I worked in design for a little over 10 years. Having an art director "tear apart" your work is generally the best scenario. They can usually back up the critique with helpful insights. Regardless of tone.
The most dreaded situations, for me, were clients who would tear something apart, but offered no helpful reason why. "Jazz it up" was something repeated an alarming number of times in meetings. I can also remember someone saying that they wanted us to use more colors since they were paying for a full color ad. Because, you know, that's what cost all the money. The colors.
I've been a client for a variety of artistic professionals.
I'm not artistic, don't have that kind of creativity, and can't use words that would be helpful to you.
I can only tell you whether or not I like it and give a fumbling attempt to explain why.
This is why I (or my company) hired you: to do something that we can't.
It is incredibly hard to do the translation between designer language and client language. I've worked with some graphic designers who are absolutely amazing at taking my malformed mumblings and using them as effective critiques and requests. But not many people can do that and it leads to frustration on both sides.
This is why those who can do the translation can make incredible money and run their own firms. Just like how people in other industries (accounting, law, coding...) who can translate across domains make more money and run firms.
If you're not artistic, and you don't have that type of creativity, what makes you believe you're the best judge of what is good or not? Yes, you may have the money to pay them, but if you're hiring them why don't you just trust their judgement instead of your admittedly poor sense of creativity?
I'm asking this out of curiosity, not attacking you, since you said yourself you're not creative and rely on these people for their creative talents.
You can know whether the aesthetics of something does or does not work without being able to determine why.
For instance, I can't cook much more than eggs and bacon, but I can sure tell whether a dish at a restaurant is any good. And I can even narrow down a dish's quality into various broad classes: disgusting, bland, okay, good, really good, and great. Most other aesthetic creations are similar.
> You can know whether the aesthetics of something does or does not work without being able to determine why.
You can no whether or not they work for you without knowing why. But the nature of subjectivity is you can't know whether they work in a more general sense without analyzing the elements of the thing in question against an accurate-enough picture of the distribution of tastes in the population.
You may know if you like a particular dish, but would you think your sense of taste is good enough to pick enough dishes to make a successful restaurant? Probably not, especially if you don't know how to cool.
Just because you like or dislike a particular creative piece doesn't mean that you have what it takes to dictate a piece of creative work that will be exposed to millions of people.
I have goals to achieve, information to convey, possibly emotions to instill. For product or marketing I as a client would know the target market and positioning. Does the design reflect that? Does it have references that are too close to images/products of a competitor (or failed old products of ours)? I can assess whether the delivered work hits the goals that I have - I may only realise after seeing one iteration that an expressed desire actually detracts from a goal either due to ineffective communication or my not understanding how things would come together.
Is the image very busy? I may know that I'm going to want to use it along with other assets or in presentations - how is it going to affect that? How do the colors and shapes used compare to other assets it will be used beside, how will it work in different mediums? Bright yellow isn't great for projectors or for legibility.
One example - a global accounting firm introduced a new framework. They had a diagram that had core elements, supporting concepts, and overarching concerns. It would work fine at full size on a laptop but was very poor for display on a low res projector to an audience of 100. This design was core to the effort and would be used in very many situations with projectors to large audiences.
I may say that I want to look like James Bond skiing - you design me a yellow ski suit very similar to the intro of The Spy Who Loved Me. I'm horrified because I want a look similar to the all black look of Daniel Craig in Spectre. My inability to communicate about design created a problem but I can judge on whether or not you've achieved my goal.
One of my managers in a former data science job reviewed a 15 slide deck and gave me feedback. On 4 slides he said "ok"; on the other 11, he said "so what?"
Everyone thinks they're a designer because they can see things with their eyes. In reality they have no clue wha is going on. As a developer who is acutely aware of my shortcomings in design it hurts to sit in client meetings with designers. The whole process is totally back to front on about 95% of the projects I have worked on.
> Having an art director "tear apart" your work is generally the best scenario. They can usually back up the critique with helpful insights. Regardless of tone.
Definitely, and in my professional career I have never had my work thrown out in a way which made me feel bad. I have been ignored a few times only to be proved right a few weeks later though!
The most dreaded situations, for me, were clients who would tear something apart, but offered no helpful reason why. "Jazz it up" was something repeated an alarming number of times in meetings. I can also remember someone saying that they wanted us to use more colors since they were paying for a full color ad. Because, you know, that's what cost all the money. The colors.