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What makes a great Creative Director?

Graham Sturt, Creative Director | Partner at D8 Amsterdam

About Graham

Graham Sturt is Creative Director and Partner at D8, a strategic creative agency with studios in Amsterdam and Glasgow.

During his career Graham has held roles at a number of leading international agencies, collecting numerous awards for his work.

Graham is active in the international creative community as an awards judge, collaborator and mentor for emerging creative talent.

A passionate advocate of Dutch design, he hosts an ongoing series of interviews with some of the countries greatest designers called ‘Dutch Design Heroes’.

Questions

Tell us your own path from Designer to Creative Director.
I hear lots of ambitious people talking about mapping out ‘5 year plans’ and setting goals to propel themselves up the career ladder. In this respect I’ve never been so focused. Previous to the point where I became a Creative Director, my only focus was delivering great creative work to the highest standard possible and challenging myself to become an even better designer. No real thought for a greater goal. In fact, becoming Creative Director sort of just happened overnight. Really. One day I was happily working as a Design Director at VBAT (now Superunion Amsterdam) and the next I was ‘the boss’ of a team of 36 creatives with the overarching responsibility of the creative reputation of a 30+ year old agency.

The instigator of this accelerated and steep learning curve was my then Chairman, Eugene Bay, and I’m, for the most part, grateful to him for being thrown ‘in at the deep end’. In our initial conversation about the role he offered me this fantastic opportunity with the caveat that I had to do it ‘in my own way’. This came as a great relief as at that point I certainly didn’t feel equipped or qualified to fill his rather large shoes.

What was the hardest part of the transition from Designer to Creative Director?
The most obvious part was the change of mindset transitioning from a team member to the overarching creative leader. In the run up to becoming Creative Director I’d had plenty of experience running teams on a project basis but having responsibility for the whole creative floor was something else completely.

Also in the absence of a clear role description from the agency, another challenge I faced initially was understanding what ‘my territory’ was and then clearly defining for myself, and the board, how I was going to operate within that space. From that point onwards the daily challenge was maintaining a healthy balance between elevating the creative standard of the work, raising the profile of the agency and the drudgery of dealing with too many meetings.

I also encountered some personal difficulties adjusting to being more hands-off in the new role. Up to the point of becoming Creative Director I’d always been very hands-on and adored crafting beautiful work. Understanding, as a Creative Director, how rewarding leading and steering a team can be, was something I discovered a little later.

At various points along the way I was fortunate, via the WPP owned Superunion network, to have direct access to a number of incredible creative leaders. Some I simply met at WPP related events, others I had one-to-ones with as a kind of informal mentoring process. Observing and absorbing the behaviours and wisdom imparted by many of these brilliant individuals gave me a lot of perspective and certainly helped me grow quickly in my role.

What specific qualities are essential to become a great Creative Director?
Early in my career it was my assumption that a Creative Director had to be this flamboyant character with a dominant, slightly ruthless, personality. I formed this assumption based on first-hand experience of one or two ‘old school’ Creative Directors I worked with early on. At that point in time it kind of killed my ambition to become a Creative Director as I, by nature, am not an extrovert and at that point didn’t exude boundless confidence.

That said, during the course of my career, I’ve also benefited from working with some extraordinarily inspiring Creative Directors who’s qualities left a lasting impression on me and have been reinterpreted in my own role as a Creative Director.

In essence I firmly believe, to be a great Creative Director, you must have an abundance of the following qualities:

– A genuine interest in people
By that I mean ALL people you work with — creatives, clients, colleagues, collaborators. The role of a Creative Director involves so much human interaction, communication and diplomacy that without this essential quality you ultimately won’t be able to win people’s trust, inspire or collaborate successfully.

– A great team builder
I’ve always seen creative teams as a band. To operate at their best creative teams need a diverse range of expertise amongst their ‘band’ members. You need lead singers and lead guitarists (sparky conceptual types), bass players (solid executional creatives), alongside great drummers (the superb all-rounders). Occasionally you’ll also need backing singers or even a percussionist (specialist talent drafted in to support the creative work). Only if you fully understand the possibility and limitations of each of your creative team will you be able to structure them in the best way to develop incredible work. Generally this only comes through constant and close dialogue with your team members. Getting to know what makes them each tick and where their passion truly lies. When you understand this you can explore matching the best combinations to suit various types of projects.

– An ability to see the bigger picture
As Creative Director you are responsible for the work from a number of perspectives. You’ll need to juggle guiding and pushing your team to deliver creative excellence, understand and answer your clients brief & business objectives and achieve it all within given time and budget constraints.

– A thick skin
As the ‘face of the creative work’ you’ll generally be the one in the firing line when things don’t go to plan. This could be the creative work not being well received in a client presentation for instance. When this happens you’ll be having the tough conversations with the client or your own CEO. The ability to ‘roll with the punches’ when necessary and to respond appropriately, without appearing wounded, is a valuable quality.

