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Going through the process of constructively critiquing a lot of work, I think I have boiled my approach down to one simple rule.

Now, there are as many ways to critique as there are people, but if you actually want to be helpful to someone’s creative process I think the ways to do that are shockingly few. Pointing out mistakes or flaws isn’t it. Being whatever you think of as brutally honest isn’t it. Stroking their ego isn’t it.

All you really have to do is imagine that no matter what part of their work or step in their process you are focusing on, that they have thought more about it than you have.

And that would be true. No matter how much experience you have, no matter how long you have been doing it, that particular piece of work you are critiquing, the person who created it has thought more about it than you have. They have reasons for doing what they did and they have a depth of understanding of their work that you could never begin to imagine.

That doesn’t mean that their work is flawless or it couldn’t be helped by another set of eyes and another point of view. But if you see some mistake, there is a real good chance that it was a decision made intentionally. Even if it wasn’t, you should approach it as if it was.

That will instantly change how you approach critique. It isn’t about what you would do with that same medium. It’s what they did, and all the choices that they did or did not make.

Quite often, you might find that they had already considered your brilliant advice, but went down another path for reasons that you aren’t aware of.

Assume that they are the experts on their own work. Tell them what parts connected with you and what parts didn’t. Don’t bother telling them how to fix it, because you will be wrong and they will have likely already thought about that course of action and abandoned it.

But pointing out what did or did not connect with you will help them tailor their revisions to make sure that their intentions are clear and come across in their work. Approaches that were too subtle can be bolstered, often in ways that are much simpler than you would ever come up with. Because, again, they have thought more about this than you have.

That’s my only real approach now. Imagine that whatever I might say in a critique, they have already thought of, so I am just here to support or focus their own internal arguments.

Learning to take criticism in the same way is an ongoing learning process.