We “creatives” are lucky — the nature of our work often lends itself to free agency as easily as it does to being a franchise player (sorry, lots of Steelers talk around just now). I’ve been both: working first at a design firm, then in corporate marketing, and, for the last 11 years, as a solo employee (and employer). It’s the longest I’ve ever worked anywhere, and soon my time working alone will surpass my time working on a team.

While I love working for myself, I dearly miss the day-to-day interaction with fellow creatives — the humor (I’ve never met a creative person who wasn’t funny), the commiserating, the memorable lunch table banter, the constant, (unconscious) learning that took place when writers, designers, “page people,” illustrators — and their bosses — got together.

These days, as a hack for hire, I sometimes get to work closely with a graphic designer, but too often, I’m churning out words and never seeing them transformed into a finished layout. Or the finished layout is less than it could be — should be — if a really great designer had been involved.

Sure, I’ve had my share of experiences that make any writer cringe. “Here’s the layout. Just make your words fit the greeking,” Or “I’ve decided to use justified type – can you cut 7 letters out of this line and 5 out of that one?” Or “I put the headline you wrote at the bottom of the page and switched around the paragraphs a little — OK?”

But I’ve had many more experiences where the writer-designer collaboration created true synergy. Where suddenly the work became better than it could have been alone — and so did we. The ideas were solid. The words brought the concepts to life. The design and illustrations made them clearer. The justified callouts had just the right number of (perfectly kerned) letters to make them beautiful, as well as profound.

With so many creatives working solo these days, the collaborative process has suffered. With client budgets cut to the bone, the collaborative process has suffered. With every “We’ll just publish it online—can I have it tomorrow?” the collaborative process has suffered. And so, of course, has the work.

I look back at some of the older pieces in my portfolio and think, “Damn, this was good.” Not because I did it, but because we did it. That’s the power of creative collaboration. Shoulder to shoulder. Pouring through back issues of CA and Print and How for inspiration. Brainstorming ideas. Huddling over the screen, moving things around. Giving and taking. It was sometimes a painful process, but more often than not, it worked. Really well.

I miss it. And if any fellow creatives out there, solo or otherwise, have ideas about how to get it back, or how you’ve maintained it over the years, I’m all ears.

# # #

I’m actually very collaborative if people are intelligent and
they’re not talking about stupid things — then I get crazy.
~ Charles Roven

Christine Hollinger (aka WordPlay) helps all kinds of people in all kinds of businesses and non-profits explain what they do. You can visit Chris online, on LinkedIn, and on Twitter (as WordPlayatWork).

Tags: Collaboration, Creativity, Working solo, Working together

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