Brand Design Masters Podcast

The Brand Design Masters Podcast
with host Philip VanDusen

Episode 149

5 Steps from Designer to Creative Director
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Philip VanDusen: Welcome to the Brand Design Masters podcast, the show dedicated to helping you build the skills you need to design bulletproof brands for yourself, your business, and for the clients and customers you serve. And now, here's Phillip.

Hey, everybody. Welcome back. Being a CD is a role. A lot of designer which is aspire to, but getting there can feel like navigating an invisible roadmap. And the truth is getting from designer to creative director. Isn't just about your design skills. In fact, very little of it is about your design skills.

It's even more about stepping into leadership, visibility, and understanding business strategy. I'm going to break down the five key steps that are going to help you move from designer to creative director. And these are practical, actionable things that you can start doing right now, no matter where you are in your career.

So be sure to stick around to the very end because I'm going to share with you the one power up bonus step that's going to speed up and supercharge your ability to get promoted and be successful when you do. So, does that sound good? Alright, let's jump in. Step number one. Getting exposure to upper management.

The first step in moving up is getting exposure to upper management. I can't stress this enough. 80 percent of your success isn't just about how good you are at your job. It's about who knows you're good at your job and actually sees you doing it. In fact, multiple quantitative studies have proven that 80 percent of your success is driven by your exposure to upper management, not by your design skills, not by how much work you're putting out every day, not by how great you are at Illustrator or Photoshop or Figma.

80 percent of your success is driven by your visibility to the people that do the promoting. Upper management generally doesn't see what you do day to day, especially now that much of the working world is doing a lot, or at least a portion of their job virtually. Management doesn't know how much effort you're putting in unless you're visible to them.

So, how do you do that? First, look for opportunities to work on high visibility projects, especially ones that require you to present your work. If there's a meeting where leadership might be in the room, don't shy away from it. Raise your hand. Be the one who shares the team's ideas. Second, don't just wait to be noticed.

Build relationships with decision makers, and that doesn't mean sucking up. It means offering real value, ask questions, share ideas, and find ways to help. Maybe your boss's boss needs help prepping a pitch deck or polishing a proposal. Volunteer for that. Third, speak up in meetings. Don't just agree or stay silent.

Share your insights, ask thoughtful questions, and contribute. Have a point of view, have an opinion. The key is to treat visibility as part of your job, not as an afterthought. The people who get promoted are very often the ones management trusts and remembers. So make sure they see you, not just your work.

Now, step number two, learn to manage and mentor others. Creative directors are leaders. They don't just execute ideas. They manage people. They mentor other people. They guide their team to bring ideas to life. The problem is most designers aren't just handed management experience early on. You have to actually seek it out.

You want to start small. Start by asking to manage interns or maybe junior designers or even freelancers on a project. This is going to give you a chance to practice a number of things. Now, first off, you have to practice giving constructive feedback. Providing feedback's a skill. You need to balance praise with actionable suggestions.

And a good leader is someone who can inspire improvement without crushing someone's confidence. And I'm sure you've been on the receiving end of feedback that's really hurt or crushed your confidence. So you want to learn how to give feedback that's actionable but supportive. And of course, there's also providing creative direction, right?

So guiding a team toward a unified vision, Isn't easy. You need to learn to articulate why something works or doesn't work and then provide really clear steps. There is a why that is based on what's good design, but there's also a why that's driven by business needs and consumer expectations and customer needs and brand strategy and business strategy.

Another important skill is collaborating with cross functional teams. Creative directors work with people across strategy and account management and finance and HR and you want to start introducing yourself to people in those departments other than design. Your goals are going to be to start building relationships and even possibly friendships with these teams now.

Learn about what they do. Pay really close attention to their priorities and how they speak about their work and their language. Now you might be asking yourself, why is this important? Well, it's important because leadership is a muscle and the sooner you start flexing it, the stronger you're going to get.

And when you show you can manage a team, even a small one, you're proving you're ready to get to the next level. I like to describe it this way. You have to start doing the things that are expected of a CD before you ever get promoted to one. Step number three, master project planning and delivery. A creative director isn't just a big idea person.

Sure, part of your role is giving creative vision for the projects that come your way, but you're also the person who makes sure those ideas get executed on time. And if you've never managed a project end to end, this is the time to start. Even as a designer, you can take small steps toward building the skills.

Maybe ask to own a timeline for a project, or map out the milestones and the deadlines, and then ask for help. Advocate to keep the team on track. Also start thinking about budgets. Even if you're not in charge of the money, ask how resources are being allocated and how costs can be optimized. Starting to think that way and making suggestions that are driven by finances rather than the creative needs will get you noticed as someone who's thinking more like a managerial level person, as opposed to an individual contributor.

You also want to learn project management tools like Asana and Trello or Monday. These are tools creative directors use every day. And most importantly, over communicate, keep stakeholders, your boss, your clients, your team updated on the progress of your projects, any roadblocks. And of course, what you see as wins, you want to become a cheerleader, become someone who sees the problems, but also someone who comes up with proposed solutions.

Here's the bottom line. Being able to deliver creative work on time and on budget makes you reliable and reliability is one of the key traits leaders look for when they're ready to promote someone. All right, step number four, master, client, management and presentations. If you want to become a creative director, you need to learn how to represent creative work, how to present it, how to defend it, and how to collaborate with clients to find solutions and common ground.

So let's start with presenting. A lot of designers struggle to articulate why a creative idea or some sort of choice works. They default to, it looks good or this feels right, but that's not going to convince anyone. Instead, you want to tie your work to the client's brand and to the business strategy.

