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More usual than not, the big learnings in your career will come from watching how thing shouldn’t be made. Try to spin things your own way, but keep on working on your book to find a new place where you can find other things to not-learn
This is the difference between designers and actual advertising art directors.
10000%. My post above I have only 2 roles on my team who should be just art directors, but because of my size limits they have to be both. You cant land unicorn art directors who are killer designers. That's a very rare thing so im stuck with 80% designers since 60% of the work is still design.
This is something your leadership needs to set the tone for. If they value big ideas over executions (and coach the team towards them) then the graphic designers will hopefully learn how to grow into campaign thinkers. If leadership is fine with executions then that's likely what you'll have to do to survive in this job or otherwise look for a situation that better fits your interests.
You are not wrong, but in reality many people come at creative projects from a variety of starting points. I’ve worked with lots of successful people who explore & figure out strategy through execution, or even through comparisons to other categories or campaigns. And, indeed, a lot of times this gets them to a finished piece a lot faster - because, for them, the image suggests lots of words vs words not necessarily suggesting a specific image.. Lots of hit records have been built off of a guitar riff instead of the lyrics and meaning. As others have pointed out, this is something you will either accommodate to, or you will move to a different environment - and that’s OK too.
The truth is that however the “client” (internal or external) is satisfied/made happy/the goals are being met is the right answer. Portfolio school method or not. Creativity comes from all directions.
try to enjoy having the work
OP is lamenting a cultural issue within their workplace…a workplace that they have…on a creative team that aren’t ADs 🤷♂️ not sure what else to say here other than train your team on your process (or don’t), or make their in-house way your way, because you’re in-house (or don’t).
I come from a traditional agency background and lead an in-house team. My whole team works this way. It's tough because they are 5-10 years into their career and have never worked forward from the insight/idea phase. It's tactics and visuals like you said. This makes doing anything breakthrough very difficult and they really aren't learning anything that will help them later. The big idea is really a foundation for all great creative work - platforms built on human/cultural insights. Even in todays media landscape, If you don't have that you have a line and a visual that is forgotten in 10 seconds.
Ask them to communicate the underlying idea they are illustrating.
I’m learning that’s the big difference between agency work and working directly for the brand, at least at the place I’m at. They care way less about ideas and insights and more about just getting the product facts across. In house feels way more about just executing what the marketing folks have decided rather than coming up with innovative messaging.
Chief
You are not likely to be able to change anything at the place you’re at, given your jr. position and the ingrained culture and methodology. Adapt to it and try to learn something different, or make your way to another place where you’ll be a better fit.
My wife is (well, was) an agency creative who made the move in-house a while back. This has something that drives her crazy and has struggled with for years. It’s just a very different way of seeing things and solving problems. Even at very high levels, and with a pretty large creative department, the ability to understand insights and separate concepts from executions is something nobody there seems to understand or even care about, which actually also makes them a terrible client for their agencies.
But she’s learned to live with it… I f you’re early in your career, I recommend you try to make your way into an agency to get a good variety of work experience and then later in your career move in-house.
I felt similarly when I started at a fast paced agency, working on a very safe and challenging client. Having to come up with like 30+ ideas in a couple days, knowing the client will never allow great work to be made, it’s way more tempting to just push out work that’s okay and makes the client happy. Better to save your creative endurance for a worthy brief.
another way to say it is don’t give up your nights and weekends on safe and conservative accounts. it’s a fast track for burnout.
Get used to retrofitting lines. Nothing any of us makes survives unadulterated.
I was taught that designers design first, then concept second and that art directors concept first then design second.