Dying in Translation

I have watched a lot of great creative work die in rooms it should have won. Usually not because the idea was weak — but because no one there could defend it in the language the business speaks.

You know the moments. A designer goes too deep into craft jargon, and the room glazes over. A beautiful visual strategy gets presented without ever connecting it to business value. A bold idea lands on the table with no sense of its financial implications — so the people holding the budget have nothing to hold onto. The work was right. The translation failed.

I’ve always loved design for the idea of impact. The artefact matters, and it’s oh-so-fun — we pour craft and heart into it. But it’s never really been the point. The point is what the work changes: for the business behind it, for the person on the other end, for the brand trying to earn a place in someone’s day.

AI has made outputs faster, cheaper, more abundant. So the value of creative leadership can’t sit in the making anymore. It sits in judgement, strategy, taste — and the ability to argue why this idea, this brand, this moment matters, in terms the business actually understands. That’s a language we creatives don’t always invest in learning. And it costs us, every time we let a good idea go undefended.

I recently finished a mini-MBA built for designers, and it gave me fresh tools for the other side of that conversation — the commercial one. Not so I could stop being a creative, but so I’d never again have to watch a great idea die in translation, and watch a business lose the opportunity that came with it.

Craft and commerce were never meant to be opposing languages. The best creative leaders are simply bilingual. ✨