It is an interactive presentation made with Flash, with copyright issues as a subject. Wether this is just a personal display of frustration, or creative expression about the limiting elements in current copyright law—I just found it funny and interesting.
Posted by Henning von Vogelsang at 03:39 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Freedom of expression
k10 is a website hub for designers around the world. It's well known in the scene, but I personally found I rarely get 'real information' out of it. However, right atop there is an announcement about copyright issues.
It is an interactive presentation made with Flash, with copyright issues as a subject. Wether this is just a personal display of frustration, or creative expression about the limiting elements in current copyright law—I just found it funny and interesting.
Posted by Henning von Vogelsang at 03:39 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack