In our latest edition, we spoke with Gemma Redgrave, Marketing Director of the award-winning agency AKQA. Read on for her perspective on how creatives industry-wide can wield succinct feedback to create designs as iconic as the London Underground.
by Gemma Redgrave
Inside the London Transport Museum there is a gallery dedicated to commercial poster art and design owing largely to Frank Pick, the first Chief Executive of London Transport. In 1908, he began to oversee publicity for the London Underground and, in doing so, revolutionised poster design and established London Transport as an international leader of graphic art and design.
Throughout the gallery, displayed alongside the original sketchbooks, drafts, and artwork of iconic Underground posters are the subsequent Publicity Officer’s letters of feedback to designers. Letters. A method of communication that would take days for feedback to be given, received, and responded to. Not hours, minutes, or seconds. The lines of typed text are exquisite examples of crystal clear direction. There is no ambiguity, no space nor time for language or instruction to be misinterpreted. The feedback is so distilled some letters contain just a handful of lines. The resulting artwork is perfect.
The fast feedback and response loops we engage with via messaging and creative apps allow us to say as much as we like, as often as we want, and wherever we are. That doesn’t mean it makes the final product or the process better.
“When that direct approach is coupled with creative trust, it results in the masterful delivery of a project with the least amount of intervention.”
There is also something illustrated so vividly in these letters that it is blinding. Trust.
As any marketer will tell you, we spend a vast amount of time giving and receiving feedback. What the archives in the London Transport Museum show us is that the direct approach is always best. It will save time. But when that direct approach is coupled with creative trust, it results in the masterful delivery of a project with the least amount of intervention.
If we only had one chance to give feedback, we wouldn’t make it so immediate. We would consider what the most important pieces of information are, reduce them to the most critical, and deliver them in a way that makes sense for the reader to take action. There would be no option of constant commenting and the persistent ‘can you just…’
Imagine if your stream of feedback messages became written letters. The time it takes to type on paper, address the envelope, buy a stamp and travel to a postbox. Would you choose to send them?
Instead opt to develop a creative partnership that is built on trust. Where brevity is encouraged and celebrated.
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