This is where things start to get tricky…
#03: On extreme optimisation, strategic slur, the myth of the creative slump, and why inspiration is only 1% of the work
This is where things start to get tricky…
Writing/ creating content as a strategy for brand awareness and connection has become the new go to move for, well, everyone. I see it, and I get why it works, but it’s also a full-time work on top of my real full-time work, so how do we keep the momentum going?
I’ve recently started this as a way to share real, behind the scenes, unfiltered truths of running a creative studio and working as a creative. I set myself up for success by telling myself I didn’t have to post something every week, but every two weeks instead, to give time for life to happen and for me to have something to tell you about.
Over the past week, I’ve been thinking what valuable strategic, information packed post I could make, that would make readers share it and appreciate the content enough to reference it once in a while… Meaning, I started doing this for fun and slipped into comparing myself to what other agency owners are writing and sharing, reformatting my initial intention of keeping this a cozy safe space for honest thoughts on creative businesses, into a strategy heavy, overly curated approach, been there, done that trail of thought. Every thing I thought I could share with you was already being shared by a dozen other creatives here, and quite frankly, more successfully than I would be able to, amazing creative resources, actionable tips… Could I add anything to this? Do I even need to? Are we not saturated with all these “tools for success“?
Reflecting on this evolution got me thinking about how this is my usual approach to most things I create… It starts as a happy creative moment and quickly morphs into extreme optimisation, high standards, big pressure that ends up ruining all the fun. So for this week I decided to take a step back, reminding myself what the goal is.
We’re not trying to be another social media trendy brand that injects strategic slur into every single post, adding to this shortly lived mountain of tips and tricks content for “making it big“. Well, I’m not going to lie, we tried our take on it, I can’t tell you the amount of times we’ve sat down with great ideas to create some flashy reels but, we’re terrible at executing for ourselves and we end up cringing so hard it all ends up in a hidden folder on the drive… So we’re staying away from that… for now at least.
Instead I can only share with you the last time a project brought me near to tears. And those were tears of pure frustration. If you’re a creative reading this you’re probably having intense flashbacks of the last time you were in this situation. But rest assured, this story is not about defeat but, about me finally really understanding the meaning of ‘genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration’. Sure we’ve all heard this quote before but I swear this time I felt it in my bones.
We got this brief for a new project, the timeline was short, I mean, short short, we had less than a week to pull it off (yes, we usually make sure we have more time but this was one of those…). So this was step one to make me stressed ✨ , I am not one of those creatives that thrives under a time crunch, I will freeze and deliver absolutely nothing. So thankfully we were two working on this.
We started of pretty good, with some awesome references the client loved, we got the moodboard down and it all seemed like it would unravel pretty easily. That’s until, of course, it didn’t.
I wrote about the art of creating a resonant moodboard on my last post if you want to know more :)
The once amazing moodboard was suddenly restrictive (?) The more I tested but more I hated everything I was doing. The colour combos felt uninteresting, the shades were off, the typography looked so amateur, the composition was an impossible puzzle… Yikes. On one hand I had to stick to the references we presented before but the more I tried to stay on that, the further away we got. So I closed the file and handed it over to my partner. Let him crack this one - I thought. And he went off doing his best with the ingredients I left him on the board. Separately it all made sense but we couldn’t find a solution we both thought was right. So we went on, building dozens of variations that we just not clicking, sending print screens to our friends and family to get some outsider perspective, and iterating back and forth. And we tried, and tried, and tried a million options until we couldn’t bare to look at the project (or each other) anymore.
We were almost settling for something meh, because of the deadline (and frustration). It wasn’t necessarily bad but, I wasn’t in love with it either. Remember what I told you about me always ruining all the fun in creating with my high standards? I think this was a bit like that… But on that demanding high I was in, I decided to have one more go at it, the day before the handover. Back to the research, restructuring what we created into something I could actually be proud of. And surprise surprise… We actually pulled something off last minute we’re excited about. I know, so cliché.
The moment we sent over the proposal, it hit me, this is the 99% doing their work. I guess I’ve been fortunate enough to have had few crash outs over work, but this time there was no inspiration that could come and save us, we had to do the work, brick by brick until we were finally done. And when it was over, I was relieved, not because we were done with this painfull process (I mean, I was, obviously), but because I now could really feel how being creative requires practice like any other trade. Suddenly the idea of being stuck in a creative slump again felt less likely because I now framed it as doing the work, some days it takes longer but it is in my control to go and do it, instead of relying on me feeling creative that day or not. I find it liberating.