Worrying about whether what you’re right or wrong means you are evaluating the ideas before they truly exist.
You’re judging before the work can be judged. It’s a dam to your creative flow that you need to learn to smash through.
While many of the decisions we make are made from experience, knowledge and plain-old instinct, we sometimes put too much effort into not making the wrong decision that no interesting ones are made at all.
Maybe it’s better to hold-off on deciding if something is right or wrong?
Why not just have some fun instead? Learn all the rules you can and then throw every idea out there in a wild haze of expression? Race after fun and excitement and enjoy the process for what it is, not what it could be. Let the bizarre and odd and unexpected into the development stages and forget about if any of it is right.
It’s often best to just forget about whether your ideas are right or wrong.
Before there is right or wrong
Before there is even a chance for you to make the right or wrong decision, it’s often best to dedicate your efforts to learning everything you can about the problem you’re trying to solve. If you are working on a client’s brochure, then understand their words, their meaning and their goal as best you can.
If you’re writing a blog post, then understand exactly what it is you want to say. Try to grasp the angles from which you will fire your ideas.
Or if you’re a photographer or illustrator, think about the scene you’re wanting to capture and express. Think about the actors, the props, the stage and mood.
Understand all that you can about the questions being asked.
You do this so that when things are flowing, you can just go with it. You can follow the tracks this education lightly set. Not all the information will be remembered word-for-word, but enough to direct you in the right direction will.
Capture everything with your canvas
And once you know the direction you’ll be traveling? Run. Passionately.
Start anywhere — in the middle or at the end. Ride a roller coaster of expression and excitement and let yourself forget structure and order, so you can allow all of your ideas to leak out out as fast as possible.
Type the words at a speed that renders the majority useless in a haze of misspellings and poor grammar, writing 2000 words when a hundred are needed. Make the marks as quickly as you can, so that they exist, not so they are perfect. Fill your camera with images, even if most are useless, just so the moment you want to capture is captured somewhere.
Logic? Forget logic! Logic wastes time.
Be pushed on by passion, not logic
Get it out as fast as you can so that no thought gets in the way, so that no distraction may destroy what it is that you are trying to build. Let it all just flow onto the page with as much power and enthusiasm as you can muster. Logic? Forget logic! Logic wastes time. Be pushed on by passion, not logic. Logic is not welcome here and now.
Express as many ideas as you can, not worrying about originality or practicality.
This moment is about discovering the unexpected — finding that which you might not if you were to consider and weigh every option.
Our minds can race through ideas and decisions far faster than we could possibly record them. With your heart and your gut in charge, give as many of your ideas as you can to the canvas and worry not about the worthiness of any of them.
… then breath for a moment
Once you’ve grown tired and weary? Stop and breath. Look at the work you’ve laid out. Much of it would be of an idea you hadn’t considered originally and might not even remember passing through your thoughts. Take it all in, decide what is worth keeping and what is to be forgotten.
It is now that the concepts of right and wrong should be considered. It is now that that the sharpest of blades is to be drawn.
The moments of working with your heart hinted at the ultimate shape of your sculpture. They hacked away at the marble and you are now left with something to refine. It is now your head that takes the stage.
With a plethora of fresh ideas before you, it is now that you decide upon the one to refine.
With your finest chisel and your eyes hunting the details, chip away until the statue is revealed. Cut the useless rubble and better define the shapes before you.
“… something started with your heart but finished by your mind”
The education you went through before you started will come through in what you initially developed, but you need to verify facts and erase the unnecessary. You will develop something started with your heart but finished by your mind, which is a big step towards having something beautiful, original and timeless.
It’s all about letting your mind run free and the ideas come through from your library of memories and inspirations. Then once you have an ocean of options in front of you, you must pick from it the best, letting your education come screaming through to help develop the best piece of work. Too often designers will go one way or the other — they’ll prefer to give something pretty but not functional, or something functional but ugly, using only their heart or their head.
Starting with the heart, but finishing with the mind.
While much of graphic design may be about structure, mathematical and psychological reasoning, I believe that what can make a good designer great is their ability to let their creativity and emotion run free for a few moments.
Good design can be either pretty or perfect. Great design is both. Let the creative ideas loose, then tame them in a net of reason.
Comments
8 pieces of brilliance put forth by the audience
Esben Thomsen
11th of June, 2010 twitter
I got a hard drive filled with sketches, images and utopian business ideas for just about anything, getting them to the next level is my biggest hurdle. I simply stop and feel unresolved about getting the ideas realized beyond that, perhaps I let it fade into the twilight for months or even years before I pick them up again with the same results.
I would like to have shown some examples but I am too afraid others will pick it up before I can finish it — but at least I have ideas and others see the potential (usually by laughing about them and calling me a basket case).
