Creative Partnership: Lessons in Professional Communication (transcript)

Audrey Havey: I'm a huge note-taker. Being able to look back and see like this is a really good point that they made or they phrase this really well and then I can present that back to them and say because you said this or that. Here is exactly why I made all of these choices with design and color and type.

Host (Wesley Slover): This is the Collab Collection, where we collect stories and useful insights about creative collaboration. I'm Wesley Slover. Communication is central to collaboration. It's a theme that comes up a lot when speaking with guests on the podcast. In order to work together, we need to transfer information as accurately as possible from one brain into another. That's not easy.

So, I wanted to explore the fundamentals of communicating during a project. And I spoke with someone who I think does this really well, graphic designer Audrey Havey. She's a freelancer who has worked for brands like Adobe, the Phoenix Suns, and Riot Games. And you've most certainly seen her work because she also created our beautiful visual branding for the Collab Collection.

Okay, so for a long time in my career, I felt a bit unsure how to communicate professionally. I didn't go to real college. I went to this trade school where we just hung out in a recording studio for like 8 months and didn't learn how to write or talk or whatever. I kind of assumed everyone else had education in like how to write an email, but given Audrey's experience, I don't think that's necessarily the case.

Audrey Havey: I went to Columbus College of Art and Design in Ohio. There definitely wasn't a workshop of like here's how to format an email, you know, or anything like that. I think a lot of it just came into practice when it came to like internships and networking and meeting people and talking to people. I kind of just like we found our voice through that.

I'm always very enthusiastic when talking to new people both in real life and, you know, via email and everything, understanding what it means to be like quote-unquote a professional, but also still holding some pride in your artistic voice and you know what you can bring to the table.

Host (Wesley Slover): Audrey describes her communication style as overcommunicating.

Audrey Havey: Overcommunicating is going above and beyond what you think is necessary to get a point across, especially raising concerns about things. That's a huge thing that freelancers are afraid to do sometimes. Like, hey, I don't think this is enough time to do X, Y, and Z, or I think this is way out of scope, out of budget, yada yada. If you don't communicate those things, that can definitely jeopardize a project. It can stress you out. It can kind of just like make everything not go very well.

Part of overcommunication is reiterating the project so far and listing the next steps. Instead of just sending her graphic design work to a client and asking, "What do you think?" She clarifies with a recap to orient the people who are reviewing the work. I think a lot of times people just kind of go in blazing just like showing concepts and stuff, but everyone always needs some kind of pre-context and recap of like, oh yeah, that's what we talked about and that's like what I said on the meeting. Sometimes clients don't even remember what they say sometimes. So like it's up to us to like really listen and take note of that so they feel heard.

Then I usually end with the next steps so the path forward is clear. I lay out what I need to continue working, giving them the next few steps of like here's what we have to look forward to. I'm going to do this, this, and this. It's never really been asked of me to like do check-ins or anything, but I think little things like that go a long way with clients and just showing that like, you know, you're being proactive, that you care, that you know, you kind of know what's on the docket of things to do.

Host (Wesley Slover): I think those quick check-ins can bring a real peace of mind to a client or a team. They don't have to wonder or check in themselves to know that the work is happening. Another important part of communication is asking questions. For example, with a new project, Audrey asks three questions.

Audrey Havey: What's your timeline? What's your budget? What are your deliverables? This is pretty standard stuff, but those questions are the foundation of a project. And if it's not laid properly, things can go badly. The way in which those questions are discussed can even be kind of a canary in the coal mine, a warning sign for how a client might approach a project.

I'm in like my second year of freelancing and a project comes to me. They they are like overly casual too, which can be a good thing, but it's also like not my favorite thing because I want to make sure that there's an understanding of like we're both taking this seriously, you know, and so I appreciate the friendliness of things, but also I want you to understand the level of what has to be done here. They kind of just like gave a very overview, broad description of like what they would want me for. The expectations weren't made clear.

I just had no order or structure to every day that I was working with them. And so I just felt like I was catching up all the time. There was never any timeline structure of like when certain things were due. This project got extended multiple times, too. Like maybe two months over. It was bad. It was just such a weird kind of experience. And I just felt so guilty because I just felt like all of that like was on my shoulders, but I didn't know like what like the start and the end of my responsibilities were and it was never written out in like a contract or anything. So yeah, learned a lot from that one.

Host (Wesley Slover): Big part of what Audrey does as a graphic designer is organize information. So, I thought she might be able to share some insights on stuff like formatting an email.

