Visual Feedback Best Practices for Creatives
- Adilla
- 6 hours ago
- 6 min read
Giving feedback can be tricky, with words like ‘make it pop’ or ‘can we use something more exciting or eye-catching’ not being useful feedback for creatives that need more specific and actionable comments. For example, animators would struggle to know which frame or what intention someone meant in their comments without mentioning everything in detail. This leads to loops of revisions and frustrations on both sides.
Best practices for visual feedback focus on making every comment specific, timely, and closely tied to the scene being reviewed, rather than simply adding more heavy-text comments. When creative feedback is contextual, the team can expect a faster process, revisions that emphasise quality, and improved collaboration.
Effectively communicating feedback to your visual creatives allows you to spend less time untangling mixed messages and more time producing results.
Table of Contents
How Creatives Across Roles Usually Work Together
Typically, creatives with different roles work together when their skills overlap. However, this sometimes leads to misalignments, as each creative role has dissimilar priorities.
When the project is ongoing, alongside the feedback and review sessions, some issues can arise, such as when Art Directors and Copywriters are a common pair to co-develop visuals and words that match. Differing opinions and perspectives would cause friction of ideas, where one is more focused on the visuals and the other on the copy of said visuals.
Another example would be filmmakers and musicians, differing roles but converging when their work is combined. The combination of visual storytelling and sound design is essential to create a cohesive narrative. Although these two roles work hand in hand, one perspective might prefer a different approach in music or an opposing view towards a visual that’s trying to capture a specific emotion.
Collaboration between creatives, especially without a structured creative workflow, can become messy. While the goal of collaboration is achieved, it usually comes with confusing feedback that causes delays and frustration, which would also impact their flow in the long run.
Thus, when a project involves many creative roles, it’s important to establish a collaboration and feedback system that benefits both parties.
Best Practices When Giving Visual Feedback
There are a few things to note when establishing the best practices when giving creative feedback, from knowing the right time to being more specific and using the help of supportive tools.
When To Give Feedback
Understanding when to share your insights is crucial for ensuring a seamless workflow throughout the project:
Concept and Scripting
With every project, the creative brief needs to include the visual components and ideas that would work with the visual creatives. Feedback on what could work when planning out a project is essential to set a realistic expectation and workload for the rest of the team.
Halfway Through the Production
As the project progresses, it’s essential to do regular check-ins with the team to ensure everyone stays aligned with the project goals. Initial ideas can change mid-production, so review sessions come in handy during this time.
Final Delivery
Before finalising and rendering the finished product, it’s essential to look at it all together and how it lines up. Some things might have been missed when they were separate visual components. Feedback during this session should not be big changes but edits that could enhance the creative project.
Be As Specific as Possible
It can be tempting to just say, “I want this to be prettier” or “I don’t feel attracted to it.” However, none of these are helpful for your creatives. When giving feedback, it’s important to be specific with actionable suggestions.
For example, if you want a change with the copy, suggest a font or a size to change it. Or if that’s not an issue, suggest colour shades to test out. You can be as specific as giving your creatives a colour code.
Utilise Visual Markups
Creative feedback is better with visual markups, especially when working with creatives who are more into visuals rather than heavy text. When words become a struggle, visually highlighting and directing which part of the work needs to be fixed makes the workflow smoother.
For example, our TESSR Review makes visual collaboration and feedback easier in its module. With the ability to draw and edit on the frame itself, it removes the potential verbal confusion of having to explain.
Categorise The Feedback
Keeping in mind the project scope, budget constraints and the project timeline, not all feedback needs to be executed immediately. So, here’s how you can organise them better:
Must Fix
Comments that are aligned with the project objectives and are essential to the overall visual project are placed in this category. For example, in an advertising campaign, any key information in a video or poster that does not support the marketing goals would be considered a "must fix", as it is vital for the success of the campaign.
Should Fix
When feedback is good but not a priority to be executed any time soon, it is placed in this category. Without it, it can still reflect the objectives, but with it, it adds an extra aspect to the project. For instance, when giving the option to make physical copies of the advertisement for an essentially online campaign, it’s an added bonus as long as it’s within the project’s budget and timeline.
Nice To Have
Mainly aesthetic feedback that won’t affect the overall presentation of the project. With extra time and capacity, this can be implemented. Like, adding extra information onto a caption or poster that doesn’t affect the campaign.
Basic Glossaries for Visual Feedback
When explaining feedback for visual work, there are some key terms to ease the comment exchanges:
Alignment | This term is used when you want to line up graphics or texts in a structured way. |
Hierarchy | To have visual elements arranged that guide users’ eyes, like bigger headings or brighter colours. You can be more specific by informing them of the font size or what colours you want to use to capture attention. |
Contrast | Difference in colours or brightness to make visual items stand out, like a dark background with light text. |
Negative space | Another word for 'white space' – the term for the empty areas in a visual work that help emphasise focus. |
Transitions | Happens between two visual items when they move from one to another. It helps either streamline a scene or cut to a different view. |
Frames | Individual still images that are put together to create movement. |
Cuts | This happens when two images or videos are joined together in a video timeline, which controls the pace and focus. |
Timeline | This is a central workspace to edit and arrange clips, audio, graphics and effects as you would find in a film strip. This is where you can cut and sync files together. |
Tracks | Layers in a timeline which separate video from audio. |
Camera Movement | Physically moving the camera to pan, tilt, track, etc., to shift focus and add perspective |
Key Takeaways
There are a few ways to streamline creative feedback better when collaborating across different roles.
Visual feedback can be tricky when you don’t have the right tool or words to express your comments.
Equipping yourself with the best practices can smooth the review sessions you have with your visual creatives.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Why is teamwork so important to motion graphic designers?
Motion graphic designers usually collaborate with other roles, such as animators, concept artists, and brand specialists. As a result, their decisions can influence, or be influenced by, the work of others. This is why teamwork is crucial to ensure that ideas are clearly communicated, and any potential issues are identified early on. Without effective collaboration, projects can suffer from a lack of direction, late changes, and mismatched expectations.
What is the difference between frames and keyframes?
Frames are still images put together to create a motion. A keyframe is a frame where you place a symbol in a visual timeline. They play different roles in a videographer's work process and animation projects.
Are there different types of feedback?
Yes, there are 6 types of feedback, and each type has different ways to respond.
Author Bio
With a background in Arts English, Adilla has been a casual writer for various hobbies, like parodies of animated shows and plots for board games. She loves to read anything and everything from fantasy stories to articles on tips and tricks. Now an advocate for mental health and effective project management for the creative industry. Currently, Adilla resides in Malaysia and is a creative writer at TESSR. To know more about her, check out her LinkedIn.
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