By Christopher Medford

 

Difficulties of Partners

 

Before i Krak on, i would like to give a shout out to everyone that I have emailed since I have started studying at the School of Communication Arts 2.0 asking for crits of some of my work. We can’t move forward unless we learn from the mistakes from the past. 

 

So it’s been four months of blood and sweat but no tears from me as of yet but I can’t speak for the rest of the cohort. Of one of the hardest courses to ever put myself through, I have learned a little bit more about myself and my inability to play well with others. How short is one’s patience and working under unnecessary pressure for very mundane and often underwhelming products.

 

I can wholeheartedly say that I actually tried my best to balance everything to the best of abilites. Inside and outside of the course including any life handicaps. BUT the next test that we all have to overcome is finding our partners. A partner that we will go on to craft a portfolio with and even go to future agencies together and even try to win some awards. 

 

But how can we put so much trust into another person that we may not know as well as we should. Such hard decisions shouldn’t be taken lightly for many of us gravitate towards personalities that we get along with and may disregard others that may be better suited to getting the best out of yourselves.

 

So here is a list of all the attributes we should be seeking from any professional partnerships.

 

 

• Healthy discussion.

 

Communication is very important in the idea creation process but arguments are counter productive, you should be able to discuss anything without shouting down your partner to get your way, be able to express yourself with the confidence that your partner will listen without too much judgement is critical to success.

 

 

• Patience to listen.

 

If you can’t listen, you will never learn and improve on them early shit ideas that we have.

 

 

• Sharing the work.

 

Partnership work more efficiently when the workload is shared, a work load shared is a problem halved. Even though we should play to our strength’s but if our partners are stressed with the amount they have to do then everything else around it will crumble as well.

 

 

• Trust.

 

Having faith in your partner’s ability to perform under pressure with you is crucial, as well as you should be able to trust them with all the top secret project ideas that you may be working on with them, and not sharing them with the entire world behind your back.

 

 

• FUN

 

No creativity is found when we are bound by too many restraints, but with all the seriousness of the work that we create and everything else that we do, we need to make sure we have fun with the people we are making it with.