Creativity Squared: The Human Element of Creative Work with Nick McMurdy and Alan Schneller

Nick> As someone who’s mostly introverted, nothing brings me out of my shell more than being around my fellow creative people. They give me life. 

When I’m around my tribe, it’s like I finally get to speak my native language. I’m a totally different person on a film set than I am in regular life.

I do believe creativity is something that’s innate, but it’s like a raw material that must be excavated through hard work and craftsmanship. There are some people who simply have more of it, and there are other people who do more with it. 

You can’t make something out of nothing, but you can make a whole hell of a lot out of even the littlest talent if you have the vision and determination to do so. 

Personally, I have more of a creative habit than a creative routine. Routine suggests repetition and replication, but the variables in this industry are always evolving. 

My habit is to concept and write every single day, but I’m constantly changing my environmental input to better align with the tone of what I’m working on at the moment. 

Facing a blank page is incredibly hard. As the cliché goes, it’s supposed to be hard or else everyone would be able to do it. That’s why I celebrate unique creative approaches, whether it’s something I vibe with or not. 

I know how difficult it is to get a good idea through the gauntlet of opinions, committees, and approvals. Anyone who manages to do it and still maintain elements of true originality has my sincere respect. 

Alan> I would describe myself as an introverted extrovert. 

I’m not sure if that is a legitimate term but it seems to be the best and most accurate description. I enjoy being around people, and I enjoy the hustle and bustle of being out and public, and I need to be able to express myself in various ways. The only way I’ve been able to make sense of anything is to put myself out there and try, the same goes for my work. 

But equally, if not simultaneously, I need my alone time and am always inside my own head, almost an observer in an out of body experience. 

In contrast to other creatives, I thrive off of structure and routine. I need to know what my limits are, and better yet, the rules and guidelines. Tell me what you want and when you want it. There’s this thought that creativity comes from thinking outside of the box, and I disagree. It comes from thinking inside the box, working with what you have and making it work. Anyone can dream up anything, but when you put pen to paper is where it counts. 

I see the world in a pretty optimistic view, and whenever I hear “we can’t” it just doesn’t really make any sense to me — I immediately think of the thousands of other people who did much harder things in life, whose stories we love to tell, and I find that not everyone who tells those stories is able to apply them.  

Nick> When I’m judging creativity, I have a pretty simple set of criteria: Is it original? Does it evoke the right emotion in an unexpected way? Is the human being the central element to its creation? 

The only variable that’s shifted over the years is the clarification of the human element. We have more tools than ever to aid creativity, but I worry that overreliance on this technology could eventually become a crutch for the hard work that’s necessary to do great creative. 

If the human being is no longer central to the creation process, we become prompt engineers rather than artists. 

That’s a bleak future I refuse to accept.

In my career, I’m probably most proud of our “connections” campaign for Bright House Networks because it focused on how technology allows us to be our most human, and really anchored itself to the emotional benefits of the products instead of the power of the gadgets themselves. 

Technology should be a tool to express humanity rather than a means to just consume more technology in an endless loop. The more time that passes from that campaign, the stronger connection I have to it. 

Alan> I prefer work that’s simple and clean, to the point. Puns, subversions and snarky cleverness don't work on me, at all. Taking something that exists, flipping it or pointing out its flaws feels lazy to me. 

The brand should speak for itself and have some self respect. Asking the audience to do the work or continuously pointing out, “Do you get it? Do you?” completely gets under my skin.

Over the years my taste has pretty much stayed the same, the biggest thing that’s changed is I’ve realised there’s room at the table for everyone. So I’ve lightened up a little, and if it’s not for me, it’s not for me. 

This creative industry, whatever it may be, should be fun — not taken SO seriously that we all forget what it is we’re doing. 

I love craftsmanship, and a vision or perspective. When you can tell that whatever the piece is was made by someone who just loves what they do and knows what they want, it’ll completely come through and that’s when you know you have good work. 

