Field Notes: How to Give Effective Feedback to Creatives. By an Account.

I'm one of six accounts at The Lab (a branding, spatial, and communication design studio of 30 people). For many years, I was the only one. In that time, we grew our team, our business, and launched successful and creative projects for ourselves and multinational clients. I believe managing effective feedback flow is critical in our ability to outperform—without pitching, without working nights and weekends, and without compromising business or creative results.

But first: these approaches don't work well (from painful experience.)

1. Avoiding feedback because you don’t want to hurt creative egos.

You should learn to give the right feedback, at the right stage, on the right issues, while understanding the technical process. Creatives should learn to receive feedback (this is another guide for another day by someone else from The Lab!)

2. Sitting next to creatives and telling them what to do.

They'll soon quit. You'll be frustrated. Clients will devalue your team. The projects will suffer.

3. Wasting your time to find creative solutions for the design team.

You'll almost always be less informed than them about trends, tools, and creative approaches. You can be lucky sometimes, but your time is almost certainly more effective elsewhere.

The following worked well for our team and me:

Focus on your expertise, and trust theirs.

When being presented with creative work, people feel pressured to contribute feedback. So they do, often at things they don't have a strong grasp of, like design.

Feedback can come from many angles. I focus on those I'm confident about.

Examples:

• Accounts should feedback on whether the work addresses the needs of the client, brief, timeline, and budget.
• Producers understand suppliers (feasibility, material, production cost) and should share their knowledge.
• Clients understand their brands, their customers, their products, and their business objectives. And should feedback from these POVs.

That's not to say you can't have a personal opinion on the creative work, but read the room and understand whether your subjective feedback will help or hurt the process. (See my next point.)

Different stages require different feedback.

Our projects usually contain 3 phases. Our goal is to deliver the project on time and on quality, and avoid feedback that should have been given and addressed in the previous phase.

1. Concept

Top-line feedback is most effective here to see if the team is heading in the right direction, like whether it's on brief, etc.

2. Creative Development

From the top-line approval, we move forward to design development with detailed proposals. Here, we can give specific feedback to finalize the design.

3. Execution/Production

Once everybody is both aligned on concept and design, we start talking to 3rd parties to execute the design.

Accounts should set the context and feedback expectations in each stage to help clients navigate the process.

An example from our interior architecture project:

Concept

Feedback should focus on big directions, the brief, cultural trends, ideas, story.

Creative Development

• 2D layout: This is where we should get feedback from the operation flow, experience, and business of the client to improve the layout. Once we lock the layout, we'll move to 3D renders. (This is admittedly tough for some clients to approve because they can't visualize a 2D layout. Many studios will address this by showing 2D and 3D together. However, any feedback will result in a lot of wasted resources. This is a discussion to have with the client first.)
• 3D renders: Feedback should address details like shape, colors, and material of the proposed design. If we feedback on the 2D layout at this stage, it'll delay the project and result in wasted resources. (Sometimes, seeing the 3D will cause certain clients to rethink their approved 2D layout. However, this will affect time and cost and clients should be made aware.)

Execution/Production

• Technical drawings: After 2D layout and 3D renders are approved, we develop the drawings to brief contractors and suppliers. In this phase, if we adjust 2D layout or 3D renders, the designer needs to re-publish the drawings and debrief the contractor. It delays the project, causes confusion, and results in additional costs.

What's the real feedback?

Learn to spot the real issue at the core of each feedback.

Almost every comment comes from a deeper concern. Ask questions to uncover the core issue.

For example:

• Client says: I want the chair in red and bigger.
• I ask: Why do you think it'll help the business?
• The client believes red will reinforce their brand. And that a bigger customer once sat on the chair, broke it, and hurt himself.
• Once I identify the real issue, I can find alternative solutions to reinforce the brand. Or ways to have an elegant, but strong, chair.

Before questioning client requests, make sure they trust you (it's your job to build that trust, not the other way around). They should believe that you have their best interest in mind.

Understand the technical tools of the creative process.

Creative work is an art form that requires a mastery of technical tools. As an Account (or Client), you should try to understand the tools of the trade to give effective feedback.

Some of the tools our creative team uses are Adobe Creative Suite, 3ds Max, SketchUp, physical modeling, and mock-ups.

I feedback after understanding how much work it will take to address it and try to consolidate feedback as much as possible.

For example:

• It takes up to 1 hour to render a high-res interior design view. It takes many more hours to model (or source) the 3D objects found in the view.
• It can take up to 20 mins to render a 2-minute 4K video. Every change, no matter how small, will take as long (or longer).
• Switching the position of a sofa set and a meeting room on a 2D layout may affect everything in that layout, and everything downstream like 3D, technical MEP, timeline, and budget.

These are the tools that worked well for me over the last 6 years here. I hope they works for you too, and if you have any tips, feel free to reach me at [email protected] !

Other Papers from The Lab

Authors

Phuong Anh Nguyen , Account Director/Partner, The Lab

About The Lab

The Lab ?is a full-service creative and design lab based in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Established in 2015. We're a team of 30 young professionals in diverse fields like architecture, interior design, branding, advertising, and project management. Our most well-known and successful projects combine some or all of our disciplines. Clients include multinationals, cultural organizations, and entrepreneurs.

We have a sister company that owns lifestyle brands in food, beverage, and hospitality called?TLC ?with a headcount of 100+.

To learn more about our values, services, culture, and jobs take a virtual tour below

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