Learn the way of creative direction

We caught up with established independent designer and creative director Erwan Compes. Based in the USA but working remotely globally, Erwan is a former product designer, chief design & marketing officer, and UX/UI designer.

Erwan specializes in brand design, creative direction, user experience design, immersive brand experiences, and creating digital products and apps. “I enjoy taking ownership of the workflow and being responsible for a project's successful evolution through the different phases,” Erwan says. A typical design project includes:

Strategy
Research
Concepts
Design
Prototyping
Implementation
Quality assurance

Image source: Erwan Compes

In this interview, Erwan takes us through the phases of creative direction and how he approaches team management and marketing collaboration. He also gives us insight into designing a brand from scratch and learning animation as a designer.

We’ll also look at two of his customer case studies, Pliability (formerly ROMWOD) and We Are SKY^™.

Day-to-day of a creative director

Creative direction is about defining the overall aesthetic and function of design. A creative director ensures all design elements work together cohesively to deliver a compelling and immersive user experience. These elements include:

Logo
Typography
Colors
Layout
Motion
Interaction

“I primarily focus on brand design, web experiences, and mobile apps. My role as a creative director involves researching the brand in question, auditing their positioning, and imagining and shaping the visual and interactive elements to align strategic goals with user needs.”—Erwan Compes, Independent Designer & Creative Director

He mostly uses Figma design software because it covers most of his design needs. Figma’s prototyping features are usually enough to present an interactive concept. When conducting research and interactive workshops with clients, he enjoys using the infinite board offered by Figjam because of its open format for brainstorming and collaborating.

For more in-depth and precise motion design, Erwan uses Framer. It closely mirrors Figma’s interface and works intuitively. Framer is a good tool for showcasing high-fidelity animations and interactions to provide developers with one-to-one specs and reduce asymmetry in production. If needed, you can push your prototype to a production-ready React app instantly.

When working on more experiential projects, such as We Are SKY’s immersive website, Erwan maintains these tools are only enough to create static designs and rough prototypes. This is where After Effects comes in: he primarily uses it to share his creative vision in video format with team members.q

“When I first started out in high school, around 2007, Photoshop was really the only design tool that gave you enough control over visual elements to execute an ambitious design vision,” Erwan says. “Over the years, I’ve probably used two or three dozen different tools.”—Erwan Compes, Independent Designer & Creative Director

These tools include Sketch, Adobe XD, Invision Studio, Principle, Protopie, and more. Playing with different software helps him keep his creative edge. He’s even used Spline and Unicorn as exciting ways to bring the power of 3D assets and WebGL into his Framer builds.

He’s also been experimenting with Linearity Move to quickly whip up logo animations.

In the future, he’d also like to sharpen his Javascript skills and gain a better command of WebGL using ThreeJS. These libraries enable him to render high-fidelity animations and interactive experiences.

A simple creative direction process

With experience comes expertise. Erwan boils the creative direction process down to three phases: research, client consolidation (creative workshops), and production (design).

The quality of research determines the quality of your initial concepts, which in turn sets the entire project’s direction. Let’s look at how he does it:

1. Do immersive research

“Whether I’m designing a brand, a web experience, or a mobile app, I invariably start with a rather deep research phase,” Erwan states. It will cover a variety of subjects even remotely related to the client, without discriminating media.

“I immerse myself in brands, websites, apps, publications, books, movies, and art pieces to expand the scope of my inspiration and activate my creative thinking.”—Erwan Compes, Independent Designer & Creative Director

Since this creative process begins after a strategy session with the client, he’ll also set a solid framework to guide his research. He draws actionable insights from all the design patterns he’s been exposed to. “This initial exposure allows me to extract a few dominant and viable creative directions from which to flesh out initial concepts,” Erwan explains.

2. Host a creative workshop with the client

Erwan schedules a creative workshop session with the client shortly after concluding his research. This is when he presents the initial concepts and gauges their suitability for the business.

“The purpose of the creative workshop is to select one primary direction, sometimes at the crux of both concepts.”—Erwan Compes, Independent Designer & Creative Director

He typically lets the client “sleep on” the initial concepts, reconvening a few days after the workshop to select a winning concept. This approach gives the client time to process the presented ideas, run them by their team, and come up with any questions or concerns. This way, they’ll have a more solid idea of what they want and usually pick a clear direction for the project to head into.

3. Create higher-fidelity designs

From this point on, the design direction has been set in motion. “When the design direction is pretty much on solid tracks, we push full steam ahead with higher-fidelity designs,” Erwan says. The content strategy also gets integrated as the project scope begins to be fleshed out.

Erwan keeps projects on track with regular feedback loops to keep the team aligned on critical decisions. A large component of creative direction involves management: managing a creative team (often mixed with technical roles) and managing external stakeholders’ expectations.

Managing a team and external stakeholders

“On about a third of my projects, I work directly with clients to assemble a team for the job,” Erwan explains. “I run the project and handle creative direction and design while one or two hand-picked developers execute the vision. On another third of my engagements, I join an existing team with the client. On the remaining third of my projects, I work with an agency for one of their clients.”

Three different setups with three different management approaches. In the first, Erwan’s creative direction role entails assembling the team and managing the entire project. Decision-making may be much more straightforward in this setup.

For the second setup, he must integrate into an existing team’s workflow. This approach requires more effort in terms of communication and team alignment. Decision-making can also be bottlenecked.

In the last setup, the client’s main point of contact would be within the agency, and then he manages the project until completion.

Whichever setup you find yourself in, strong communication skills are essential in creative direction. Especially online and asynchronously. “I rarely fly in for a meeting, as I handle most projects 100% remotely,” Erwan says.

“I’ve developed a streamlined version of SCRUM processes to run projects smoothly and manage multiple stakeholders—often across two or three time zones.”—Erwan Compes, Independent Designer & Creative Director

He uses a combination of Figma, Slack, and Asana to keep communications open. He encourages transparency through daily stand-ups (written or oral), sprints, a GIT-style commit flow for designs, and thorough documentation.