Believe it or not (most likely won’t) creative work is a lot more involved than most people would believe. Many (especially the family members of our creative team) think that writers and designers lounge around, playing games, maybe reading comics, or perhaps enjoying the occasional drink or four, waiting for their eureka moment. (Okay, perhaps there’s a bit of that.)

The truth is, there’s a great deal of actual work that happens throughout a creative endeavor. Getting to the end is never a straight path, but that’s intentional. It’s all part of a little something we call “process.” 

Process Matters

Mad Genius does a lot. Branding. General creative goodness. Production (video and photography). Website building. Media management. We’ve got experts upon experts running around the labs, all focused on the various minutiae that make their particular world turn.

How do we keep those worlds from crashing into one another, destroying everything and transforming our loving workstations into a scene from “Fury Road”? Process.

The accounts team meets with clients, collects more information than anyone could ever need, and distills that data into a creative brief. That single-page of mind-motivating goodness is fed to the rest of the team, which is when things get exciting…

There’s research into the client to determine their specific needs, breaking down their request, brainstorming initial concepts, fleshing out the best concepts, plus rounds and rounds of internal reviews. That’s just a few very basic steps, and that’s well before you get into things like client reviews, applying feedback, additional design/revisions, and repeat… and repeat… and you—guessed it—repeat.

We’re not going to get into any of the more proprietary methods behind the Mad Geniusness, but those are some true-isms that generally work for all creative agencies. (If you really want to peek behind the curtain, schedule some time to chat below.)

Why Is the Creative Process Important?

In most creative endeavors, getting turning a rough idea into a mind-blowing campaign or website or commercial can be chaotic (the bad, tornado-like kind, not the “organized” sort). Process is critical because it brings order to the chaos.

Think of us as an orchestra or a band. Mad Genius’s different departments are the various sections. Creative is strings, production is percussion, web is woodwinds, and media is horns. Process is our conductor. A great conductor may separate sections for parts of a piece, but brings them together to craft something special. 

A good creative process can also act as a much-needed reality check when things get out of control. It ensures that you don’t end up going rogue, or out of scope. Agency’s that don’t adhere to their process can lose sight of what they’re trying to do in the first place, and some can spend so much time noodling an idea that they run out of money before they’ve really gotten started.

Process is checks and balances. It’s following steps in the proper sequence, passing work off at the appropriate time to the correct team with everything they need to keep it moving forward.

When Is It Okay to Bend the Rules on the Creative Process?

Now, we’re sticklers for our process, but if something isn’t working, we aren’t above adjusting.

Following the process will, more often than not, lead to relatable and consistent results. But sometimes, the process needs to be bent, twisted, or even ignored to achieve that spark of genius (pardon the pun). But the best processes are flexible enough to account for those moments. The trick is knowing when the need for flexibility has come.

Consider your Nana’s famous peach cobbler recipe. No one changes Nana’s recipe, and why would you?  That thing is iron-clan and handwritten in a worn-down recipe book that’s old enough to qualify for AARP. Maybe, just perhaps, adding an unlisted ingredient, say cinnamon, could take it up a notch? We know. It’s sacrilegious. But, have you tried it? Sure, the process has been bent a bit, but the recipe to perfect peach cobbler has been cracked—or, at least, made more to your taste. You can’t make that change without a thorough understanding of the recipe in the first place.

A Sound Strategy

Process is, for us, a peculiar beast. It’s not freewheeling. It takes time. There’s absolutely structure to our process—it is methodical, it is flexible, and it is always open to new inspiration. Mad Genius thinks that following a great process is the backbone of our creativity. At the end of the day, in a world of creative chaos, trusting the process isn’t just a good policy or suggestion—it’s a sound strategy.

Looking to talk to someone about how Mad Genius’s process can be leveraged to help your next project? Fill out the form below to speak with a method mastermind.