Help! Common Issues That Creatives Face and What Managers Can Do to Help Them

Creatives are any employees that use imagination and artistry to make something for an audience. They can be Visual Designers, Copywriters, Musicians, Animators, or User Experience Designers and they aren’t just found in marketing agencies. In this age almost any size company will have a design department to create and maintain their branding and marketing, their online and mobile presence, their products or services, or even their brick and mortar locations.

Being very particular about who you bring on the team should always be the cornerstone of building any team, but the reality is that building a team with absolutely no issues is impossible. The creative process itself can create problems for a business-goal oriented team. As a manager the best solution can be to know what the issues that you need to worry about are and have a strategy for how to deal with them when they arise. Managing creatives is sometimes referred to as “herding cats” because the individuality and freedom that creatives usually need to do their best work can be different from the needs of other types of employees. It is wrong to think that all creatives are the same and what will work for one employee will always work for another, but here are some issues that creatives might have in common and what managers can do to try to help:

Daydreaming “My creatives are staring off into space, taking long breaks, and appear to be goofing off!”

How you can help: Are they getting great results? If so, they may be engaging in just what they need to think through their creative process. Creative employees need time to explore and it can sometimes look like goofing off. Have you ever noticed that new ideas often coincide with taking a bathroom break? Getting up and changing your location does wonders for your creative muscles. Creatives also like to engage in mindless tasks from time to time to allow their mind to wander. The next time you need to put postage on 300 envelopes, ask a creative if they would like to do it, they might just get a brilliant idea as a side effect. If they aren’t getting great results, it might be because...

Disengagement “My creatives are not doing work as great as I know they are capable of and seem disinterested in what they are working on!”

How you can help: If they aren’t getting great results, discuss it with them, find common ground on what could be better, and see if you can discover the reason together. If they feel uninspired, help them find places to look at similar projects that have been accomplished well. Talk about what makes them great and why. If they feel disengaged with the project in general, help them find where the places in the project that they can find the fun are where they can find something to get excited about creatively.

If they are getting great results, do not disparage your creatives if they are engaging in an activity that may seem to equate to a lack of work ethic in other employees.

Devil’s Advocate “My creatives can sometimes be annoyingly contrary. It seem like they always take the other side of every discussion!”

How you can help: While some consideration of different points of view is always welcome, sometimes it can be hard to make headway on a project when it never ends. What makes a creative great in the first place is their ability to make non-obvious connections and ability to see things from different perspectives. Be patient with them, it’s their talent shining through. However, there are times when you need consensus on a project. Listen to them and their idea carefully, but if the idea isn’t a game changer for the success of the project, it may be better adding their thoughts to the backlog and refocusing their attention to making the task at hand as great as it can be.

Ego “Help! My creative thinks they’re the greatest thing in the world and won’t listen to me!”

How you can help: Creatives can often feel that their perspective is the best, which can be a real problem when working in a team environment but before you hand them their pink slip, let’s look at this situation at a deeper level. Creatives that come from a place of a lot of personal work sometimes have trouble drawing a distinction between creativity for personal use and creativity for a business use. You want creatives that create on a personal level, this is how their taste and point of view are formed, but there is a real difference in how you execute on personal and business creativity. With personal creativity, there is no wrong. The creative is the master of everything. Business creativity has a wrong solution because business creativity is geared toward reaching a specific goal.

Another issue may be that you are unable to communicate to the creative in the correct vocabulary for either of you to understand each others problems with something. You need to both speak the same language if you hope to say things that the creative will respect. You both need to listen carefully to each other and maintain an open mind. It’s possible that the problem is with you, so consider your own perspective carefully here. If the problem isn’t that the creative isn’t focusing on the business goals of the project and it isn’t that the two of you are unable to effectively communicate, then the problem may be that they are just not suited to working in a team environment and you should consider letting them move on.

Low self esteem “My creative has no point of view and can’t be relied on to lead the vision on anything!”

How you can help: The creative thought process can lead to a balancing act between low self-esteem and thinking they are the best. It is not uncommon for creatives to rarely be satisfied with their work and always feel it can be better. They are constantly comparing their work to others. Because of all this, creatives often have a strange relationship with competition, and you need to be careful if you use that as a motivator. At the end of the day a creative wants to feel that their creations have meaning and are having an impact on their audience and that is the best creative motivator. On the other side of that coin, seeing a project get cancelled can be a terrible blow to morale. Creatives are used to going the wrong direction down a path to find the right one, use that as a tool and embrace a failing fast ethos to avoid projects getting to far into development before they are cancelled. Remind yourself to give positive feedback when appropriate and be sure to keep them updated on the success of launched projects.

