Since then, everyday I would wake and type through hazy thoughts, knowing that this was my job for the day. Whatever else followed lacked in meaning compared to my few hundred words. I hit publish because a pro shows up. I hit publish even though I was rarely happy with what I was giving the world, even though it needed to be edited, or read! It just had to be read again, and yet I would still hit publish because a pro shows up. A pro shows up. For better or worse, A Pro Shows Up.

They appear daily because they know it is required of them. The muse will not suffer the lazy, and should you miss too many days, she will simply fire you. You will need to start again, start as apprentice, before you can strive up the creative ladder and invoke her unique set of skills.

You must show up daily so that you move forward daily. Too long spent in the same place doesn’t simply leave us stranded, it pulls us backwards. We lose an inch everyday, and horribly, few of us notice the sound of the gravel crunching under our backwards moving feet.

If we linger, for even a moment, we will begin to repeat ourselves. We will no longer do the craft, but simply output the work. We will repeat. We will repeat. We will repeat. We will repeat. The second we linger is the second it happens, the second we start to rely on what we know, what is comfortable, what is sure to work. We will repeat, forever we will repeat.

This is what happens to most of us. We sit and look at the work of others and consider ourselves inspired. I do this constantly and for it I am a constant fool. I think this enough to help me put one foot in front of the other, but if this is the case, I have been walking a treadmill for years.

Until 31 days ago.

31 days ago I started this project.

31 days ago I said “I’m scared, I don’t know what I’m going to do, I don’t know how people will react, I’m going to fuck it up and everyone will see me do it. I can’t spell, I can’t write, I can’t form sentences worthy of heartbeats. I’m scared. I’m scared. I’m scared. I’m scared. I’m scared. I can’t do this, I’m too scared, others will do it better, others will best me, others are better, I’m no one, I’m just me, no one worries about my thoughts. I’m happy enough without this horrible fear eating at me everyday. I’m happy enough today. I’m happy enough. I’m happy enough.”

31 days ago I hit publish. I hit publish because I was sick of this fear of failure gnashing at my insides. So much fear. I was sick of the fear of failure before I started then I found the fear of starting once I had.

But now I’m comfortable with it. Hell, I welcome it. It’s a reminder that I’m even happier, that I’m giving back, that I’m trying. I know now that it isn’t fear as I thought it was but it’s an ache, an ache that pulls on my stomach to be let out into the world as creative effort. If I think of my project at the end of the day and still have weight of the ache pulling me down, then I know I’ve wasted those 24 hours and wasted the days of all those that allowed me to live it. But there’s tomorrow, and I will show up again. A pro always shows up. Through pain and tiredness and distraction, a pro always shows up.

The only thing I’ve done right this entire time is show up, every day. I’ve ignored my process, I’ve ridden my ego, I’ve done what I know I shouldn’t. I took my time for granted. But I’ve worked. Every single day I’ve worked.

This project might be over, but tomorrow I will be back here, at my desk, elating the ache in my stomach to the sound of clacking keys.

Tomorrow the next project starts. I’m not giving myself a break, I’m not giving myself time off to regroup. It might be some days before you see me regularly publishing, but I can promise you I’ll be here. I’ll be here because a pro always shows up.

There is so much talk about doing, and much looking done too. But there’s so little effort put into seeing what we do and what we look at. The difference is one that comes about once we become educated and can define the differing qualities of an object – what comes from its environment, what comes from its message, what comes from other peoples definitions and expectations, and what comes actually from its collected parts.

The inexperienced designer might only look at one or two aspects, the audience might only recognize one but will be influenced by them all.

We learn to look. It’s sometimes difficult but it’s vital in polishing and shaping our lens. It’s like learning to kern – learn it today and from tomorrow until death you’ll notice how poorly most people kern “11″ or “Tomato”.

So how do we go about it? How do we learn?
The obvious answer is that we read. If this bores you I apologise, but it’s the best start we have. It’s important to collect a library of books that is incredibly wide in scope. A single book can inspire a hundred others, but one must be prepared to search it out for a lifetime. For the lucky amongst us it’ll be found in the first year, for others it might take a decade. For most of us, however, it’ll go forever unfound – these are the luckiest. The hunt is the most enjoyable and should we never find the book we are after, we shall write it, using the lessons all the other books, the books of our journey, gave us.

