Pulling Back the Curtain of Big Tech: Confessions of an Anonymous Art Director, Pt. 1
Interview by Danielle Evans / WNW Member
The first time a company ripped off my work, it was a former client. I knew the entire team involved and had spent a week working manic hours for a tight turnaround campaign only a month before. I lay awake shaking and staring at the ceiling for two nights before working up the courage to email the team lead. I had no support at the time, and I knew speaking up would likely result in me not being hired again. The inner workings of the large companies that hire me, an independent artist, are a mystery. I rarely get a peek behind the curtain at the decision-making process, aside from occasional conference calls and working on site. When the process works against independents in the form of theft, it’s unclear who is responsible and how something like this occurs with multiple parties signing off.
Therefore, I reached out to an anonymous art director friend at a large corporation to gain clarity. We discussed the mood boarding process for a global campaign, where things go awry, and when a company decides to make pre-emptive restitution. The interview was so insightful, we broke it into a two part series. Once you finish this Part 1, head here the second part of the conversation where we reveal the process behind hiring freelancers for a major campaign.
The Interview
Danielle: What can you tell me about this organization? How could you describe your role there?
AD: I work at a tech company with a global presence that services creatives. It's a role in which you oversee the marketing aspects of a certain project as part of a specific product line. So this includes marketing tasks related to hero imagery, which is global imagery, digital imagery, and some print stuff.
Danielle: Interesting. So you work on teams involved with putting together assets that inevitably become the art for these consumer-facing goods. Can you talk to me about the process of pulling imagery to inspire campaigns, and how one is doing that? Are you using Pinterest? *laughs*
AD: I stepped away from using Pinterest because as a product, I think it's god-awful. But I know people who use it for finding mood. For all the projects inside this department, the first step is always putting together mood boards. It could be of artists we want to work with. If we're going to be shooting limbs or including people, we’ll assemble mood boards of figures and how we want those compositions to look, what kind of lighting styles we want. If it's motion, we save mood boards for possible storyboarding. Sometimes we create storyboards based off of mood we find on the internet.
Inside this company, the level of curation is very high. Those first few weeks working there, it was nothing but assembling mood boards for a project. I thought my curation level was like 6/10, but everyone there is operating at 10/10. They have a keen eye for what artwork they're looking for, and everyone's conditioned to be curating at that level. So there was definitely a learning curve of catching up, which is fun, but also challenging.
The level is really high, partly because mood is presented to people at executive levels as possible options for final artwork. This is where it gets kind of muddy: the mood is treated as placeholder until it's not. This work can become final art literally days or weeks before a final asset is due. But there's not an easy process.
Most of the creative directors there are like, “Just keep grabbing mood,” so we keep populating. We go through a round of mood, we present, we choose what we like, we take feedback and we refine the next board. There are weeks and weeks of 5-7 designers on a team just finding mood for a specific visual direction.
“The inner workings of the large companies that hire me, an independent artist, are a mystery. I rarely get a peek behind the curtain at the decision-making process, aside from occasional conference calls and working on site.”
Danielle: Do you think the ultimate goal is to ideally have so many different reference points that you come across with a handful of images that convey the base-level emotion? Like, the idea is to pull from many, and then end up with one. Is that right?
AD: Yeah, it is. But oftentimes, there isn’t a clear internal communication about whether we're trying to do this in-house, if we'd rather commission someone, or if we should license the image we sold up the ladder. It's understood that it'll be one of those options. But it's not really talked about until a higher-up signs off on something and says, “Yes, we love that. Let's do it.” And then we have to figure out which is the most appropriate option. Is this an artist where we can license their work? Is this an artist where we can get them to create something very similar? Or is this something where we have to do it, that we have time to do it internally for the cost, or whatnot.
Danielle: Interesting.
AD: And it's frustrating to me. On my last project, we would be grabbing mood and burn through most of our time. We would literally be a week before handing off final files and still have to decide whether to create in-house or commission something. It was moving so fast. I wish we had a sorting phase.
Danielle: At what point does it make sense to commission someone versus licensing a piece? Is there a point in the mood-gathering process where something comes back in a thematic way, or do you decide, “No, this work is indicative of one specific person. We should just ask them for something new, because what we have here isn’t quite cutting it?”
