Do you measure success by how many projects you crank out the door? Is success measured by those who are impressed with your work? If your client likes your work have you reached your goal? If your designs win awards is it considered a success?
Those were some questions rolling around my head while working on a recent project. The project had turned out, well, not like I had imagined. And I wanted to write it off as failure.
Creativity vs. Performance
As an art director, I have a very opinionated view of whether a piece is aesthetically pleasing or how well the composition flows, but someone less focused on creativity and more on business results may have a very different view. This results-driven person may like a more structured or very straightforward approach to a layout. So the conflict between creativity and past performance begins.
(Don't we all—whether client, art director, or project manager—want the final piece to look just how we pictured it in our minds? Even down to the smallest detail.)
It's easy to get caught up in impressing or trying to please an account director, other art directors, project managers, or even creative directors. But is a piece truly successful when two or more people on the project rate it a ten?
No, I believe a design is truly successful when it produces results. Does the concept and design work together to increase business, draw awareness or persuade?
If in the end, the piece is beautiful but doesn't bring the desired results, go back to the point of the project – how it can fulfill a goal in the marketing strategy.
More and more, I am seeing design not only as making something look great within a set of parameters, but also as a business. A design is truly successful, in my eyes, when it's a stand-out piece in terms of its aesthetic composition, layout, etc., and when it produces results.
If the final design doesn't look quite like I imagined it, that doesn't make it a failure. Though an entire client board of executives or associates in the workplace can't praise the work, if it produces the desired results, wasn't that the purpose?
Balancing the aesthetics of the piece while hitting the intended purpose is a tough task, but it's a challenge I look forward to everyday.