No... I Cannot Make the Logo Bigger

On giving and receiving creative feedback

Last Wednesday my AIGA New York mentee and yours truly had our weekly session while I was on a high speed train from Córdoba to Madrid.

To finally be a true nomad.

She and I speak the same lingo: advertising for entertainment. She for Broadway, me for TV and live events. All under the same umbrella. We speak key art, logo lockups, talent approval. We understand the imperceptible to a naked eye. The details.

We immediately reconfigure in our head how an image will work in any size humanly possible. We are also eternally torn between keeping the integrity of the work and pleasing the many, often conflicting, interests that could quietly kill it. We, with our counterparts, become the bodyguards of clear and effective communication.

She is working as a de facto Creative Director. The road that led her there is not an uncommon one. Her bosses left, the agency didn't hire anyone. She was it. All of a sudden, she found herself in a different position. The one where you have to take a creative brief and translate it for the people who will actually do the work.

She asked me what happens after the brief. I knew exactly what she was looking for. I dug into old emails to find some that illustrated the back and forth that goes into polishing a show-based branding campaign.

I wish I had kept many more of these conversations over the years... Every decision is a statement. The typeface you choose. The color you don't. The image you pull for reference and the twelve you leave on the table. Creative direction is always happening.

What I'm not seeing here

Larry Merritt — living la retiree vida loca and still the sharpest feedback giver around — gave me a gift I use every time.

What I'm not seeing here...

Five words. Completely unremarkable until you understand what they do.

"This isn't working" is an ending. It tells the ones doing the work the door is closed without showing them where the handle is. The project stops. The energy drops.

"Yes, and…" or "What I'm not seeing here" is a beginning. It keeps the project moving. It gives the creative a leg to stand on and leverage to build upon what they've already made. It's the difference between saying and communicating. Saying describes a feeling. Communicating gives the creative somewhere to go.

• BILLIONS: Keep moving. All good on our end.
• HOMELAND: Please remove gun... And if possible can you change her position so it has some movement. Maybe she is on the move…?
• THE CHI: Looks awesome! ... But please have Oliver go back to the color palette on the comp we approved.
• SMILF: The jersey has to be illegible... Remove the NIKE swoosh.
• RAY DONOVAN: They want to make the silo look LESS like LIEV... make more "generic man?" because we don't have time to get him to approve.
• SHAMELESS: Still need the color palette to be different than SMILF.

The "Uncharted" Skill: Translation

Going from a marketing brief to an award-winning campaign is something they don’t teach you at school. In school, you learn to execute. In the field, you have to learn to translate.

When a note comes in from a stakeholder at the eleventh hour, your first instinct might be to forward it. Don't. If I had told the team at Mondo, "Legal says take out the bat," I would have received a poster of a man standing still. Boring. Static. Dead.

Instead, I translated the Problem (the loss of the bat) into a Diagnosis (the loss of Ray's 'aura') and provided Direction (make the rays carry the energy to compensate).

Art directing is a filter. You absorb the "No" and translate it into a "How."

Before we had to get rid of the bat, the rays were emanating from it. It gave Ray that calm, cool, collected aura. Without the bat Mr. Donovan simply stands there. Faceless. He looks like he imploded. Make the power rays kick ass. Super cool. Much more interesting to look at.

Problem. Diagnosis. Direction. No apology for the process that broke down. Just the fix.

I didn't say that the poster wasn't working. I told them what I wasn't seeing — the aura, the energy, the cool the bat had been carrying. I named what was lost when the constraint arrived. That gave the illustrator something to reach for.

Name what's missing. Stop there. Let the creative close the loop. The tone carries the whole thing.

Boundaries

Setting the creative edges before passing the work to a wardrobe department you have never met, and who know the show better than you, requires a different strategy.

For Masters of Sex wardrobe call, along with providing visual direction we defined clear boundaries.

Keep it in character but stay away from James Bond. Choose colors that work with the red foreground.

• Masters. Pattern or light color shirt. No jacket.
• Johnson. Nice earrings. Big enough to be noticeable. A touch of color.
• Late 50's. Elegant. Modern. Provocative.

Nobody is being told which colors to use for the shoot.

Rock me tender

Not too long ago, I sent the same Larry Merritt, a draft for a college course on art direction. Early structure. Something that still needed lots of shaping. His reply came back with generous and precise feedback, as usual.

I LOVE the concept. This is a great initial draft.

Then he took the time to move things around. A blessing.

It seems to me there are two distinctly separate ways to pitch this.

From there, he builds it out. Calmly. Precisely. He moves through the work so deliberately, nothing gets dismissed. The structure adjusts, expands, becomes clearer.

I moved this to the top. This could come earlier. I added this working session. A new session to discuss. You may want to consider. I would also.

He's clearly reshaping the proposal's content with such delicacy, you don't feel the pain.

Thoughtful feedback is a gift.

Make it bigger

"No one watches TV to see your logos." — Lou Dorfsman, CBS

"Make the logo bigger" stalls the work. It's an overplay—one element stealing the thunder from everything around it. Key art attracts and tells a story; the logo signs it. It doesn't open the conversation. It closes it.

The overplay is a strategy problem, not a size problem.

When the logo gets bigger, it stops being a signature and starts competing with the story. That isn't a design note; it’s a strategic misunderstanding of roles. The conversation shouldn't be about scale—it should be about hierarchy. Is this element doing the right job right now?

You could, of course, make the logo bigger and let it play out. Or you could make everything else smaller, move it to a better location, or make it stand out without changing its size.

The brief is where the story begins. The feedback is how you keep it moving. If the feedback is a "No," the work stops. If it names "what’s missing," the work evolves. That translation is the invisible skill that defines the best creative and marketing leaders.

If you do this for a living, you probably have your own version of this. A line that keeps the work open. A way of pointing at what's missing without closing the door.

I'm collecting those. What's yours?

Myriam López is a former Showtime creative director. She believes that taking the time to give thoughtful creative feedback changes the work and the people doing it. She mentors creatives through the AIGA NY AMP program and is developing The Art of Art Direction, a course based on her experiences in the entertainment world.