Surviving COVID-19 when you're in a creative team

This article was originally published by Campaign Magazine on 22nd April 2020.

So, our sourdough starter is growing nicely. The framed Kaws print is positioned so it’s spotted at just the right moment in video calls, and I’ve now perfected my quarantine couture with a bit of business on the top, and the bedroom on the bottoms. 

All of this adaptation comes courtesy of the endless helpful and heartwarming offerings being penned in people’s newly found home-based ‘freedom’. According to them, I should be living-a-lockdown-loca.

"I should be living-a-lock-down-loca"

But I’m not.

Despite residing amongst my lovely dimmers, slick Sonos, and artisanal wonky veg boxes there’s an important aspect of my job that I just can’t replicate from the comfort of my own home; Working in a creative team.

For a bit of background, I’ve been adver-married to my creative partner Stu for the thick-end of 20 years, and in that time we’ve become creatures of habit; working in (almost) perfect professional harmony, producing exciting creative work and knowing what to order the other one, if we get to the pub a bit early.

Accustomed to particular ways of behaving to come up with the goods (and make our living), we’re now having to re-think how we function as a team working from our own personal postcodes.

Now it’s worth saying that before all this Stu and I never had any particularly weird or wonderful ways of coming up with stuff, BUT what we do, has always worked, and now we’re facing the challenge of finding many of those mechanisms unavailable to us.

We tend to work best wandering around Shoreditch together in a free-wheeling blither (10% of which is brief-related). Our creative process is very much built on talking, kicking stuff about, prodding, pulling, and interrogating our ideas with lots of “Oh-I-thought-you-meant” s, plenty of “Nah-that’s-shit-but-if-you-just…”’s and a ton of “Hmmmmmmm...maybe”s.

Our creative process involves a lot of "Oh-I-thought-you-meant"'s, "Nah-that's-shit-but-if-you-just..."'s, and a ton of "Hmmmmmm...maybe"'s.

We argue. Ferociously. We’ve got very good at sitting in coffee shops scribbling down words, sketches & scraps of ideas. We once tried the pub, but both woke up with hangovers and hollow notepads. It wasn’t for us (I wish we were cooler).

But there is always that moment where one of us ventures something, the other patiently nods as it falls out of their head, and after a pause to process what’s been said, they’ll say; “Yeah. Yeah! There’s something in that ! ”.

"We've fucking cracked it"

This always tends to be followed by that amazing rush, as we crash back into the chaos of Creature, a pair of capachoochoo’s in hand, to excitedly tell Dan, Gibbo and anyone else who will listen that “We’ve fucking cracked it”. 

And they never disagree. Ever. That’s never happened.

Every creative team will have their tried and tested techniques for coming up with the work, some will be similar to us, lots will be nothing like it, but whatever they are, they’ll be having a right old time of it at the moment.

(I’m deliberately avoiding the witchcraft of solo creatives. I still don’t know how they do it). 

Fundamentally, the creative process is built on riffing off other people’s energy and we’re no different (even the silences are weirdly productive) but for the past few weeks now, this lockdown has meant that tangible team-energy that we’ve both become accustomed to is either MIA or being delivered through ‘technology’.

With premium length Zoom’s, Hangouts, Slack #channels and good old fashioned phone calls, we’ve certainly leant on technology to help us to stay in touch and ‘communicate’ but it’s not the same.

My right arm’s still missing (well, it’s in Hackney), there’s a gap where my creative partner in crime should be and the balloon I drew his face on has started to go flat.

However, this new enforced way of working hasn’t been a total write-off.

There’s some nice, creature comforts; the privilege of being able to work in a nice house and garden, an understanding missus, and I’m getting to see more of the kids than I would normally. All that stuff’s pretty great.

But there’s also some more professional benefits too; like burying myself in my photography and design books, has really re-awakened my individual creative voice. It’s different to Stu’s, it tends to be more emotional, more visually led, and is beautifully balanced in the normal world by his more reasoned and thoughtful approach. To be clear, it’s not better, I’ve just noticed it, and it’s felt like bumping into an old friend.

We’ve also found that because we’re having to come to catch ups on the work with our thinking ready to discuss, rather than letting the ideas take shape on the fly between us, that we’ve had to fully form our ideas a lot more, complete the loop, which has meant I’ve found myself much more invested in my ideas, as our row’s now glitch and buzz over temperamental internet or phone connections. 

The truth is, Creative Directing hasn’t changed wildly. We’re still able to judge, shape and hone ideas with the gang (and having those books to hand is proving to be a lovely thing). The main difference has been having to be a bit more measured with how the pair of us deliver feedback, because it turns out that excitedly talking over one another on Zoom literally doesn’t work. I think everyone’s appreciating that.

So, it turns out we do still know what we’re doing. We’re just having to keep smashing it in a new, slightly different way at the moment.

Despite our best laid plans of sneaking off for surreptitious ‘working-walks’ around London's parks, we’re stuck with our separation for a while so we’re going to do what every other team with a dream is doing right now; gritting our teeth, pulling on our slippers and staying home to make it work.

We will all get through this.

It will pass.

And when it does Stu and I and a zillion other creative teams will slow-mo run into one another's open arms, embrace like long lost lovers who have survived something awful, and get back to creating magic.