You want to explain how the design solves the client's problem. You want to back up your decisions with logic. Why did you choose this color? Why did you choose that layout? How does it address what the customer needs or is expecting? How will it drive that intended action that design was created for?

All right. Next up is handling criticism. And this is a big one. Clients are gonna have feedback and sometimes it's not gonna be pretty. It's not. going to be what you want to hear. You need to learn to separate yourself from your team's work. Don't take feedback personally. Instead, you want to listen really closely to what the client's saying and what I like to call mirror what they're saying by repeating it back to them.

That's validating that you've heard them. And then you want to ask clarifying questions, negotiate and collaborate on solutions so you find that common ground. Now that doesn't mean that you're a pushover. You want to fight for your ideas, of course, when you believe in them, but don't dig in just because it's your preference.

Use strategic thinking, your business vocabulary, not stubbornness to find that common ground. Creative directors advocate for strong ideas, but they also build trust with their clients. And again, this is a skill you can start practicing right now on small projects, even in internal presentations when you're presenting to your own creative director or in client meetings.

The better you get at it, the more leadership potential you'll show. And if at all possible, Try to do it in front of upper management. That's exactly the kind of visibility that gets people promoted. Number five, be solutions oriented and take ownership. Leadership's about problem solving and creative directors don't just spot problems, they fix them.

And if you want to stand out as a leader, start by changing how you bring up challenges. Don't just say this isn't working or this is a problem. Instead, come to the table with the problem, but also, Propose a solution. For example, if the timeline's tight, suggest where the team could streamline or prioritize, or if a client rejects a concept, propose ways to pivot while staying true to the strategy and the idea.

If resources are limited or if workload is too much for you or too much for the team or the other designers to handle, offer creative ways to make the project work with what you have or advocate for more resources by quantifying what it is that's happening in the department. Being solutions oriented shows initiative.

It shows ownership. It shows leadership. You're proving that you're not waiting around for someone else to fix things. You're ready to start thinking like a creative director. And let me tell you the buck stops at the creative director. So here's the key. Start doing the job before you're given the title.

That's how you show your boss. That's how you show upper management that you're ready. You want to take ownership of the work, take ownership of your team as much as you can, and also take ownership of your own growth. All right, so at the beginning of this video, I said I was going to share a super power up bonus step, and this is it.

Get a mentor. This falls under the category of shit I wish I knew when I was starting out. If there's one thing I wish I'd known earlier in my career, it's this. Get a mentor. Navigating the leap from designer to creative director and thriving in those first 90 days on the job isn't something you should be doing alone.

A mentor can help you see around those corners and avoid the pitfalls and communicate better and understand the work politics and make sure that you don't screw it up. Here's the truth. When you land that creative director role, the first 90 days are critical. All eyes are on you, your clients, your cross functional stakeholders, and even most importantly, the team of designers that you lead is going to be watching to see what kind of leader you're going to be.

Those first few months are about establishing trust and building relationships and proving you can deliver at a higher level. A mentor can help you navigate that transition. They can guide you on how to set the tone with your team and earn their respect without them feeling like you're micromanaging them.

A mentor can help you establish relationships with cross functional partners like account management and strategy and HR, like I said before. Those are folks who are going to see you as a collaborator, not just the creative person. They can also guide you on how to build Client trust in your leadership and your vision, especially as you begin to present work and negotiate creative solutions with them.

So where do you find a mentor? You can start inside your own company or your own agency. Look for someone who you admire, someone who walked that path before. Ask for their advice, shadow their approach, learn from their mistakes and their successes. You can take it a step further by hiring a coach. A professional coach will provide tailored advice to help you hit your goals faster and avoid those costly mistakes.

That's exactly what I do with my coaching clients. I help them level up and step into leadership and build careers that they're really proud of. Okay, so here's the shameless plug. I offer one to one coaching for creative pros to supercharge, Your career success. So if you're interested in working with me, just go to philipvandusen.

com slash one on one and learn more. And if you're looking for a supportive community, so you can grow alongside other ambitious creatives, I'd check out Bonfire, which is my mastermind group for mid to late career creative pros. In Bonfire, you get group coaching from me, and you also get accountability to your goals from the other group members, and access to tools that are going to help you excel in the leadership roles that you want, like becoming a creative director, or running your own freelance business, or possibly even a small agency.

It's an incredible way to fast track your success and learn from others who are doing similar things in their careers. So if you're serious about becoming a CD and crushing it in those first 90 days, take my advice, get a mentor, find some coaching, invest in it, and surround yourself with people who are going to help you grow.

I'll drop the links for my coaching services and bonfire community in the video description. And if you're ready to take the next step, let's talk. Okay. Let's recap. The five steps to move from designer to creative director are Number one, get exposure to upper management because visibility is key.

Number two, learn to manage and mentor others because leadership can start small. Number three, manage project planning and delivery, because reliability builds trust. Number four, learn to manage clients and to present work by defending your ideas with strategy and finding common ground. Number five, be solutions oriented and take ownership because leadership starts with action and solutions.

And finally, number six, the power up bonus. Find a mentor. Now, if you start practicing these skills today, you'll not only stand out as a designer, you'll start proving that you're ready to go to the next level. So thanks again, keep pushing your creative career forward and I'll see you next time.

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That's where we share all the latest resources, articles, books, and videos that we recommend to help you build and improve your creative practice, personal brand, and business. That's philipvandusen. com slash Muse, M U S E. Thanks again for listening. Bye for now.