– The firewall
It’s your duty to protect your team from external politics so they remain highly focused on the creative work. This isn’t talked about much but, in my experience, there’s usually some behind the scenes tensions you have to shield the creatives from. In the beginning, as Creative Director, my face would give me away and my team would think I was stressed when I was actually shielding them. These days I think I’ve perfected my poker face.

– Constant curiosity
As Creative Director your interest has to extend way beyond the disciplines within the agency. You have to embrace creativity in all shapes and forms and question everything. Out of this approach generally comes creative ideas and inspiration you can share or that will feed directly into your own work.

Tell us about some of the pros and cons of being a Creative Director.

Pros
– Spotting, hiring and nurturing amazing talent from around the world
– Seeing the creative teams work gain recognition and positive feedback from our clients and the creative industry
– Having an influence and helping to shape the direction of the business
– Giving something back to the industry in the shape of mentoring up and coming talent (the Creative Directors of tomorrow)
– Earning an ‘access all areas’ pass to the wider creative community internationally via awards judging, guest speaking and creative forums

Cons
– Having to make uncomfortable company related decisions you didn’t sign up for
–Being less hands-on as a designer
– Back to back meeting hell

In your view what are the primary responsibilities of the Creative Director in an agency setting?
I think there are two key responsibilities:

– To be the champion of creativity
This may sound obvious but within a large commercial agency billability, revenue and targets are sometimes prioritised by the organisation over the delivery of high quality creativity.

As Creative Director you are there to ensure and fight for delivery of creative quality in balance with the agencies responsibility to achieve business objectives and financial results.

– To be the guardian of the creative culture
Again not rocket science, but without a healthy creative culture any agency will struggle to succeed in delivering great work and in retaining and attracting the best talent.

Describe your management style.
This has developed over time, with a certain amount of trial and error involved. Some ingredients have been trained but overwhelmingly the majority comes instinctively.

As several of the other interviewees in this series have rightly pointed out this is a difficult question to answer too. Difficult, I think, because what many Creative Directors may view as their management style is not necessarily the view shared by their team. On this basis I asked several ex-colleagues for their opinion on my management style and these were some of the bullet points that came back:

– Cool, calm and collected
– Non hierarchical
– Approachable
– Inspiring
– Detailed
– Gives creative freedom whilst maintaining the overview
– Fair but strict when necessary
– Reads people well / empathetic
– Builds confidence in the team
– A clear communicator
– Collaborative
– Decisive
– A positive and curious mindset

Ultimately I try to treat everyone I work with in the way I expect to be treated. That means being respectful, inspiring, fair, kind and open at all times. By maintaining this you hope to create a healthy agency culture in which everyone thrives.

How long did it take you to feel completely comfortable in your role?
The role of a Creative Director can be highly demanding. Hardly any day is the same and it feels like there is always something new to do, explore or learn. Thankfully I’ve never become completely comfortable in my role because of this constant flux. I strongly believe that the uneasiness we inherently feel is an intrinsic part of the role too. It’s what helps give you an edge. When, god forbid, I do start to feel completely comfortable as a Creative Director I’ll make the decision to hang up my hat and find something else to do.

Did you ever suffer from what’s known as ‘imposter syndrome’? If so, how did you deal with this?
I certainly felt this for 1 to 2 years after I became Creative Director. It wasn’t a constant feeling but came and went in waves. With more experience under my belt now I realise it was natural and human to feel this. It’s also reassuring to read many of the other interviewees in this series encountered similar feelings.

My way of dealing with it was to totally challenge myself by doing things I instinctively felt terrified or incapable of doing. Kind of ‘kill or cure’ measures. Within those first 1 to 2 years I was hosting large workshops for clients, judging design awards, standing on stages giving talks as a ‘design expert’, giving interviews on design issues to journalists and, the icing on the cake, interviewing Stefan Sagmeister in front of hundreds of people at a design festival. All the time trying to project this cool, calm and collected impression whilst my heart raced and I was screaming internally. The good news is it worked for me and there came a point where I finally felt ‘qualified’ and ‘credible’ enough to walk the talk as a bona fide Creative Director.

What has been your biggest learning experience as a Creative Director?

There have been so many learning experiences along the way I find it difficult to single out one as the biggest. Two that stand out for me in particular are:

– Being a great designer doesn’t automatically qualify you to become a great Creative Director
In fact I would say if you are happiest hands-on designing don’t become a Creative Director. This role isn’t for everyone, particularly those who don’t enjoy managing people.

– You can’t please everyone — accept it and move on
If you are working with a big creative team, as I was, there are always going to be those amongst the group who don’t accept you. What’s important here is to simply accept it and keep moving forwards. If you believe in yourself and forge a strong direction others will certainly get behind you. Inevitably some will be left behind but you have to do what’s good for the agency. It’s not your job to people please.

Is it important to set and adhere to a creative vision for the agency? If so, why?
Personally I’ve never liked this ‘creative vision’ terminology. It feels too fixed and inflexible somehow. What’s important to me is to set a high creative ambition amongst the team, to nurture a vibrant company culture and to lead by example at all times.

