I was Doodling, as I usually am. I was on my iPad playing around with new software. I was doodling until I came up with an idea and started to draw. The piece isn’t worthy to be shown, or anything special, but something really cool happened
Oblivious to me, The app was recording the screen as I was doodling and thinking. Going through different ideas, trying new brushes and effects. I played it and it was really amazing. What I initially wanted to draw was completely what I ended up with. I short clip of a design process.
I decided to create a TikTok with some cool music, and the Copy almost came naturally. We don’t wait for inspiration to hit to start creating, but rather we create until inspiration hits. It's funny with life in general how we expected to go somewhere but ended up in a completely different place, but for the sake of time let's focus on the creative process.
Not Starting
Being blessed with the ability to be surrounded by incredibly successful creatives in different stages of their life, I hear something all the time. “I have writer's block,” or “I waiting for an idea to hit me.” That was interesting because I have seen this with struggling writers to international Art Directors. Trying to formulate a concept, while staring at a wall waiting for intervention from the creative gods.
On A Junior level, you see a lot of imposter syndrome. “Will it be good enough?” Will people like it”? They don’t start because of the fear of the outcome. It is so common, and the solution has to come from within. A senior-level creative also find themselves in this position, but fear of failure with diminish past success.
Expect Change
Creative Ideas that are done on a first iteration are so rare I have never seen it personally. I have heard of Jay-Z finish a song on the first try, or Painters never changing paintings ( when it's done, it's done). These are just legends, stories we hear of anomalies. It just does not happen enough to expect it for our own creative pursuits.
Books, music, architecture, and almost every creative professional pursuit go through multiple iterations. It just how it works. User Experience is off, materials are not practical, and so many other things affect the design and the creative process in general. Also let's not forget how much initial design, songs campaigns, are initially pitched before focusing and refining the finished product.
Create, Create, Create
Ok, let us say you find people who can hit a home run on their first try. How many different pieces were created that never were shown to the product? Has Jay-Z put out every song he ever created? No. The most eye-opening thing I have ever seen in the creative process is the amount of output these people can maintain.
Good Designs, bad designs, it doesn’t matter. The amount of output is absolutely incredible. I was at the house of a great industrial designer. He had a bookcase filled with notebooks. Thousands of pages of designs, and I wondered why he never threw them away? He said it is the single most important thing he has. He looks at old designs and sees what he can learn from them. Maybe with new experience, he can make it better, or maybe it will never be good, and he can tease out why.
Not only are single projects a culmination of several iterations, as a creative you are honing your skills every day. finding inspiration every day. You don’t just learn your craft and just get knighted into enteral glory. It is an everyday thing. Even a well-established creative like my friend tells me. “If I stop drawing for a week, I need a couple of days to warm up.” That floored me, but it opened my eyes to creating amazing projects.
Also, Rule number one of sculpting is, making sure you have enough marble! Projects in their final form are sculptures from a block of many ideas. Make sure you have enough ideas to select the best one! I really don’t see a downside
Don’t You Love What You Do?
Why did you become a creative, or any profession for that matter? Don’t you love what you do? Creatives have a unique advantage in that they create ideas anywhere. A notepad and a pen. It’s all you need. you can draw, you can write ideas down. You can create anything, or at least the genesis of anything.
So Why not just create something every day? It doesn’t have to be your million-dollar idea, but at least you will be honing your skill, and there will be an idea that you will be able to pursue. It will come to you and it will be much easier to build on that idea.
Your not alone
Creativity, good ideas, even hunger comes in waves. There is nothing we can do about it, and it would be ludicrous to believe that we always need to be coming up with incredible ideas, but there is merit to living in the world of your craft. If your a writer read articles, write little blurbs, immerse yourself in your craft, and eventually, you will start to create interesting ideas that you can build on. Love what you do and never stop creating.