AD: In a perfect world that benefits the individual designers or artists, you would think that there'd be something for if there was a specific style for one person. Like <artist redacted>, for example, because there was literally just a whole style that people were curating around her work. And they were like, “We were going to do something internally because all it is is shapes.” As we were getting closer, I finally stepped in with, “No, that's <artist redacted>. You can't put her work in there without commissioning her.”
Currently, there’s no accountability level of somebody stepping in and saying, “This is a singular artist's work, and we can't copy that.”
“Currently, there’s no accountability level of somebody stepping in and saying, ‘This is a singular artist’s work, and we can’t copy that.’”
Danielle: Interesting.
AD: That doesn't come up until, again, we're too late.
When we start to whittle down a direction, there are a handful of people we've worked with before that turn around quickly. We can send a brief, hop on a call with them, and have them complete the work, all within a three-week time span. The timelines are often this limited and sometimes prohibits us from taking chances on new people. This is why we keep a roster of people internally.
These are artists, whether it's photographers or illustrators, that we've had prior experience with. I think sometimes by using proven talent, what they're presenting is, “We've worked with this person before, so we know they're good to go, and they can fit within our timeline, scope, budget.” We know that's good.
But the flip side is that sometimes new people get pushed by the wayside because a higher-up may say, “Oh, this person’s great but untested, and this familiar person is tried and true.” So that's kind of a negative. But usually, that all just depends on the timeline, for how much time you have before the final assets are due.
Danielle: So ultimately, “time equals flexibility” is what you're saying.
AD: Yeah. Time is flexibility. If we have five weeks, the sky's the limit for an illustration, or even probably a photo shoot, too. If it's three weeks, it's bare bones. It's a “got to figure out a solution” kind of thing. Internal creation is a last resort; it's basically an option if there's somebody inside the company who can do it. They're like, “Well, we could commission somebody for this, but if you volunteer to do it, we're not going to say no.”
It's like, “Oh, well, you have the skills to execute this.” People don't talk about this ambiguity. The internal level is weird. When it comes to 3D projects, we have a whole in-house 3D team that cranks out stuff on a daily basis. You see this on the <redacted> product, where the style skews towards a cleaner aesthetic. They might actually be copying exact artists, but because they have an internal team they pay a ton of money, they can hand that off and churn out this type of work. Illustration and photo is another thing.
Danielle: You’re saying it's almost like the primary needs have in-house teams. And then these supplemental assets are farmed out as needed. But if someone has the skills internally to handle it, they will do so.
AD: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Danielle: But also, that's where things can get kind of weird. I have seen a couple different articles about independent artists who have taken larger brands to court, being like, “Hey, you ripped off my sensibility, and this was once a mural.” Or, “This was once a painting,” or “This was once a pattern that went on some clothing, and now it is part of your larger campaign.” Is that the responsibility of the brand, or is it the responsibility of the artist, stepping in to make the assist?
AD: I think in a perfect world, it's the brand's fault for it going out that way. I feel like they have to take responsibility. But the way that the company works, I think it's on the designers and art directors to make explicit calls when these situations arise.
That's where I was super aware when I was grabbing mood. Because sometimes people will internally grab mood so fast that they don't even catalog who the artists are. Just throw it on a board, in a file. Just crank stuff out because they want to move so fast and say “yes” or “no” to a lot of stuff.
I would always catalog stuff by artist and the type of medium. That's where I think it's embarrassing if it goes out. I know there's been more incidences on the 3D side, where <company name redacted> internally does the 3D thing for <a product>, or something like that. And somebody comes out, you've probably seen it on Twitter, and they're like, “Oh, this is my exact style, that they did in 3D.” And where it's on that team to say, “Okay, look. We can do this internally, technically. But ethically, we shouldn't do that.”
“People will internally grab mood so fast that they don’t even catalog who the artists are. Just throw it on a board, in a file. Just crank stuff out because they want to move so fast.”
Danielle: That's very interesting to me. Because people are grabbing so quickly, they're not attributing to the right people. Do you think you are more sensitive to this because of your history as an independent AD? Are you more inclined to put a name or a face or a personhood to a piece of artwork?