Should a Creative Director be hands on or hands off?
It depends on the situation and what’s best for the creative work. Ultimately what’s important though is to lead from the front. To be the player-manager. If you need to roll your sleeves up you simply do it. Equally you shouldn’t be a block for superior creativity within the team. No ego stuff. Personally I’d much rather be in the trenches than standing on the hill.

What tips do you have for building and nurturing a healthy and vibrant creative culture within an agency?
As a Creative Director I feel it’s important to nurture what I call ‘a culture of sharing’. When I became Creative Director I was amazed at how many of the agencies creatives at the time were so insular and protective of their own corner. There was this accumulated wealth of incredible expertise within the agency but it was, for the most part, hidden to a wider audience. For a large creative agency it felt so counter intuitive. I felt this had to change and did so by setting up a number of initiatives to inspire and encourage the creatives to become more open. Out of this came what we later termed a ‘Wise & Curious’ mindset. Essentially this meant we could all (junior or senior) learn from each other if we remained open to it. Certainly in the case of VBAT it went a long way in lifting the creative culture within the agency and in turn helped to make it more attractive for recruiting creative talent.

What tips do you have to continuously inspire creative teams?
The great thing about working with fellow creative people is we are all generally quite self-motivated and receptive to inspiration in any shape and form. As such I’ve learnt it’s not too difficult to build an inspiring culture for creative teams. One of the best ways to do this, in my experience, is to provide a platform for inspiration, to drive it hard initially and then empower the creative team to get involved and run with it. At my previous agency I set up two initiatives with this in mind — The C-Word Talks and the Inside VBAT blog publication on Medium.com. The C-Word Talks gave the creatives direct access to guest speakers from highly creative backgrounds and the blog publication gave them the opportunity to write anything they wanted so long as it could be classified under the banner of ‘Creativity’. The beauty of both initiatives was that after initially investing time and energy to get them off the ground they took on a life of their own as others were attracted to get involved. An additional bonus was that some of the C-Word Talks guest speakers ended up collaborating with our teams on creative projects and the blog provided a vehicle for one or two creatives to develop their skills as writers.

How do you maintain your own creativity to ensure you remain on top of your game?
I was once described by a previous boss as a ‘zeitgeist sniffer’. At the time I didn’t know how to take this comment but now see it was intended as a compliment. For me I’ve never really needed to go out of my way to maintain my own creativity. In regards to design and creativity in general I’m always ‘on’ and still have a genuine passion for what I do.

How do you create a balance between giving your team creative space while maintaining overall responsibility for the creative output?
What’s most important is to set the creative standard, to instil self belief amongst the team, make it fun and to be as non-hierarchical as possible. Everyone should feel able to have the ability to contribute no matter what level they are. When you achieve this everyone feels they are in it together, the team will fight for each other and ultimately they will run through walls in the name of creating great work. Your role should then simply be about constantly motivating and inspiring the team and gently nudging them, when necessary, to ensure the work stays in the right direction.

In your opinion what is the best way to give feedback on creative work?
Honestly and objectively, but always constructively. As Creative Director you are end responsible for what goes out. If the work isn’t flowing in the right direction it’s your duty to get it back on track quickly by clearly, respectfully and diplomatically communicating to the team what needs to be done. In my experience the best way to do this is to be firm but always motivating. Another thing I find helpful is to limit the number of large ‘formal’ internal reviews. Too many people in the room usually kills the flow of conversation. I much prefer to review ‘on the go’ by remaining in constant contact with the team while they develop the work. In this way you stay close and can usually identify and then encourage the development of the best ideas early on.

How do you defend creative ideas to stop bad things happening to the work?
Ultimately the strategic framework around the creative work should provide the best defence. Being objective at all times when presenting creative work helps too.

What has been your biggest success as a Creative Director?
Professionally I’d say it was playing a significant part in raising the creative profile of my previous agency internationally.

Personally to be given this unexpected opportunity in the first place helped me immensely to begin realising my full potential as a creative. Although I initially feared I wouldn’t enjoy the people management aspect of the role I came to find it incredibly rewarding. It certainly equipped me with the necessary inner confidence and self belief to move forward with setting up a new creative agency, D8 Amsterdam. As such it’s incredibly exciting to be bringing my experience leading and nurturing large multidisciplinary creative teams to a new audience.

What was the best piece of advice ever given to you as a Creative Director?
I’m not sure it’s the best advice, but it was certainly the first piece I was given on taking up the role. Rather ominously it was this: ‘Start making friends outside the agency. If you don’t you will be lonely.’

And finally, what advice would you give to anyone who has recently been promoted to the role of Creative Director?
Being a Creative Director is a privilege. Lead from the front and don’t let your ego get in the way.

About the author

Originally from England, he lived and worked in London for more than a decade before relocating to Amsterdam to follow his passion for Dutch design.

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