Anders Schroder: Framing Ideas

Anders Schroder is Creative Director at Frame, the well-known Copenhagen-based design and motion graphics house. Frame has developed extremely innovative graphic commercials, TV openers, and promos for clients like Gatorade, Lexus, L'Oreal, MTV, and VW among others. Here, Anders shares his thoughts on idea management, displaying work in early stages, and motivation from tight budgets.

"The key to a great job is great ideas and great execution." Anders believes that collaboration is as critical to execution as it is to idea generation. In his own words, "You can simply achieve a much more interesting and mind blowing result if you collaborate. Putting together a team where each person has a particularly strong emphasis on a certain area of his craft and letting him do exactly that on the project is crucial to getting an amazing result. Some people are good at lighting, some at designing and some at animating. Use people where they are the strongest."

There is a general level of uncertainty that creative professionals report as a source of great frustration. For Anders, his biggest frustrations are "excessive client changes, a shortage of skilled freelancers when you need them, and inconsistent freelancer quality." He goes on to say, "To put it short, most of these frustrations and challenges can be overcome with patience. We always try to be diplomatic and try to solve the issues and reach a compromise where no other option is available."

Good ideas can crop up at inconvenient times. Anders is focused on salvaging unused creative insights by storing them in a backburner. He explains, "As the years pass and as we get older in this business more and more unused ideas accumulate from old boards or pitches that were either lost or discarded. If an idea or visual was never used we sometimes try to repurpose it in some form or use it as a source of inspiration for the new job. It is always hard to see great ideas wasted in dead pitches, so this helps us as creatives to stay on track by seeing some of the good ideas staying alive."
 
While most creative professionals insist on shielding their work until it is in final form, Anders defies this norm. "We always try to show the client what we’re working on at very early stages even though it’s rough and crude. For many years we believed that it was dangerous to show clients unfinished work, but if you just explain to them what is still to be done most clients will understand. This way you possibly save yourself a whole lot of time from going down the wrong road, and will get the client what they want quicker."

Anders explains that his team is motivated by "developing fun and great looking creative work no matter the size of the budgets." They enjoy being creative within the limitations of the projects. He explains, "These days it’s a major challenge to create something outstanding for very little money, we can get satisfaction as creatives working with all sizes of clients. It’s about taking pride in what we do and often turning shit into gold."

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