The Creative Partner

How many times have you had an idea at a random moment? What if you kept that Idea to yourself?

This thought only occurred to me a few weeks ago as I was staring back and forth between a brief and my creative partner. Who at the time was reclining in a chair lazily scratching a sharpie across the pad on his lap drawing massive boxes.

I was ‘mildly frustrated’ by the brief and somewhat confused as to why he was drawing boxes around everything so I asked him. He said “I’m drawing lines, this pen is really nice to draw lines with” suddenly the words what.the.fuck. sprung to mind. The moral of the story is I spent 7 hours in a basement watching boxes be drawn and thinking about the importance of circles while getting next to no work done.

As creatives the idea of the creative partnership is thrust upon us from the get go, however, it’s hard to see why.

Are we really more productive as a team? Or is there more benefit if you go solo?

Imagine you get that random idea, why share it? Why not take it, develop it, fire your partner and work your way up the agency ladder? Better yet, why stop there? Do it several times, earn a ton of money and start your own agency called (Insert your initials here) eg. HAB then pay yourself and only you because it’s your agency, your ideas, and because you did all the work, you earned it.

Two words: Pipe. Dream.

The reality of our work is that we need partners. Why? Because like it or not we are shit on our own. Creative partners are there to produce what you cannot. Art Director and Copywriter, black and white, work together to bring to life something hopefully a little more vibrant and interesting than grey. But what makes a good creative partner? Supposedly if you are the extreme opposites of each other you will be fine, personally I think that is total crap.

If I don’t like someone I’m 90% sure I’m going to hate rather recklessly on their Ideas if we aren’t gelling. How is that productive? Two different views + two large egos and an ‘I’m always right mentality’ = creative carnage and possible homicide inquiries.

Get a partner who agrees with you but pisses you off in a good way. Then you can get work done but still punch them in the face to show them that despite thinking so, they aren’t better than you. Respect each other. A team is only as strong as its weakest player, and in a team of two, that means a 50% chance of being shit.

Oh, and I’m Hugh, I’m an Art Director.

Cheers