Creativity vs. Taste: Why Founders Make Terrible Creative Directors

By Philosopher All Posts Featured Marketing Insights 04/12/2025

Reading Time: 4-6 minutes

The skillset gap between product vision and brand execution and why confusing them kills both

Your designer just sent the 47th revision of your logo. You still hate it. They’re crying in the bathroom.

It’s a scene that plays out in startups and SMEs every day. You know your business better than anyone else, so logically, you assume you should also know exactly what it should look like. But there is an uncomfortable truth that separates successful brands from the ones stuck in revision purgatory:

Having a great taste does not make you
a good Creative Director.

The Real Difference

To fix this, we have to look at where the wires get crossed.

1. What Founders Are Actually Good At.

Founders are the architects of value. Your job is product vision and strategy. You identify the market gap, the customer pain point and the solution.

Steve Jobs is the ultimate example. He didn’t sit in Photoshop moving pixels around. He knew what the iPhone needed to do be a phone, an iPod and an internet communicator but he didn’t design the rounded corners of the icons himself. He had Jony Ives for that.

2. What Creative Directors Actually Do.

A Creative Director’s job is to translate that strategy into emotion. They speak the language of color, composition and user experience to make the strategy “feel” right.

The Gucci Rule: In fashion, there is a church-and-state separation between business and art. During Gucci’s resurgence, CEO Marco Bizzarri ran the numbers and strategy, but he let Creative Director Alessandro Michele decide that “geek chic” and floral suits were the future. If Bizzarri had picked the runway looks based on his personal preference, the brand’s revival likely never would have happened.

Three Ways Founders Mess Things Up

When founders try to jump the fence, things get expensive.

1. The “I’ll Know It When I See It” Syndrome

This is the silent killer of creative projects. You have a vague feeling of what you want, but you can’t articulate it, so you force your team to guess.

Consider this real-life scenario from the design trenches. A founder turns a simple project into chaos by shifting direction every time an update is delivered. Ideas jump from one concept to another, only to circle back to the original as if nothing ever changed. Different stakeholders on the client side share competing priorities, forcing the designer to navigate office politics rather than design. The feedback? A “helpful”: “It’s just not quite there.”

The result wasn’t a better product, it was a team stuck decoding mixed signals while the goalposts quietly moved.

2. The 47-Revision Death Spiral

You might think more feedback leads to a better polish, but the data suggests otherwise. Excessive revisions often lead to a “Frankenstein” design that serves no one.

The Cost: Research on digital user experience shows that 88% of users won’t return to a site after a bad experience (Jobins.jp). When you micromanage design into the ground, you often strip away the intuitive elements that professionals put there to guide the user, resulting in a product that looks “safe” to you but feels broken to your customer.

3. The DIY Trap (Malaysian Context)

In Malaysia, the “boss creates the Canva poster” culture is strong. It feels like a cost-saving measure. But if your “free” design fails to communicate value, you aren’t saving money. You’re losing customers.

The Middle Path: You don’t need a million-ringgit agency. But you do need to budget for a professional freelancer or boutique studio. Treat it like hiring an accountant, you wouldn’t DIY your tax audit just because you know how to use a calculator.

What Actually Works

1. The Collaboration Model

The gold standard is Steve Jobs and Jony Ive as mentioned earlier. Jobs provided the “editorial” eye and the uncompromising standards, but he protected Ive’s creative team from the rest of the company. He trusted Ive to translate “simple” into aluminum and glass. It was a partnership of respect, not subordination.

2. The “Just Do It” Reality Check

A common trap is obsessing over the logo as if it is the brand.

The Nike Lesson: Nike wasn’t built in a day and it certainly wasn’t built solely on the “Swoosh.” It was built on decades of consistent storytelling and hero worship, signing Michael Jordan in 1984 and sticking with Tiger Woods through his 1997 Masters win. The logo is iconic now only because they spent years filling it with meaning. Don’t expect your logo to do the heavy lifting that your marketing strategy is supposed to do.

3. For Malaysian Founders: Practical Steps

Early Stage: Keep it clean. Use templates if you must, but stick to one font and two colors. Consistency beats the “wow” factor. Do you even know what “wow” means?
Scaling: If you find yourself debating shade variations of blue for three hours, you are the bottleneck. Hire a pro.
Established: Hire a Creative Lead and listen to them. Your job is to approve the destination, not drive the car.

Three Rules to Live By

Give Creative Briefs, Not Art Direction: Tell them “We need to look trustworthy to 50-year-old bankers,” not “Make the logo blue.”
Feedback on Goals, Not Fonts: Instead of “I don’t like this font,” say “This feels too playful for our serious product.”
Stop Saying “Make It Pop”: If you have ever said “make the logo better” or “be creative” unironically, buy your designer a coffee today.

Proof It Works: The Collaborative Wins

We don’t just preach this collaboration model, we see the results of it every day. When clients trust the process and focus on the vision while letting us handle the execution, the results aren’t just “approved” they’re transformative.

We experienced this synergy firsthand with Constellation Ventures, Trisilco and CashKu. In each of these cases, the founders didn’t try to micromanage the pixels. They brought clear strategic goals to the table and trusted us to translate that value into a visual identity. Because they respected the “skillset gap,” we were able to build brands that didn’t just look good to the boss they resonated with the market.

The Bottom Line

Confusing your personal taste with effective creative direction is the fastest way to burn budget and morale. The next time you feel the urge to jump into the design file, ask yourself: “Am I solving a business problem, or am I just picking my favorite color?”

Sources

Regarding Brand Geeks Inc

Since 2011, Brand Geeks Inc has helped brands evolve into tech-empowered market leaders. We’ve guided 300+ brands, including MyTeksi (before it became Grab), to turbo growth. We don’t just nurture legendary brands that change the world, we nurture the people who build them. Explore our portfolio and services at brandgeeksinc.com

Ready to Turbocharge Your Brand?

Register for Turbocharge Cyberview 2025: AI-Powered Marketing, which includes a half-day workshop and online coaching sessions, to power up your usage of AI for more effective marketing, led by branding and marketing practitioners (as in, our founders) across a 3-month hands-on programme.

Spaces are limited – secure your spot today to stay ahead in the AI marketing revolution!