Focus “My creative is all over the place and can’t focus on anything!”

How you can help: Idea generation can be a very powerful strength, but sometimes it can also be a debilitating weakness. Some creatives produce new ideas at such a rate that they can’t focus on really developing anything. There is nothing necessarily wrong with this, they just might need help recognizing when an idea is worth sticking with and help with concentrating on the task at hand. Daily check-ins, printing things out and putting them in a visible place, giving the creative an avenue to vent these ideas and always bringing conversations back to the task at hand can all help with this.

Many of these qualities are ones that can be permanently overcome with practice. Some of these qualities aren’t really problems and can be turned into strengths with a little bit of perspective adjustment on your part. Either way, knowing some of these common qualities of creatives can help managers develop strategies for meeting their business goals successfully. Have any ideas to add? Let me know in the comments!

Stormy Day Poetry Drawing

Photography Section

I added a photography section with a few shots I have taken in the last year.

Spine animation experiment

Swallow Falls, MD

Some pictures I took at Swallow Falls State Park, MD

Mob Zombies

Just looking through some old stuff and found a few old games i had completely forgotten about including Mob zombies. As far as I know the first AR game ever made. This is from 2006 or 2007 before AR was a thing. You ran around in real space to make your character run away from zombies and pick up power ups.

How to be happy at work and make great things

Here are a few thoughts I have had on how to get the most out of your work experience. If you have anything you would like to add, let me know in the comments!

• Values are more than just a corporate poster. It’s something that you can believe in. Work (and Life) are more meaningful if you believe in what you are doing all day. Find a way to make it meaningful to you and you will be happier and better at what you do.
• Life is too short for making crap. if you are going to spend your precious time making something, do it well! The success of a company depends on everyone not just doing what they need to do, but going above and beyond to make it excellent.
• Be yourself. Find what you can uniquely bring to your company with passion and bring it! It doesn’t necessarily have to be your primary function, just find a way to involve the essence of you in what you are doing there. There is nobody that can be as good a you as you. You are the best one in the world.
• Don’t cut corners on hiring. Hire the best and then support them and success will follow. Rest assured that you are here because you are the best.
• Connect with each other. Communication is one of the biggest challenges that any company faces. Always look for opportunities not only to talk about projects but to connect as people. You are there every day with each other. Be there with people you respect and enjoy because you have made an effort to really get to know them. This is where genuine culture comes from. The only ingredient in the recipe for Great culture is you.
• Involve creativity in whatever you are doing. Great HR involves great creativity. Great programming involves great creativity. Accounting with creativity finds where the company can save hundreds of thousands of dollars. Have a strong point of view, but being open in your thinking at the right times can bring things to the next level.
• Be humble and don’t play politics. Lift each other up. Be careful not to fall into a culture where everyone is competing over accomplishments. Not everybody is great at selling themselves and it doesn’t mean that they aren’t valuable and doing amazing things.
• Pay attention. All systems are interconnected. What will effect another department will eventually effect you.
• Be honest from the bottom up and the top down. When you find yourself being less than truthful, really think about why and whether that’s really the right course in the long run. It may sometimes be harder, but systems based on a foundation of honesty are one million times more stable than systems based on what you think people want to hear. When you can trust each other everything is easier. I begin every new management relationship with a conversation regarding this.
• Nothing great was ever made alone. All great ideas arise from conversations or from one person being inspired by another. We need each other to make great things. Value each other’s ideas and different perspectives. Be open to inspiration from each other.
• Make time to experiment and explore. The world will not stop changing, do not let it leave you behind.
• Do not be a slave to process. Process is a valuable tool, but it is only a tool. Keep your eyes on the piece of wood in your hands, not on the lathe. If you need to finish it with a chisel, that is ok.
• Be patient. Nothing is ever perfect right out of the gate. There will be a lot of back and forth and conversations and it will take some time. Don’t be precious about things, it’s better to make things right.
• Keep the big picture in mind. Reserve some time to put things in perspective at least once a week.
• Take initiative, figure things out and get things done. You don’t always have to wait for everything to be completely spelled out before you proceed with something. This doesn’t mean don’t communicate, it means don’t let everything be a roadblock.

Inktober Day Four: Underwater

Inktober Day One: Swift

How to get the perfect Art/Design internship

I have been hiring design interns for many years, and in that time I have learned many things that would be helpful to pass on to those looking for a great internship experience. A great internship can give you real-world experience that will help you learn not only what kind of company you want to work for and how it actually works, but what kind of skills you need to build in order to compete in today's job marketplace.

