Anthem To Creative Honesty

If your designing something original, you’ll be making it up as you go along.

Sure you’ll have some loose client brief and ideas in your plan but there will be that awkward but addictive moment when its just you and your favourite tool (it’s always a pencil and paper for me) and some kind of endless possibility that needs to become a vision and then a delivered project on time and on budget.

Very soon you’ll be sharing your ideas with your client and that’s where it gets tricky.

You’ll need to see this part of the process as a beginning because your ‘endless possibility’ is now going to get a big fitness test as its flung from corridor to corporate corridor pulled apart and put back together in some form only vaguely reminiscent of your work from a week ago.

This may feel creatively vulnerable at this point. It’s fine for your client to see this, in fact it’s your job as a collaborator to make sure they understand that if you are creating an original piece of work there will be many unknown threads yet to be explored and tied down.

If you can educate your clients about your creative process over time this can lead to some significant magic being created as your clients become collaborators, they share your vision and become your visions greatest ambassadors turning difficult logistics into a dream run and manage upwardly like seasoned diplomats.

In my world the best most original work is produced by teams that are comfortable with a creative process that allows loose moving parts for exploration along the way to magic being created, after all we are all making it up as we go along and that’s the truth.

Collage by Emma Hofstede