tackling creative reviews

If we don’t know the creative intent, we shouldn’t speculate.

Questions like why are the team excited about the idea? How will it work? What will it look/sound/feel like? How reliant is is on technique? What cultural and aesthetic traditions and tropes does it steal from, borrow, or remix? What emergent cultural language does is channel? What are the most important parts? How will it unroll? How will it scale... See more

The art of stepping into an idea continues with seeking to understand. To spend the time to ensure that we have correctly understood the creative intent. For the fact of the matter is that until work is fully produced much of that intent resides in creative minds - not on the page or on the screen. Found imagery and footage, Midjourney renders, sto... See more

Looking closely is valuable at every scale. From looking closely at a sentence, a photograph, a building, a government. It scales and it cascades — one cognizant detail begets another and then another. Suddenly you’ve traveled very far from that first little: Huh.

I’d say that that huh is the foundational block of curiosity. To get good at the huh i... See more

WHEN REVIEWING WORK, THINK IN THEMES. Let the CD worry about plot holes.