Today we have a special treat for you!  We’ve given you a glimpse into the lives of a graphic designer, a copywriter and a web developer, but today we bring you a glimpse into the life of a creative director. A creative director is the person who brings all the folks from different disciplines within a creative agency together to form a cohesive team. She is the keeper of the creative vision and it’s her job to deliver a great outcome to her clients. Here at GLAD WORKS, that person is the multitalented Gina DiSpirito and she wears many hats indeed (literally and figuratively).

A creative director is certainly someone with a strong artistic and creative vision, but she also needs to be a people person. First, she needs to be able to communicate effectively with her client and know all the right questions to ask so that she can fully understand their needs. She then interprets that information and brings it to her team in a creative kickoff meeting. Once the team hits the ground running with their agreed upon strategy, it’s her job to manage the different disciplines (design, tech, copy, photography, etc.) to provide quality control over concepts and projects and make sure everyone sticks to the same vision.

When she’s not busy supervising and inspiring her team or presenting concepts to her clients, she’s communicating with her account and traffic managers to make sure that deadlines are met and schedules are adhered to. She does this with multiple projects simultaneously every. single. day.

And, she has her own design projects that she works on as well.

It’s sort of like being the ringleader at the circus, only with less elephant poop and way more paperwork.

A typical day for Gina looks like this:

Wake up after only about four hours of sleep (if she’s lucky) to the sound of Bella and Dolce, the GLAD WORKS Chihuahuas, begging for their breakfast.

After the ladies are taken care of, she calls to check in with the office and starts looking at her emails. “Gee,” she notices, “only 150 emails while I was sleeping. Slow night!” Next, she prioritizes, sorts and answers as needed. Sadly for Gina, none of it is spam and it all requires her attention.

Once she’s answered her emails, she has her morning protein smoothie and gets ready to come into the studio. She puts on a jaunty hat and chooses coordinating outfits for little Bella and Dolce. With her husband Adam (our technology director) in tow, the whole family heads out for another busy day at the studio.

Once she arrives at GLAD WORKS and Bella and Dolce have done their visiting with each team member, it’s time to get to work. While the little ladies work on getting their beauty rest, Gina gets started on her projects.

On any given day, she jumps on multiple calls with clients and vendors, heads out for meetings, works on her own design projects, meets with the creative team to review work, heads creative kick offs, works with project managers and generally kicks butt.

Before you know it, it’s 4:30 and she hasn’t had lunch yet. Too bad, there’s another conference call in three minutes!  Who needs lunch, anyway?

After work, when most people are heading home like zombies, just waiting until a decent hour to go to bed, Gina hits the gym for consecutive hour-long spin classes, 80-minute treadmill marathons or sessions with her personal trainer.

Once the gym is done, she and Adam finally head home, eat dinner, answer more emails and watch an episode of The Pitch or Shark Tank. Finally, she falls asleep only to wake up a few short hours later to Bella and Dolce’s desperate pleas for breakfast.

Clearly, it takes a special kind of person to shape and manage the collective creative brain of an entire agency while at the same time managing daily business operations. We get tired just watching her!