When it comes to the complexities of designing within creative practice there is often a persistent undercurrent of uncertainty that is reinforced by the recommendations, opinions, and voices of client and agency teams. This can produce a level of design by committee and creative compromise that is maddening. We all know we need to arrive at something everyone agrees is the right and final solution but few of us want to be the person that has the ultimate job of defending and standing by the end product.

I would argue that the reason this is often the case is because being responsible for the certainty of a creative outcome can be scary. If you are the final decider, the buck stops with you and most people would prefer that someone else have final “sign off” in case what is chosen is unsuccessful or not well received. To get beyond this fear, each person must take responsibility and authorship over their creative work and have the emotional and rational fortitude to accept the end result, feel good about it and own it.

Moving creative ideas from fuzzy to focused

Leadership in the context of creative work can be a problematic idea. Titles such as Executive Creative Director or Creative Director often represent a more senior creative person that has transitioned from executing work to overseeing other designers and providing guidance and mentorship. This brings about a question of power and hierarchy. Can a person that is not actually making the work really be totally responsible for it? I would say that the answer is no and that to instill a hierarchy of creative responsibility that is top down is less constructive than building a more horizontal creative culture of collaboration and equanimity.

At the most basic level, actually making an idea and merely verbalizing an idea are two very different things. As you begin to bring a design project to life, I find it difficult to communicate a creative idea using only spoken words. Everyone has a different visual interpretation of something verbalized and I find that visual ideas need to be articulated at the very least in the form of sketches, references, and doodles reinforced with some kind of written explanation.

At the outset of a project, there tends to be a great deal of open discussion and ideation. We chat, pull references, make mood boards and assemble all of our collective thoughts, impulses and impressions of the “What If” that we could create. We tend to linger here because there is a warm and fuzzy feeling of possibility when things are open ended. We often stay in this mode too long because there is no wrong answer and therefore no creative accountability.

After a good deal of optimistic “what if-ing”, inevitably the Creative Director that is leading the effort must work with the team to steer the open-ended raw material into something more concrete that makes sense for the brief. The intention is to synthesize everyone’s disparate ideas into some general ways to move forward into actually making.

After the Creative Director has worked with the designers to define some clear creative territories to make more concrete, it is time to let them run with it. This is the moment in the creative process where a Creative Director needs to step back and give designers the runway to do what they want to do the most — design.

Where leadership ends and authorship begins

For anyone that has worked in a creative agency we know that any brand that is developed will be informed by many voices and opinions by both the client and your internal creatives. So the question becomes, how do you craft the work to be singularly cohesive and not just an amalgam of everyone’s input? This is where authorship comes into play.

What do I mean by creative authorship? Authorship means that you realize that you and you alone are ultimately the creator of the work of art you are making and that this singular authorship gives you the permission to create a design solution with a cohesive conceptual foundation and style that you have individual accountability and ownership for.

The worst position to be in as a designer is when you feel that you are merely the “hands” of the Creative Director, or heaven forbid the client, just fulfilling their idea while they stand over your shoulder. I have been in this position many times and it is very dissatisfying and is the antithesis of authorship.

When we think about what creative leadership truly means, when it is at its most effective, it is about handing over authorship to the designers you are working with and trusting them to reconcile all of the inputs into a singular conceptual and aesthetic whole.

This kind of creative leadership is about empowering and letting go and is not about clinging to your own idea and trying to get your team to fulfill it. As a leader, the moment you relinquish creative control and allow your team to be authors of the designs they are making, you give them the gift of responsibility that is reinforced by your trust in them.

This can be a slightly terrifying moment for most creative people. Creative Directors may feel that they are ultimately accountable for the final creative product and that by letting go they are losing control of the work. At the same moment, the designers may feel lost or unsure of where they want to go and what they want to do. It is this moment of uncertainty when creative control and authorship are exchanged that makes designers and the work stronger.

The illusion of creative hubris

There was a time when individuals within agencies would take credit for the work of others to validate their jobs and make them feel important. This still happens but I would like to think it is becoming less commonplace. Human beings are self-preserving by nature and it is inevitable that egotism may come into play when wrangling creative ideas.