AD: Yes, I think so. Partly because I've been on the other side, and I know what that's like. If somebody were to find my work, I would want it attributed to me. Not necessarily a style. So many times, the question arises: are you putting up a general style? Or are you putting up a general person?
Higher-ups assume we're putting up a general style because they don't know artists. It's not their job to know artists either. They see a board and they're like, “This is geometric. This is blobby.” “I like the style,” or “It's too weird.” Their job is to respond to the things that we present. Our job is to present and make the decision as to what information we give them.
There is a level inside of < company name redacted> where they're super sensitive to not getting sued, as much as they can control. If you are aware that you're doing something that comes too close to an artist's style, <company redacted> will reach out to those artists or reps and try to pay them for the general concept or idea. If we were going to do something internally, that looked like <artist redacted>, we would reach out to <artist redacted> and pay her, even if we weren't using her work. It's basically just paying to have a sign-off, or be okay using that likeness.
Danielle: So it's almost a trade dress affirmation, saying, "Hey, I recognize this is so close that we have to concede some sort of ‘inspired as’ qualifier.
AD: Yes. In the winter, we were decided on commissioning a couple artists. And I believe we had even reached out to one or two of them, but the timing fell through and concept changed enough to not hire anyone. The CD said that if we were going to go that direction, we would do something internally. Because we could do something close to it in the time span. However, because we had already reached out to one of the artists, we decided, “If we do this internally, and we go this direction, we have to pay that artist.” Just because we had already reached out to them, and if they saw the final product, they would know it was us copying them.
Danielle: Oh, interesting.
AD: You're paying that artist to not sue you, I think is basically what it comes down to…
“You’re paying that artist to not sue you, I think is basically what it comes down to…”
Danielle: You're paying for damage control.
AD: Yes, which is smart. That was not something I ran into until I got here, this idea of getting too close to a particular artist, and while we're still going to attempt the concept on our own, we still have to respect that artist and pay them. That's the ideal scenario, the way we frequently operate. When oversteps happen here, it’s because somebody did not say, “This is too close to so-and-so's work.”
Danielle: Does this artist of influence get a byline-inspired credit, or is it just kind of a silent, like, “Hey, we're essentially paying you work-for-hire?”
AD: When commissioning people for <product redacted>, there’s an extra pay level for a byline. We commissioned a big name artist recently. He probably cost $500k in fees alone. He wanted to have his name on the site, but it would have cost additionally for us on the product front page to say, “<artist redacted> Original.” But generally all the artists who do commission work for <product redacted>, their name is not anywhere on the site. Depending on the agreement, they're being paid more to not have their name on there.
Danielle: So there's a tiered structure, is what you're saying. People get to choose how they’re compensated.
AD: Yeah. It's not advertising that so-and-so artist has done work on this product. But what you're showing is a use case for a user to do their thing. So, you're just showing a general user who does this artwork. You're not supposed to be showing it's a big artist.
Danielle: Sure. This is almost like a partnership. It's not about the artist. The partnerships that people commission are about shared name, combining forces, and generally both parties benefiting from the use of one another. But in the case you're speaking about, this is strictly, “Here is a potential end for this product, this is a potential user group for this product. And this art just happens to encapsulate this potential group of people's use.”
AD: Yes.
Danielle: That is very smart, very good business.
“Higher-ups assume we’re putting up a general style because they don’t know artists. It’s not their job to know artists either. They see a board and they’re like, ‘This is geometric. This is blobby.’ ‘I like the style,’ or ‘It’s too weird.’ Their job is to respond to the things that we present. Our job is to present and make the decision as to what information we give them.”
AD: You were asking me what level I'm comfortable talking about, or giving pushback on, either artists' work… I felt affirmed by my then art director and creative director, and I felt comfortable to voice, "This is <artist name>'s work. It's too close. We shouldn't do that."
