Make It Pop: The Art of Creative Feedback

By Anna Denette, Art Director

I would say I’m generally pretty great at receiving critique. Maybe it’s my laidback personality, or perhaps design school forever altered my brain chemistry, but either way, I can take feedback like a champ and run with it. 

I’ve always thought that taking a critique and making something better was the end-all-be-all of being a good designer and creative. Give me a problem, give me some feedback, and I’ll go back to my desk and, as we creatives say (maybe too much), “play with it.” 

Transitioning from designer to art director revealed another side to that equation. Receiving feedback is one skill. Knowing how to provide feedback that actually helps someone is an entirely different beast.

The Other Side of the Equation

When you're a designer, critique is the fuel that gets you across the finish line. At least, that’s what it feels like. When you're an art director, you realize it's actually part of the track. You're not just being asked to make good work, you're deciding what makes the work good.

A lot of that comes down to a strong sense of taste. Art directors continually develop their taste through exposure to things outside design: fashion, fine art, music, film, obscure reality TV shows, and much more. All of these things sharpen your visual vocabulary and refine your creative palette. The more you expose yourself to creative work—good and bad—the better you become at recognizing why one thing works and why another doesn't.

Taste tells you something feels off. Critique allows you to articulate what it is.

“I Don’t Like It” Is Not a Critique

Having good taste does not make you good at communicating it. This lack of verbal skill can lead to critiques that make a designer's eye twitch. “I just don’t like it.” “I’ll know it when I see it.” Or the dreaded ”It needs to pop more.” 

I honestly feel a little yucked out even calling these critiques. Yes, heard. These feelings are valid. They are reactions, though, not critiques. 

Allow me to illustrate the difference.

• Reaction: “This is boring.”
• Critique: “This feels boring because the elements on the page are too symmetrical. The brief called for dynamic energy and I don’t see it. Try to add visual interest back into the composition by breaking up the elements and adding more contrast in size.”

It’s normal to have a kneejerk reaction to design. That’s a good thing. In a vacuum, however, it’s not particularly effective as feedback. Back it up with something tangible. Give the designer something actionable to do. 

Criticism describes a reaction. Critique provides direction.

The Anatomy of A Good Critique

How does one form a solid critique? Great question. Let’s play out an example.

You are the art director at your agency. Your team has been assigned a branding project for a witch-themed cafe called “Witches Brew Cafe & Bakery.” The client wants a logo that matches their whimsical and artistic attitude. It should also reflect the seriousness with which the client takes coffee. The client is down with hints of magic iconography but doesn't want anything too obvious or spooky. 

You kick off your design team, they do their thing, and they come back to you with this logo:

It’s not bad. However, your art director taste buds are tingling. Something feels off. 

How do you structure your critique?

01 Start With the Objective

Before talking about whether it’s good or bad, let’s establish the goal: “The client wants a whimsical and artistic logo reflecting how seriously they take their coffee, with subtle witchy elements. Now your critique has a north star.”

02 Identify the Problem

My kneejerk reaction is that it looks basic and doesn’t quite fit together. But that’s not a critique yet. Let’s break down why objectively: “The icon is fun. It combines coffee, a cauldron, and magic, and the hand-drawn quality gives it the artistic feeling the brief calls for. The problem is the ‘Witches Brew’ type. It’s bold and sharply witchy, which clashes with the hand-drawn icon. Meanwhile, the ‘cafe & bakery’ tagline gets lost, and the decorative lines aren't helping.” Now we’re getting somewhere.

03 Explain the Impact

Connect the design decision to the audience’s experience and the brief: “Because the typography is so heavy and expected, it overpowers the whimsical feeling we want the audience to experience. It's making the brand feel a bit disjointed and less artistic.”

04 Offer a Direction

It’s not your job to tell a designer what to do. It is your job to offer directions to explore: “I would keep the icon and tagline font the same, but try a different typeface for Witches Brew. Find something that feels more hand-done. The tagline should probably be bigger… And let's think about dropping redundant design elements.”

05 Know When to Stop Talking  

Occasionally you'll want to backseat design. You have a vision and your own way of doing things, but that's not your job. It's your job to direct.

After you’ve shut up and given your designer time to rework their design they come back to you with this:

Much better! Maybe it’s not what you would’ve done to solve this problem, but you can’t deny that it fits the brief perfectly. The wonders good critique can do!

Make It Pop With Purpose

Am I still a champ about receiving critiques? Yes. 

Am I still actively learning how to give helpful critiques? Also yes. 

Since I’ve made my transition to art director I’ve had several moments of giving bad feedback to my design team. Usually this ends up with our creative director not liking the direction or the client taking issue with it. Whatever the outcome may be, it makes me question my taste as a designer and as a creative.

Remind yourself in those moments that, at the end of the day, being an art director isn't about being the person with the best taste in the room. Giving a critique is not about proving you're right or solving the problem for your designers.

One of the biggest things I’ve learned is that sometimes my job isn’t to have all the answers. It’s to ask the right questions, pointing out what isn’t working, and giving someone enough direction to go figure it out themselves.