Audrey Havey: Audrey says when she's writing emails or Slack messages or slide decks that she utilizes the design principle of hierarchy, sorting information in order of importance. If the reader is presented with just paragraphs, it looks like big blocks of ink. So, I break up the copy to be easier for the eye to process. Ask yourself what is the first and foremost thing that you should be reading and then the second most important thing and then everything else is kind of tertiary. You know, what does your eye see first?

For example, header, you know, big bold type subheader less important and then like body copy is just kind of like where you have a lot of words. Something else I'll do to make things clear is reiterate language from previous conversations, recapping saying, "Hey, here's what you told me. Here's what I think you're saying. Is this correct?" Reusing like exactly what they said in your answer. Bolding that. Maybe I'll do like a point or two type size bigger just to kind of emphasize like here's the question or the topic at hand.

Bullet points—I do a lot of bullet points. I think reading paragraphs is just not it anymore in an email, you know. Slack is where I do most of that. Honestly, I use and abuse like all of the different character and formatting styles that they have, the numbers, bullet points. There's like a code text kind of like formatting thing that I do for like titles sometimes. It helps so much with digesting everything.

Host (Wesley Slover): Sure, formatting text is cool, but what's your professional opinion on emoji?

Audrey Havey: I love emojis. I've made way too many of my own. I think my favorite one is Heard Chef with like a pizza maker guy, like a chef going like this. Um, yeah, I think that's like the best one of like heard.

Host (Wesley Slover): Learning to communicate by observing your collaborators is so useful. Audrey says she learned a lot while on contract with the video game studio, Riot Games.

Audrey Havey: Riot was always like the dream, but I didn't really know it was the dream, if that makes sense. I happened to see a LinkedIn post one day from one of the art directors from League of Legends saying that they were looking for a couple different roles. One of them being like a senior designer with a daunting like 100 plus comments underneath of people throwing their name out in their portfolio. I'm like, "Yeah, right. No way." But like, what's the harm in just putting my name and portfolio on there, too?

Did that, and not even a couple days later, I got an email from one of their production coordinators to plan a meeting to talk. It was actually just the one interview. It was a lot of just talking about myself and my interests and and walking through my portfolio. A lot of it was talking about my least and my most favorite projects on my site and like what I could have done better with certain ones or like why this one was my favorite. And I know through all of this, they're getting like a personality check and vibe check and everything.

A few months after the interview, she started a contract with Riot. It was just so super daunting at first because it was just the biggest foot in the door I could have ever expected or imagined. I just tried to soak up as much as I could and I learned very quickly just like how much they overcommunicated and how producers even laid out like here's what's happening this week. As a freelancer I was definitely a part of the team and just like part of all the conversations and any conversation I wanted to be a part of I was able to and just the questions I was able to ask and there was just no shame in like asking, you know, dumb questions or anything like that.

Her producers would funnel the various feedback into something clear and actionable for the designers. Our manager was always so great about kind of taking all of the like obscure maybe like really wild feedback that we might have gotten from like the stakeholders, and then condensing down to like here's basically what they said, and here's what we should do. Having that filter to tell us the clear directive was always super helpful. Audrey's producers would initiate conversations to iterate on their team's process.

They have a really good structure of getting feedback from everyone. And I think one of the best things with Riot was a thing called retros, like retrospectives after a project is done, talking about the aches and pains of the project, what didn't really go well, what went super well, like what we should probably try to do in the future, and then like kudos to everyone, you know, like pats on the backs, like everyone did a great job. Then producers would take all those learnings and then try to implement that for like the next campaign.

Host (Wesley Slover): I think my biggest takeaway after talking with Audrey is to kind of constantly interrogate my own communication. I might think I've communicated something, but is it really clear to the people I'm communicating with? Am I overcommunicating? Or are there helpful pieces of information I might have left out? How could I make this communication easier to understand?

In my career, since first feeling like I should have learned this stuff by going to real college, I'm continuing to see that there's just not really a right way. Everyone has their own methods and communication in the workplace is consistently evolving. And I think that's cool because that means there's always something new to learn.

This episode was written and produced by me, Wesley Slover, with help from Jake Merritt. It was mixed by Trevor Richardson. Her album artwork is created by the guest of this episode, Audrey Haby. Audrey was great to work with, which is why we wanted to have her on the podcast to share some of her perspective and experience. The Collab Collection is a project of Sanctus Audio, a sound and music design studio. Hear our work at sanctis.audio. And if you could use a sonic collaborator, hit us up.