Creative Direction
A Creative Director is your Brand’s Champion. They help steer your brand’s creative course with comprehensive Creative Direction, providing coordination and avoiding pitfalls.
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Creative Direction will ensure your brand is delivered in the best possible, consistent manner across all channels
Creative Direction can be a tricky thing to define or isolate. With a myriad of creative activities happening for your business, it’s important to be consistent and have a clear path to success. Good Creative Direction ensures things look good no matter what is being done, on your website, social media and in print. We put together a strategy and style guide to ensure your company looks good no matter where or how it is viewed.
What is Creative Direction?
There are a lot of moving parts to consider when designing a solid brand and voice for a company. Your design needs to be consistent. Your company’s voice needs to be clear. Your message and goals need to be effectively communicated across all mediums. This is the core of solid Creative Direction. How all these pieces come together is what will make or break you in the eyes of your customers. Creative Directors oversee this complex dance of moving parts to put together the big picture of your brand with experience, coordination and an eye for detail.
What’s what and who’s who in the execution of your brand?
Graphic Design: This is the core “nuts and bolts” of creating visuals for your brand. Ads need to be created, websites need to portray your brand in every button or text block, emails and print pieces need to be created. Graphic Designers are the “boots on the ground” for this work.
Art Direction: Art Directors are responsible for overseeing the work being done in a variety of visual mediums to ensure consistency and adherence to brand style guides. With many pieces being put together with tight deadlines and goals, this task can be overwhelming to even the most experienced designers.
Copy Writing: Your Company has a voice, or at least it should, if you want to be consistent. That voice and your visual design should come together and portray your message in harmony or you risk confusing your target audience. A common pitfall of branding is to assume that copy is just copy, and autonomous to the over all strategy or design.
Creative Direction and Strategy: Graphic Designers are typically not writers, and writers usually do not have an eye for visual impact. An Art Director has an eye for the important visual aspects of your brand, but may not understand the true goals and marketing objectives of your organization. This is where a seasoned veteran, or Creative Director, steps in and takes hold of the big picture.
Creative Direction is the fusion of Design, Copy and Art Direction – where they meet Strategy and Marketing Goals.
Project Management and Coordination
Knowing how to handle a project, large or small, on a deadline with many considerations to be taken into account requires an experienced eye, and an understanding of seeing a project through to completion. Left unchecked, designers may stray from your brand identity into the realm of their own personal style. Copywriters, without direction, may become too wordy or lose your message. Projects tend to have many moving parts on the web, and often require experience off the web to see them through to completion. A good Creative Director has this knowhow and the experience of completing a wide variety of projects. They are well versed in the pitfalls of the various design mediums and can help to keep a project on task, on time and on budget.
Strong, Brand Consistency Across the Board
What happens when your visual design and copy are out of alignment with one another? How do you know your audience is getting the right information, at the right time? Creative Direction ensures brand consistency in all facets of your Marketing Strategy. Your organization likely has a wealth of information being presented to the world. Regardless of if it is onsite-marketing efforts, email blasts, social media posts, or printed material it is important to make sure your voice and image are strategically aligned with your company goals and image.
Copy & Visual Design are the Voice and Image of Your Organization
Fundamental IA and UX concerns can be tackled in a variety of ways. Here are two examples of tactics that we find successful for you:
Copywriting is the process of producing quality written messaging for your brand, which adheres to the best practices of whatever medium is being utilized. Facebook, Twitter, Blogging and Print Design all have different ways to approach the words, which form your message. True “Wordsmiths” provide a wonderful service to your company by providing well-written content that speaks to your target audience while conveying your message in the best way possible.
Design represents your Brand Identity in everything you put out to the world. Quality Graphic Design can help your company leave a memorable, positive impression on your audience and ensure your message is seen. A gifted design team can provide a life all its own to your company. Visuals can speak to people in a myriad of ways. It’s important to ensure they are speaking in a positive way.
Creative Direction can provide coordination to these efforts that will yield results like never before. Even the best designer or most influential copy writer will likely not have an enough understanding of how their work impacts a business on the “big picture” level. It’s important to ensure that amazing talent does not fall on deaf ears or get put on a shelf. This is what makes Creative Directors so important, as they have the creativity and practical experience to ensure everything comes together in a way that represents your brand with your vision at its core.