Category Archives: Management

Sketchbook/Notebook methodology

Sketch­books and note­books are one and the same when you are an artist. Sketch­es are notes and notes illus­tra­tions of moments of inspi­ra­tion and enquiry.  The most impor­tant part of any sys­tem is to stay out of the way of cre­ativ­i­ty and spark that lights our fire. Pages of draw­ings can be free con­ven­tions unless […]

No More Managers. Everyone Leads

An engi­neer­ing researcher was clair­voy­ant when he said in 1994 that sub­or­di­nates often make the best lead­ers: Often with small groups, it is not the man­ag­er who emerges as the leader. In many cas­es it is a sub­or­di­nate mem­ber with spe­cif­ic tal­ents who leads the group in a cer­tain direc­tion. Lead­ers must let vision, strate­gies, […]

Teamwork Ground Rules

Good advice from Kristof Kovacs There’s only three things: ASK: If a task is not clear, or more infor­ma­tion is need­ed, please ask as soon as pos­si­ble. Ask­ing is always ok. Doing the wrong thing (or doing noth­ing) because you did­n’t ask is not ok. DEBRIEF: It’s not done until you report­ed it done. This […]

The Creative Brief

Don’t let the ques­tion pre­dict, lim­it and/or hide the answer. It is very impor­tant when cre­at­ing a brief for a cre­ative project not to be over­ly pre­scrip­tive as it will lim­it the pos­si­ble cre­ative out­comes. Trust the team and the cre­ative process to deliv­er unex­pect­ed results that fill your require­ments. When engag­ing in a new […]

Rules of engagement

Before work can begin with a new cre­ative team or group of teams it is impor­tant that some ground rules are estab­lished and very clear­ly and con­sis­tent­ly enforced (enforced may seem harsh, but clear bound­aries are not a bad thing). One con­ver­sa­tion at a time There are no bad ideas Fail ear­ly and fail often […]

Need to write a creative brief?

Bel­low are guide­lines for any­one wish­ing to write the per­fect cre­ative brief. When engag­ing in a new project we want to get the ball rolling quick­ly, lay­out expec­ta­tions ear­ly and agree time-scales and bud­gets. 

Remov­ing ifs, buts and maybes from the process great­ly increas­es the chances of the design­er sur­pass­ing the clien­t’s expec­ta­tions and the devel­op­ment of a last­ing rela­tion­ship.