Being proud of your work is great but being prideful and believing that your work is better or more superior is naive and short sighted. If what you are making is doing the work it needs to do, there is no need to prop up your own ego upon it.

Similarly, pushing back on ideas you do not agree with and giving verbal criticism, without offering a tangible alternative solution that works, also produces unnecessary friction. If you are forever the critic without offering to actually facilitate a solution it’s just another form of hubris that halts progress and produces bad energy.

Taking authorship over creative work is about taking responsibility in service of making the work the best it can be. When one uses their creative work to validate our own ego and self image it creates an exclusionary energy vacuum that will push your collaborators away. As we begin to take the steps to become the authors of our own creative output and decision making, it is important to realize humility is the central ingredient that helps everyone advocate for the work and to get on board.

Embracing your fear of being wrong

As a graphic designer that works very hard to do good work that you are proud of, the most devastating hypothetical anxiety you can have is that something you feel great about is seen as “missing the mark” or just plain wrong. The fear of being wrong is triggered by a perception of future harm. It is a worry about a hypothetical future that may or may not come to pass. Fear of being wrong creatively can be paralyzing and if you let your fears drive your thinking and design decisions it may result in a self fulfilling prophecy of failure.

To embrace your fear of being wrong is to move toward it and to create work that helps answer the questions your fears bring out. It is only through the work itself that you can grow and it is only through the making that the fear of being wrong can be accepted and overcome. Being scared and doing something anyway is a leap of faith which is really all that great creative work is. Facing our creative fears and moving forward is about placing yourself outside of your comfort zone that leads toward a growth mindset. It is this tension, coupled with creative authorship, that sparks great ideas.

Look to yourself for the answers and you will find them

The natural impulse for most at a certain point in their creative career is to look to others for the answer. This seems like the easiest way to move forward and absolves you from responsibility. Doing the homework needed to arrive at a solution on your own is much more difficult than asking someone else “in charge” for the answer. The irony here is that leaders actually want people to arrive at a solution themselves. This parley of creative authorship has everything to do with attention and accountability and moving from merely doing the work to going deeper to own the work.

The biggest ah-ha moment in our creative journey should be the realization that empirical certainty doesn’t exist. The only certainty we have is the one we create in our own minds when we believe that we have gone the distance, exhausted all variables, and created something that makes the most sense given all the various inputs. As long as we feel that we have taken full authorship over the creative idea and have fully embraced and synthesized all of the incoming feedback and constraints then we have done the right thing.

The real superpower that less creative leadership and more individual creative authorship amplifies is that you have the ability, inner confidence, and creative problem-solving skills to want to do what is necessary to architect the solution at hand and to take ownership of it. This ability will become the primary weapon in your creative arsenal and serve as the anchor upon which a lifetime of creative growth will be built.

Further Reading

Designer as Author. Michael Rock, 1996
In the mid 1990’s authorship was a hot topic in design circles. Micheal Rock’s Designer as Author article from 1996 (and its updated lecture in 1997) is a fantastic encapsulation of the debate at the time. Today designers are not consciously correlating ideas from literary theory with the practical necessities of day to day creative practice. However, the articles’ mention of Emigre author Anne Burdick’s proposal that “designers must consider themselves authors, not facilitators” rings true. Rock’s articulation of designer as translator, performer and director is a great framing for the different roles a designer must embody. Finally, Michael’s argument that
“design authorship may be as simple as a renewed sense of responsibility” is a universal truth applicable to every discipline and era.

Take Ownership of Your Actions by Taking Responsibility. John Coleman. 2012
In professional life, waiting for someone else to act, take initiative, assume blame, or take charge lies at the heart of the majority of friction, blockers and lack of momentum. I love Coleman’s statement that “no one is coming.” This realization amounts to our ability to internalize the idea of taking responsibility. He states that “In a world where problems are getting more complex, determined and innovative problem-solving will flow from those who live as if help is not coming.” Check out his HBR guide on Crafting your Purpose.