There’s some good advice in this Asana blog post about giving feedback on creative work. It’s largely rooted in the tenets of facilitation and expectation-setting:

“Ideally, you spent some time clarifying the objectives and nailing down the requirements—target audience, channel, timeline, etc.—of your project before your creative team started executing on designs and copy. So when it’s time to give feedback, you’ll have something to refer back to.”

There’s another facet in this piece that I really appreciated, which is about making sure to be clear about whether your feedback must be incorporated or whether it’s just a recommendation:

“It’s important to distinguish between blocking feedback and advisory feedback. The former are changes that must be addressed before something goes out the door. This might be a design interaction that doesn’t align with your goals or written content that doesn’t meet legal guidelines. The latter kind of feedback includes things that would be nice to have, but aren’t critical to the success of the project.”

Being clear about this is so important — not only for the person giving feedback, but for the person receiving it. If there’s any doubt, clarify!