But there is a certain level where people are just afraid to talk about what they believe, to a specific person. I heard that once it gets up to VPs or even two levels below that, anything higher than an executive creative director, people won’t voice their opinions. They don't want to rock the boat, and they're afraid of getting fired. Once we arrive at sign-off, it's at the whim of whatever that person points at, basically. Because they're not going to come back and say, "Well, we believe this is actually the best visual for this product." They just have to be okay with whatever is affirmed and work that way back down the structure, all the way back down to the designer.
Danielle: It's amazing how humanizing this process becomes. From the outside looking in, you see a big corporation, and you think, “People work here because they don't want to be overly responsible. People want the stability to vanish into teams. This all makes a lot of sense for someone else. That's cool.” But there are still levels of responsibility going into a large company. It's just harder to point a finger.
AD: There are levels of creativity. And there are so many things happening at once. This is the worst part about a huge company. There are so many levels of communication that when feedback comes from an executive down to your level, it's gone through like five people's mouths, like a game of telephone.
They keep people out of the meetings that are below a certain level because they say they don't want the meetings to be too crowded. I think it's because they want to control what the feedback is, and what the bias is. Which is not a great thing to deal with. So I really hate when I get feedback on something, and it's gone through like five people from where it first came from. You want to hear the feedback directly.
Danielle: That's fascinating.
“They keep people out of the meetings that are below a certain level because they say they don’t want the meetings to be too crowded. I think it’s because they want to control what the feedback is, and what the bias is. Which is not a great thing to deal with...You want to hear the feedback directly.”
AD: Yeah. But when the product is a high performer, it’s a priority. When it's a high-profile thing, there's just way more feedback, way more people, way more scrutiny.
It is interesting. Everything's always like a step up aspirationally. And this is just generally how [my employer] handles everything that's consumer-facing. You want to show the products or software being used in a way that's a step above aspirational. When we show handwriting, an executive or a higher-up is like, “I want to see handwriting, but I want it to be like realistic, scribbly handwriting.” Actual handwriting looks like shit, so you have to go a step above. This would mean someone trained in calligraphy or lettering creating this “handwriting.” It's always two or three steps beyond aspirational with everything we present.
Danielle: That's fascinating. But it makes sense, because that's the ad: the attainability of someday having great handwriting, which this piece of technology can give you. So, yeah, that makes sense.
Do you feel, working at this place and speaking up, that there's any kind of pushback on you as a person? Because many of the arguments I've heard regarding speaking up or not are because people are afraid of it jeopardizing their jobs, or generally getting in trouble. Do you find that speaking up is encouraged in this place?
AD: I think so. Or maybe I just did it because I didn't know any different. On the product that I was working on, <product redacted>, I was kind of the best at doing that type of content. There wasn't anybody else in there who was as adept in-house, so I became comfortable voicing my opinions. A lot of early mood is too trendy... I knew how I'd want to push this design.
Part of not speaking up might come from people who are grabbing mood that want to execute these ideas themselves. But they're afraid if they speak up, they'll know that this particular designer does a style, or we're copying a trend, or something like that. The inability to speak up might come from just someone's selfish ability to be like, “I want to do this really cool thing for <company redacted>, but I don't want to tell anyone that this style already exists.” That make sense?
Danielle: I suppose that train of thought falls in line with curation. Sometimes with curation, someone can have an exquisite taste level, but not be able to produce at the taste level that they are aspiring to. And therefore on a global scale like this, it makes sense that that would only be augmented.
AD: I felt like I really understood the <product redacted> I was on, who it's for, and generally, what the marketing should look like. Because normal people use it. People don't want to see trendy graphic design bullshit. But also, you don't want to be presenting some weird ass conceptual illustration; like, find a realistic use case for why anyone uses it. It might look super cool, but you're like, “No one's going to do this.”
Danielle: Right.
AD: The process works when the trendiness is discarded. Because it has to go to an executive, who says, “This is too hipster bullshit,” which... fair. I'm glad that got called out. By the time you get to the end product, all the forces work to make sure this is the right reflection for the consumer.
WNW Member Danielle Evans is an art director, lettering artist, speaker, and dimensional typographer. She’s worked with the likes of Disney, Target, the Guardian, PWC, (RED), McDonald’s, Aria, Condé Nast, Cadillac, and would love to work with you. Subscribe to her newsletter here.
Header Illustration by WNW Member Miriam Persand