Responsive Web Design, Part 2 (2015)

Counting Stars: Creativity Over Predictability

A Varied Pool Of Talent

Many of the agencies I deal with today still favor the types of creative teams that were first established in the late 1950s. Advertising itself has changed since those two-person copywriter and art director teams were first formed. The web is a significantly more complex medium to work in than print, so we need a variety of people with an even wider variety of skills on our teams today.

When we’re building a team, we may need to include an art director, writer, developer, UX specialist, and any number of diverse skills to deliver great work. There may be less of a requirement for a traditional copywriter/art director pairing today, but there is a requirement to bring people with different skills together so they can collaborate in the ways art directors and copywriters did in the past.

Of course, no single working structure will suit every organization or even every project. What matters is that project leaders can draw from a varied pool of talent for each account or individual project.

It used to be the case that agencies could make great ads — ads we’ve remembered for decades — with just a copywriter and an art director. If we want work that will be as memorable today we need them, too, but we also need information and UX specialists, technologists, and others working together. This is a significant change for many agencies who still structure their businesses along departmental lines.

Dave Bedwood is a creative partner at London-based Lean Mean Fighting Machine, and he wrote:

“There can be no doubt that the creative team ‘mix’ has to evolve. […] This means we need creatives of all kinds of skill sets working together. […] Unfortunately[…] the digital world has not[…] understood the difference between them, a designer, a programmer or creative technologist.”³⁰

In a creative organization, we need people to be familiar with one another’s work so they feel comfortable enough to share ideas and, sometimes, to take risks. Proximity matters, as does uniting teams of diverse skills together so they can sit near one another in one creative space and not be isolated in separate departments. That space is vital to the creative process, as is a working process that genuinely supports and promotes creative ideas.