Where I wanna be?
For me, the advertising industry is one of the most competitive and exciting fields in the world. Advertising is like a big stage that helps clients to tell their stories to the mass in a unique and fascinating way, and behind all the curtains that the audience never sees, is a whole production team that works non-stop to create the best story for the audience. One of the ‘man’ behind the curtains that always fascinated me is the creative director, all the aesthetic and practical parts of ad design are monitored and controlled by them, ensuring that each area fits together in a way that complies with the brand expectations of the client (Flavin 2019). They oversee the entire marketing team to keep the creative vision on track: graphic designers, copywriters, and art directors, to deliver the highest quality product, creative directors are keen listeners and are able to benefit from the experience (Kirchhoff 2009) .
One of the creative leaders I admire is Geoffrey Hantson who currently works at Happiness Saigon. We share the same values which are human happiness (Matei 2019). Anything I do, I just want to make people slime and happy. In 2010, he was named Creative of the Year (Hantson n.d).
Geoffrey Hantson (2020)
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Geoffrey Hantson is usually combining simplicity, and emotions into his creative work to make it relatable and aesthetically pleasing to the eyes. His Skills include branding, copywriting, designing, creative direction (Hantson n.d).
According to Advertising icons Jeff Goodby and Rich Silverstein (2020), there are 3 Qualities of a Successful Creative Director:
Creative directors think Several steps ahead. They can imagine their mission and know how to accomplish it.
They’re able to keep their team on track and can see all the moving parts of development and how they function together to create a memorable design.
An eye for the big picture
Creative guidance is about more than visual communication; about their creative work, it's also about interacting with others. In order to promote a relaxed and open working atmosphere, a creative director can hone their interpersonal skills.
Strong communication skills
Leadership skills and time management skills in design are essential to leading innovative people to a single target successfully. To know what works and what doesn't, they use their past job experience and they know how to direct an innovative project to completion on a deadline.
The capacity for leadership
Where I am now?
For my profile and development as a creative director, I need to have not only effective communication and copywriting skills but also creative and designing skills. ICP has taught me how to build a webpage, set up detailed and specific, and realistic goals, work with clients, and develop my communication skills while working in a team. I believe that the best way to learn is through your own mistakes. For this project one of my biggest mistake was misunderstanding our target audience, therefore the whole campaign was going in the wrong direction from the first few weeks. After being corrected by Dr. Lena, we had to start the research from the beginning by re-reading client briefs and conducting deeper research. This overlook has shown me the value of time, time was our big competitor as we had less time and more work to do. One of the most interesting things I learn from working with the client that can benefit my professional practice is, always having plan B, clients always right, and time management.
After realizing how much work we need to finish I needed to organize and prioritize my time. I researched how to balance my work and life by watching Sara Cameron's ted talk on ‘How to turn busy into balance’ (Sara Cameron 2016), which taught me not only how to manage my time but also balance to work more effectively under pressure.
So, I decided to separate my working time into a few categories:
As a person who has little experience in building web pages, youtube became my main tool to learn. From watching Dev Ed’s tutorials ‘Web Design Tutorial - 5 IMPORTANT Tips! & How To Design Good Layouts’ and multiple series of Ran Segall on how to build a website using Wix for beginners ( Segall 2020).
From them, I learned the importance of color, colors should be aligned with the overall aesthetic of the page and each color has its psychology that would affect US (user experience) (Hauff 2020),
(Hauff 2020)
the headlights should not be over 5 worlds, and the website should not use more than 2 fonds.
At first, I wanted to create a creative website with lots of animations and videos, I learned from the youtube channel ‘ Wix.com’, how to make cool animation which took me five days to learn and do.
Youtube. Wix.com
However, I over underestimated myself, my skills were not enough to make something that advents. I asked my peers for feedback and tested my User experience theory, the website from their point of view was ‘interesting and cool visuals, however, your website is overloaded with animations and transitions that was hard to follow the content and navigate’
I tried to remove some and edit my website again, but it did not look the way I intended in the first place. I admitted I failed on my first try, but now I know my mistakes so I know where to start my improvements. Firstly is research, I sign up for Mr. Joe Parys, masterclass to see how to build a pleading webpage.
What I have learned through our 12 weeks is that we need to set realistic and specific goals in our careers and life. Also, before doing any task, I need to have a deeper understanding and research so I won't waste my time on impractical goals.
How will I go to where I want to be?
To be a good creative director I need to improve and develop my copywriting, branding, and designing skills. I think the most challenging part in my field of practice
Is gaining experience. This profile has made me realize how much learning and knowledge I need to gain before stepping into this field to be more competitive, and how to see my little but meaningful growth throughout the project and evaluate myself through my own setup tasks and goals.
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One of the things I enjoy the most is the creative process, making connections between things that seem to have nothing in common from the first glance.
For now, my first step to becoming a creative director is gaining experience in the advertising field. I signed up for the D&AD competition to gain knowledge, experience, and work with clients' briefs all over the world. We already signed up for three briefs: Duolingo, Coors Light, and Penguins.
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