Who this is for
Art directors, writers, designers, editors, and product people who already have taste and now work with generators or coding agents. If you have never finished a piece of work you were willing to sign, start there. Direction has nothing to stand on.
The path
- Write briefs that fail the stranger test. Seven fields, every time. Audience is a person. Feeling is a body state. Tension is a cultural or human rub. “What it is not” is a door list.
- Keep a bible. Paste it. Do not say “as before.”
- Shoot coverage. Three distances, two gestures, one change of light. Then edit. A single pretty frame is a student exercise.
- Log the deaths. If you cannot say why a take died, you do not have taste yet. You have preference.
- Do a software slice. One rite, no auth, no dashboard. Review the preview with the same ruthlessness.
- Publish the method, not the gallery. Hiring managers drowning in Midjourney grids will notice a brief.
The detailed layers: AI Creative Director playbook. The hire side: job description.
What not to do
- Collect 40 courses in 40 tools.
- Rebrand overnight without a death log.
- Present one miracle as the campaign.
- Confuse speed with direction. Speed is what you spend on thinking, or you spent it on slop.