Criticising creative work is a crime. It steals future beauty from the world. By criticising creative work, the creative that made the work closes down a little – and ends up playing it safe in the future.
By criticising I mean saying “this is a bad idea”, or “this doesn’t work”.
But we need to make the work hit the purpose we are creating for. So how do we do that without criticising?
We do it by building together. You look at the brief again together, look at your strategy for how to solve that brief, and then see which parts of the brief are being met by the work and which are not. The work is not bad – creative can’t be objectively bad – it just doesn’t meet the requirements for the work you are producing.
By doing this, you might be able to spot possible avenues forward together. Or the creative can go away with a clear direction on what to create next to meet the brief. Their creative spirits remains strong and they produce high quality work.
So next time you are about to criticise creative work. Build together instead.
