3 Creative Design Top Tips

Creative Director, Ben Gerrard, tells you how best to engage your creative spirit with three simple top tips. 

Don’t start with a computer 

I would always say go old school. Grab a pencil and a piece of paper. Start drawing, doodling and coming up with ideas. A creative person shouldn’t just be confined to being in front of a screen.

I always try to draw what I want to create before I start the work and I find it really helps my creative process. 

After you feel comfortable coming up with ideas and putting them down on paper, that’s when you should start using a computer. You can then bring your scribbles to life and a computer is a really fantastic way to do that.  

Research 

At Northstar we have a variety of clients that are involved in several different aspects of business and all have very different products or services. Having done work on the Harkness and Armitage Shanks accounts, you couldn’t have two more contrasting services being offered. 

My job is to consistently represent these brands at a high standard and without knowing something about them, I can’t do this. Therefore, it is important to do my due diligence, make sure that I know a brand and can fulfill their needs as best I can. 

Collaborate 

It has always helped me out having people around. Without being able to bounce ideas off others, I don’t feel that you can be fully happy with what you have produced.

Fulfilling the brief for a client is essentially a collaboration and if you don’t work with others on it, you can get tunnel vision and not give the client exactly what they have asked for. 

What is so good about the Northstar office is that we have quite a social space. It’s not difficult for me to quickly call someone over to my work station, or to shout someone from downstairs. Which does frequently happen.