the importance of collaboration Brandon Knowlden

Today’s guest post comes from Brandon Knowlden. He is an AD for Struck Creative in SLC. I first met up with him last October while schlepping my portfolio around. His personal website can be found here. He’s a great guy and will be enlightening us on some cool topics over the next few months.

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My first Creative Director said, “you can get a hamburger anywhere, but if you want filet mignon, you go to Ruth’s Chris.” Well, I have yet to eat at Ruth’s Chris, but I got his point.

You might wonder what this has to do with collaboration. Well, it has everything to do with collaboration. The people who are the best are the best at one thing and they know the importance of using the right people for things they can’t do. Those are the people you want to go to, to seek out and collaborate with. That’s why I love concepting so much. I’ll say something that I am seeing in my head, and more often than not, the person sitting across from me sees it completely different from me – and often for the better.

The same goes with a photographer. I love giving them a two sentence description of the idea, followed by “so what were you thinking?” The best photographers, the ones I want to work with don’t sit and take directions, they work with you. And because of that kind of collaboration, you will ALWAYS end up with a better piece.

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