Rebooting Your Eyes : How To Step Back From Your Grade

Dealing With Client Changes – After Spending Hours On A Grade

This Insight is a follow up to my previous insight on a commercial grade. You can read it here.

In my previous insight I was speaking about a commercial I spent many hours on and in retrospect can admit that I got too close to the job.

What I mean by being too close is that I had spent too many hours grading it “my way” and that was essentially all I could see.

When I received the client feedback I had major issues wrapping my head around it and this insight is all about overcoming that!

The Issue – Cath Kidston Bags to School Case Study 

The good news is the commercial is out so I can share it with you guys!

As you can see the commercial is a nice warm happy spot that deals with the emotions of the kids first day in school.

As mentioned in my previous insight the client feedback was that the spot felt too autumnal and not summery enough.

I watched the commercial 5 times and could not wrap my head around why or what was making it feeling autumnal and not summery.

A few factors contributed to my eyes needing to be rebooted.

I was overly attached to the reference

I had given this grade 110%. Most of you will know that I favour low contrast looks these days and I made sure to give this job extra attention to try and make it as beautiful as possible and true to the references.

10 hours of grading time. After 10 hours of grading I had fixed everything and anything that I thought was an issue.

The changes needed were subtle. The final version is actually very close to my original grade but those slight changes made a world of difference. If I wasn’t careful I could have blown away a great grade by being emotional and quick tempered. By sticking with it and assessing the scenes.

Check out my video below where I show some before and afters from this job and also some tips on how I approach the issue

-Dan

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