Creative services: a bureaucratic-sounding catch-all term for providers of creative labor, output, expertise and other things that are a mix of art and science, operate in relative uncertainty. People in creative services do work that requires at least some original thought and discretion. You know… things like branding, graphic design, copywriting, digital development, UX and UI design (really, just all the ‘design’ types), architecture, creative direction, strategy, audiovisual production, storytelling. All of those and other things that come in as a brief or a prompt or a problem and eventually emerge as an output that’s original. Like a logo, an app, a brand story, a music score.

Business Context

When it comes to doing business, high-trust environments are a big deal. Environments where contracts are upheld by law, for example, make it less risky for people to do business. Ridesharing platforms enable us to get into strange people’s cars to get places. Taxi medallions did the same before them.

Some industries are regulated to create that consumer confidence. Others just scale to the point that they’re familiar to people or they’re bought and sold in familiar contexts.

What all of these things have in common is a system — formal or informal — of accountability. A measure of predictability that we can count on, or serious penalties for breach in high-involvement transactions with a large ‘spread’ of quality, or at least a low risk profile like buying some inexpensive trinket in a street market.

Creative services don’t have this kind of transactional ease as a whole. The proof is in the pudding: reaching an agreement to work is itself a process. Proposals get written, pitches are pitched, reputations are googled, emails are sent, and returned, and sent again. Because labor is highly specialized and skill levels are all over the place, if you plan to make a living from your work deal-flow is often slow and manual.

We can change it. Below, a proposed set of rules to improve creative service bedside manner and make the whole experience more predictable to would-be clients. Yes, it’s wildly optimistic to hope that all the creatives will get onboard. But if you do adopt them, your work will be better, your clients will be happier, and your incoming business is likely to improve anyways.

The Rules

I never worked at a design agency before I co-founded In-House [which has since added full creative and digital capabilities, but that’s beside the point]. Which is to say that these rules were not always part of our process, they were often adopted as the result of some epic stumble. They are all a continuous project for us to improve and surely will be joined by additions —which I very much welcome from your own experiences.

1. Set expectations, then meet them.

When you’re hired to do a job for a client you’re the expert at the process. So lead the process. Ask for materials or information upfront and ensure that dependencies are clear to them. Make sure they know what to expect, and when to expect it, and deliver on those promises — in full, on time, every time.

All of this should be obvious. But there’s a giant gap between that and the perception people in general have about how ‘creatives’ operate. You know the stereotype: the delicate genius that doesn’t take feedback and delivers a year after the deadline. The stereotype comes with a silver lining: show you’re a professional and you’ll earn trust and latitude.

2. Topic not in scope? It’s still your problem.

The scope of your deliverables is what you’ll be creating. Your understanding of the work you’ll be doing cannot stop at “dimensions, colors, tech specs and deadline”. The scope of your project may stop at comps or illustrations or video. It may very clearly exclude stuff like “copywriting” or “implementing and measuring” or “ship to clients and follow up”. But guess what? You should care about all of that — the full system that surrounds the goal. You should ask about it. Because your scope covers the extent of your output. But your deliverables exist in the world and have to work for a thousand things. To do work that does the job, make sure you know what job (the problem you need to solve) really is. It won’t be fed to you. Even if you think it has been and you got an amazing brief doc, you should still look further. Know how the work will be measured and why it will be measured that way… and build that into your objectives.

Fact finding informs your work and makes it more appropriate to the task. It also shows your expertise, your curiosity, and your focus on doing the work right. Do this and then show the links between needs and work and watch micromanaging disappear.

3. Educate your client.

So let’s say you’ve communicated to your clients what you expect from them. But then you send this earth-shatteringly great piece for evaluation and approval… and you get back comments asking you to move this here or replace things there because x or y or z doesn’t like the color you used. Before you fire off a screenshot to ClientsFromHell, first ask yourself if you’ve set them up to give you what you need. If you solicited feedback and leave the instructions there, you’ll get whatever your client’s idea of feedback is. It might be unhelpful or misconstrued as an invitation to take over the creative decisions of your work. You know what actionable feedback looks like in your world, your client does not.

Remember you’re the expert. Taking the lead means you’re responsible for educating the client about the process as a whole, but also how to do what you expect them to do.

This includes providing them with the tools to evaluate work. Give them the specific set of questions you need answered. Explain how they can tell whether the work is good, and make your case explicit when you present it; and no, the quality of your work is not self-evident.

Educating your client sets clear expectations and clear boundaries. It also greatly reduces anxiety from clients who simply don’t know what’s going on. It’s also a great building block for a longer term relationship.

4. Protect the integrity of the work.

You only succeed if you accomplish the goal. Assuming you’ve followed the previous rules, you should have a pretty firm grasp of the goals and metrics of the project. When you get feedback or requests that are counterproductive to that goal, defend it. Disagree. Gather evidence (obviously, be prepared to concede if you’re wrong). But if the request will hinder the goal, dig your heels in when really necessary. Your clients may love you when you do all the stuff they ask and are just a delightful human. But you’ll earn real trust and respect when you value them enough to do the right thing.

To clarify though: it’s never okay to be an assh*le about it.

5. Never, ever, ever (ever) sacrifice the effectiveness of the work for something that will win awards.

This might be a footnote, but it’s one of those bothersome “misaligned incentive” issues. Awards are shiny and awesome and prestigious. In design, awards often reward beauty without really evaluating whether the design worked. But great work is only great if it works. Which is not to say you can’t do both; that’s the aim! But in the name of tough love: if you sacrificed function for dazzle, you don’t deserve the award in the first place.

Wise people of the Internet, what are your rules and ethical guidelines for creative work?

If you’re looking for a great design partner or know someone who is, or just want to send us a note for fun and stuff [get in touch!]

-