Preparing yourself to become a Creative Director is something you can do throughout your entire career. Learn from every CD you serve under, both the good and the bad.

It’s very easy for a pitch to descend into late nights and lost weekends. You can stop, not all, but some of that happening by getting ahead of the presentation deck.

A lot of creative directors end up in that role without any training. If it’s a role you want in the future they are ways to prep for it. Start with giving book crits to learn ‘direction’.

A few more tips for juniors, grads and students. Some watch-outs and to-dos that could be useful. Learn from my past mistakes.

Dev is one of the hardest parts of a creatives job, taking something you’ve lovingly created and changing it. If you’re stuck then try destroying it completely.

Not everyone thinks like a creative. Make sure you present in a way that everyone, whether left or right brain, will understand and love your work.

Outside of the advertising industry bubble no-one really cares about ads. Except for your mam. Accept that and you can use it to create work that does get noticed.

You can’t just sit around and wait for the magic ‘great work’ brief to show up. Push on each brief and you can build for the future.

As channels and media have advanced many creative presentations have become very process heavy. Or boring. You need excitement to sell an idea.

5 more tips for students, grads or juniors. You need more than just a great book to get a job and your education shouldn’t stop when you get one.

Creative Director’s need to be great at making the work better, but that needs to go beyond just pushing the creative ideas. You need to be able to see, and help others to see, the big picture.

Swinton Insurance’s ‘Turn Nagging Doubt into nothing-to-worry about’ was a campaign the public grabbed hold of. We made some deliberate creative and production decisions to help it happen.

The third batch of tips for students, grads and juniors. From finding the right agency for you to making your book appeal to that agency as much as possible.

The most important thing for an ad to do is to engage. For the public to like and love it. The people at home are your audience, appeal to them.

It’s fine to say an ad is ‘great’ or ‘rubbish’ as long as you then go on to say why you think that. Then to go further, looking at what you can learn from it to improve your own work.

It’s easy as a creative to think your job is just about coming up with great ideas. But you’ll get more ideas out into the world if you spend time getting the process right too.

The creative industry is full of energetic and eccentric characters, it has to be. Just be careful you don’t become one of the worst stereotypes, see if you have…

The same basic skills come into play no matter what channel you’re working in. The more ways you can find to practise them, the better your creative work will become.

Another five tips for students, grads and juniors. From improving your book to learning what advice you should take to heart.

It’s easy to get carried away when you’re coming up with ideas. If you’re not careful then you can end up spreading yourself, and the budget, too thinly.