From the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA):
“As designers, we don’t design in a vacuum. A good designer will need to learn to take the feedback from their peers, clients, and bosses to solve a particular design problem. Critiques will also help you broaden your communication skills as a designer, as there is always the opportunity to articulate why you did what you did or to better explain your idea to the reviewer if they don’t see it as clearly as you do.”
Critiquing Creative Work
We can’t get better at what we do unless we get feedback and make changes. We also can’t get the jobs and do all of the cool projects we want to do if we don’t learn to talk about our work and how we got from just an idea to a final, polished design.
Critiques can be scary because they involve us letting our guard down so that others can judge the work that we have created. Here are some tips to help the process go smoother.
1. Take yourself out of the picture
You are not the target for whatever media deliverable you are creating. Sure, maybe you share some of the same demographics as your prospective audience, but you are not them. You are inside the machine that is creating content for those people. So, whether you like the layout/ad/webpage/logo or not is irrelevant. Does it catch the eye and make it as easy as possible for everyone in your target audience to consume the information? Is it effective at what it is supposed to do? Those are the questions you need to be asking.
2. Think strategically
Compare what the work is saying and doing to what you agreed it needs to do in the creative brief. Is it aimed at the right audience? Does it use the language they will respond to? Will the visuals draw the attention of your target audience? Think about the magazine, newspaper, website, etc. where this will appear…is it going to stand out or blend in?
3. Be specific about needed changes
It’s okay to suggest ways to make changes in a critique. You are expected to! Just be specific in what you feel like could make the work stronger. Give direction. The worst feedback you can give is “I don’t like it, but I don’t know why.” Or, “I’ll know what I’m looking for when I see it.” Go back to #2 and answer those questions honestly. Find where creative work is not doing what it is supposed to do. Suggested changes should be geared toward solving that problem.
4. Remember, it’s hard to hear that your baby is ugly
Keep in mind that every piece of creative work presented for critique is like a baby to the person who created it. They’ve spent hours working on it, nurturing it, tweaking it. Even the simplest-looking design and copy has had hundreds of creative decisions made before it’s presented to you. Colors are chosen specifically to work best with a certain photo. A font is chosen to match the mood of the message and for its readability. The headline is written and rewritten, dozens of options are tried out. The point here is not to discourage you from making changes, but to offer a suggestion about how to make them. Start from the premise that they very well may have tried the exact change you’re suggesting. So, when working with your creative team, ask “Did you try….” or “What was your thought process in choosing that font or that photo? I think x might work better, what do you think?”
5. Try and get all of the feedback you need at the same time
When working in any creative field, you will need to get approval for your designs from various stakeholders. Those could be editors or art directors or, if you are a freelancer, clients at various levels within companies you are contracted to work with. You may even need to run your designs by a legal professional to make sure they conform to brand or copyright standards. Whatever the situation, you should make it easy on yourself and, if possible, try and get everyone who needs to give you feedback to do it at the same time. Don’t present or send out a new iteration of a project for feedback until all of the changes that were discussed in the previous round of feedback have been made.