When people laugh about my ideas it always means that I am on the right track.
The stamina to keep focus on these flimsy ideas for periods long enough to make them come true, is the really hard part.
Alexander Ross Charchar
11th of June, 2010 • www twitter
I’m so glad that you said “when people laugh about my ideas it always means that I am on the right track”! It’s often hard to tell somebody about an idea you have and convince them it’s a good one, if they could never think of it themselves (unless they’re paying you for those ideas, obviously — it makes it a lot easier).
I remember trying to explain the mere concept of typography to a (very good) friend of mine and their response was simply “… it’s just letters”. Even though it was someone I knew well, and vice-versa, it was still hard to sell them on the idea of something that wasn’t even my idea in the first place. (i got a lot of ‘uh-huh, yeah, ok’ about retinart, bah!)
But you’re not alone when it comes to the stamina part. Though I think when you think of an idea that really means something to you, stamina won’t be a problem — it’d be enough free time to get it finished and as perfect as you want it to be?
Esben Thomsen
11th of June, 2010 twitter
I don’t think its because people don’t understand my idea, its just that I take things to a whole new level, like getting a 400 kg letterpress printing machine on a second store apartment building, circumnavigating the North West Passage all the way in a piss poor boat, just because it takes a Dane to beat a Norwegian (who btw. needed central heating to complete the goal halfway).
Or building web services that utterly destroys well known danish brands just for the heck of it, actually destroying companies who’s services I don’t like or care much about dwells on my mind. The feeling of getting annoyed is what drives it to hatred and then doing the same for free or figure out business ideas that pays for the servers or makes it exceptional accessible.
Going to pitch a few if anyone out there is looking for something clever:
· The property marked or renting marked needs a GNU like service without subscription or ads. Making a business plan is easy if your creative.
· Dating services could be extremely interesting seen from a mobility point of view and profiles is a thing of the past — Facebook is the first service on the web where people use their real name and believe me, it is gonna be the last!
Everything takes time and energy, but there sure is plenty out there.
I work in a digital printing house and graphic design bureau and even I is seen as an off beat character for my interest and lust of typography. What I do find scary is a trade have been more or less dead for some time and nobody is picking it up. Printers don’t and graphic designers rarely do so either, not above or beyond the drop down menu that is. A trade is up for grabs but who is gonna carry the flag for future generations? Dylan is not right by saying it is blowing in the wind, this is the eye hurricane.
Do I talk too much?
Zoe Lynch
11th of June, 2010 twitter
This has got to be the BEST typography site I’ve seen. It’s so insightful. And I actually feel valued for reading it. Thanks for all the hard work!
Alexander Ross Charchar
11th of June, 2010 • www twitter
Talk to much? Not at all Esben! You clearly have a passion that could imagine … I know how you feel about the love of detail with typography. But there are always going to be people who just don’t get how important those seemingly insignificant things are.
But we use those kinds of people to help us understand our own passions — they’re kind of like measuring sticks, in a way.
And I’d absolutely love to hear this story about moving the printing press, sounds a lot more interesting than when I got my windmill into my garage! Any photos? :D
Thanks Zoe! A blog should be for the readers, not the authors, so I’m so glad you feel valued!
Andrew kelsall
13th of June, 2010 twitter
Great article Alex. I can pretty much relate to what you’re talking about. This is especially true when I work on a new logo design concept – often, I know that a certain concept is rubbish, but I’ll scetch it anyway just to get it out of my head! Then, a better concept can emerge once my brain-space is freed-up…
Matt O’Leary
14th of June, 2010 • www twitter
Sometimes it seems like everything has to be done just the right way, from the start. This article really brings home the fact that despite the importance of structure and guidelines and processes, the important thing is IDEAS. And that they must come before all the rest.
Without the original no-rules, no-holds-barred brainstorming messy idea-grab-fest, there will be nothing later to apply right and wrong TO. Really perceptive Alex. It’s easy to forget this, and start to believe the people telling us things have to be ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ from the start.
Alexander Ross Charchar
14th of June, 2010 • www twitter
That’s a great piece of advice Andrew, one I wish I touched on a little more — that it’s often great to do a complete brain-dump, where you get everything onto the page so that they’re just gone and you can let go of them an focus on what’s new .. thanks!
I think because of where we’ve both worked, we understand that in a specific way, Matt. Being in house doesn’t really leave a lot of room to explore for the majority of the work done (obviously talking about where I currently am, as you’ve got it now?) — it’s either stick to the brief, stick to the branding or do exactly what the client wants because we’re just in-house anyway, and what would we know?
Going to Semi-Permanent the other week really reminded me that the grass truly is greener on the other side from time to time.
Shall you delight, entertain & enlighten
us with your own thoughts?