An internship can also provide you with great portfolio pieces as you start looking for an actual job in your chosen industry. It can also be a stepping stone to a full-time job at the company of your choice. At Arkadium, we have hired several of the shining stars of our internship program, and one person who started as an intern is now a VP of the company.

After seeing so many applicants make so many easily correctable errors, I am offering some words of advice to help you land that perfect position. Here is my checklist every art/design internship applicant should go over before pressing "send" on an internship application:

• Read the job description carefully and do everything it says. If it says include a picture of a donkey in your portfolio, make sure you include a picture of a donkey. Some places include things like this to make sure you are paying attention. A great design intern is someone who pays attention to details.
• Make sure you are addressing the right company. There is nothing worse than receiving an application addressed to Imodium when you are applying for an internship at MiraLAX.
• Include an online portfolio. Don’t just send a bunch of jpegs (or worse, a bunch of 16 color gifs). For a design internship, you are broadcasting how you will make decisions for the company with every choice you make. Just sending a bunch of files means you haven't thought about how to present yourself. Design and art is about presentation. The way you are presenting yourself will tell companies how you will present them. Unless you are looking for a position that includes web design, it's ok to choose a template from Squarespace. If you can't afford that, link to your pages on Behance or Dribbble. (Personally, I would not use Deviantart.) Choose a platform that is designed well itself and that industry professionals use. Only use video reels to show animation or motion graphics work. If you expect me to look at your static portfolio as a video reel, I am not going to look at it.
• Include things in your portfolio that are in line with what the company does. You want the company to know that you understand what they do, this what you do, these are the sorts of things you want to learn more about, and these are the things you can help with immediately. If you are looking at a position that includes interaction design or UX, make sure your portfolio is intuitive and easy to use.
• Do not include these things in your portfolio:
  • Life drawings. I love seeing that you can draw and it is very important to your development as an artist, and I am sure you are very proud of them, but this will not relate to anything anyone is going to ask you to do. It just tells me that you have nothing else to show that is more relevant.
  • Guns/tanks/bloodandgore/sex/your D&D character portrait. Unless you are looking for an internship at a FPS specifically making guns, I do not want to see a portfolio of nothing but guns. There is something about college that makes everyone want to draw skulls and blood. There is literally nothing that says immaturity more than a bunch of gross disgusting stuff. Even if I was a horror movie maker, I would want to see you can do the other things rather than a bunch of disembodied arms. Also, you may think you are unique, but literally 60% of portfolios make this mistake.
  • Stuff that looks bad. Your portfolio should be telling me that you know what "good design" looks like. If you have a question about the quality of something, don’t include it. If you don’t have enough stuff that is unequivocally good, do some more work. Your portfolio should be saying whether or not you have good taste.
• Be aware that I am not going to read anything. When I am looking at design portfolios, I am literally looking at hundreds of them at a time. I have no time for reading anything. I look at your work and how you are presenting yourself, I give you a rating and then I move on. The ones that I have rated as acceptable (and to give you a frame of reference, that might be 5 out of 100) I will then go through and read their information more carefully. Bottom line: you should include well written information in your portfolio/resume/cover letter, but don’t count on anybody reading any of it.
• Don’t make spelling/grammar mistakes. I know that this is counter intuitive to what I just said, but as a design intern you need to project that you pay attention to details. If as a portfolio reviewer I see any of that, you are out.
• Be responsive. When they contact you don’t wait a week to get back to them. Respond right away. You are in competition for this spot with several other great candidates. If you are the one that doesn’t respond, it makes everyone else look better. Even if you have other companies that are your higher preference, write back and let them know what is on your mind. Be honest, I know that you have other places you are considering.

The bottom line for any internship is that the supervisor will be thinking "Will this person be useful to our department right out of the gate or will we have to hold their hand the whole time?" An internship is not school. The people at the company have a job to do and while you will learn a lot, they cannot spend all of their time teaching you. Do not include lines like "I don’t know how to do X, Y, and Z but I am a fast learner" that translates to you being a lot of work to make useful. When I only have a couple of months to spend with you, that isn't a very good return on the investment of my time. Everyone is a fast learner, I need to know that you have the basic foundation to know how to do what I need you to do.

If you keep these things in mind and create a totally kick ass portfolio and conduct yourself in a professional manner, you will probably be a top tier candidate for an internship just about anywhere you want. It’s a great stepping stone to landing yourself that perfect job and the beginning of a great career in design.