Nick> When I’m first starting a project, I don’t gather a lot of reference material and competitive comps right away because I feel like it influences my process too much. I’d rather attack the problem from my own unique point of view, and then use those inspirations and references as a tool to ensure I’m not being too derivative. 

I just focus on the brief’s 'single most important thing to communicate' and find as many unique ways to express it as possible.

Once I feel good about some initial concepts, that’s when I engage others on the creative team to swap ideas and see where we can build upon the best stuff. After that, we broaden out to the account team and production team, gathering more insights along the way. 

The more people you can bring along in the process, the more ownership everyone feels over the finished product. Don’t underestimate how important it is to include others in this process. They’ll help make it better, and they’ll help defend it when you need them most. 

I think the only time that a piece of work is truly done is when you attach a deadline to it. Otherwise, you can always make something better. I don’t consider a single thing I’ve ever done to be perfect, so that suggests it’s only done because the deadline dictates that it is. It’s oddly comforting to operate that way. Otherwise, I’d probably never release anything. 

Without deadlines, I’d be stuck in perpetual development hell.

Alan> The first step I always take is research. I scour the internet (or my own brain) for any kind of visual or written reference I can find. Multiple tabs open, different creative sites, a thesaurus if I need it — everything. 

From there I just pull anything I find interesting into a folder without really thinking or getting hung up on the details. I’m going for a gut feeling. After some time and when I feel that I have collected enough, I like to go back and see what stands out the most and is most applicable to the project. 

The screenwriter, Aaron Sorkin said that the most terrifying thing for him is the blank page. There’s so much truth to that — so I found that the only way to combat it is to not make the page blank anymore. 

I just start sketching on paper or throwing together a rough composition in photoshop just to get a basic idea of what I’m trying to accomplish, and after that it’s just continually building and refining that idea or ideas until it’s in a place that I’m comfortable with.

Nick> I grew up in a rural town just north of Pittsburgh, where there simply wasn’t a blueprint for a career in the creative arts. I was surrounded by nothing but factory jobs, so I developed a blue-collar work ethic that I translated to my writing. 

It’s a job and you need to approach it with a measure of discipline, even on the days when it feels like work. 

Since there weren’t any educational or mentorship opportunities available to me growing up, I just learned by doing. I took the classic '10,000 Hours' approach. Even to this day, I genuinely write day and night; at work and at home. I write so much that I recently bought myself a drum set so I could finally have a creative outlet outside of my discipline. 

I need peace to do my best work, and I never understood creatives who intentionally put things off to the last minute so they’re forced to work under pressure. 

I come from a screenwriting background, which conditioned me to view work through the lens of 'writing is rewriting'. You can’t rewrite what’s not there. I get as much up on the board as early as possible so that I have more paths to explore and refine. 

So how do we best facilitate creativity? To me, it all comes down to respect, and incorporating a healthy dose of collaboration. I understand why so many people are excited to chime in on the creative process, but collaboration can sometimes go too far in this business. 

True collaboration is becoming a master of your individual discipline, and then working with other experts in their disciplines to find the seamless overlap that solves a common goal. We’re all just figuring out this shit together. 

Alan: I grew up in a medium sized city in Kentucky. And for most of my life I had no idea what an advertising agency was, never heard of it. 

I didn’t have access to the Adobe programs, and not necessarily any art programs in school either, and to add insult to injury, art and creativity weren’t encouraged or deemed important. 

While I was in college, I had a friend who let me borrow 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest', the 1975 film starring Jack Nicholson. I was already taking art and design classes but didn’t know what I was supposed to do with it. I was also dabbling in comic books and making drawings to entertain my friends anyways, but this movie really laid the groundwork of what could be possible. 

Essentially, I immediately did a deep dive into film. I watched EVERYTHING, 5-7 movies a week, and when audiences were shifting one way into entertainment I found this other avenue that somehow went the other direction, and I will forever be grateful. 

I really moved forward with wanting to make movie posters and then from there actually make movies. Over the years that’s evolved to be a few different things, but it really did shape how I approach my career and the creative industry.