We learn to see by taking the lessons we are offered from pages of fibre and applying them to objects both beautiful and ugly.

But books, while very important little shortcuts to knowledge, aren’t the whole of the equation. We must also talk. Writing is a great way to talk and makes it a lot easier to introduce yourself to people. We argue, too, but never seriously – we defend the pieces that we consider good to those who see them as bad, then allow them to do the same with us.

But back to the lenses.
Whatever we pass through our lens of taste is placed into context with all else that has passed through it previously. We think of those pieces, even if only a moment, and see how well the patterns of the good pieces align with what’s before us, and we search out the patterns of the bad pieces, too. If those patterns both sit equally over this piece, then we consider it mediocre and it is forgotten – it’s pattern is too different to the good and bad pattern, so we do not recognize it as something worth remembering.

It’s important to realise this – that every object seen is looked at by our brains which act as machines trying to see familiarity, so it can be catalogued once passed through our lens’. In this, nothing can possible exist within a vacuum. There’s other objects that look similar and come before, there is the place in which the object is seen and experienced, there is the mood of the audience, the time of day, the balance in their bank accounts, the music they played in the car ride ten minutes prior.

It’s how we develop taste, that thing everyone on Earth is sure they have figured out better than anyone else around them.

But as creatives we cannot be like everyone else. We cannot assume that our way is the only way, that our way is already perfect and needs no enhancements, needs no wings clipped.

It’s a horrible trait many of us hold. This is what leads one to becoming not just stuck in a creative rut, but making a home within it. I’ve heard some seasoned designers suggest that design is a young persons game. What garbage. Design is a game for those whose taste, whose lens, is subject to constant change – this is the natural habit of the young as they work to discover the world. The world only becomes undiscoverable once we think we’ve seen it all, and I can promise you we shall never truly do so.

So those patterns that help us refine our lens and use it quickly?

Break them.

Evolve them before they become stale, break them when they become comfortable. Perhaps we should do it annually? Go so far out of our comfort zone that our pants tinge yellow. Scare ourselves, look at work we hate and try to enjoy it. Look at work we love and try to break it. What survives the pressure of this year in, year out, will become our diamonds. Whatever doesn’t will remain coal.

Break those patterns. Destroy and crush and powder them. Do it deliberately to yourself before another does it to you, and please do not distraught when another does so. It’s a reminder, that’s all, not a death sentence.

But if you cannot break your own patterns, if you don’t teach yourself what is needed in an object for it to break your preconceived notions of what is good and bad, then how on Earth will you be able to do it to the audience? No, too plural – how will you do it for one single person? Just one?

Inspired by Paul Rand: Conversations with Students and some of Cole Peters’ recent essays. Thanks Cole.

It sounds like you’re spending a good amount of time honing in your taste, but not enough in implementing it in your own work.

It’s hard to know where you are in your career, how much of the following is information you’ll find stale or that you’ve exploited a great deal, so I’m going to aim big and hope to hit something.

Make a list.

You say you have a great deal of ideas in mind? Write them down, every single one of them. It doesn’t matter how silly you think they are, how big, how small, how stupid – write every single one of them down. Get an exercise book and write down a heading for each, a short description and whatever sketches might work for it. Do three or four a page, but no fewer – you don’t want to get bogged down in the little details you can figure out while working, you just want the idea removed from your head so you have some space in there for other things.

If you’re comfortable with it, I’d suggest using a pocket sized notebook so that it can always be with you.

This has two benefits – firstly it allows you to always get an idea on paper instead of trying to frustratingly remember it later, and secondly, once you’re in the process of recording your ideas, you’ll be amazed at how many more start to come to you. In my experience, whenever I’ve done this practice (it’s one I fall out of too frequently), within a week or so I’m getting a fresh and exciting idea to scribble down at least once every hour, if not every ten minutes.

Most of all, number each idea (this comes in handy later) so that you know how many are in your book and can reference them easily (“Kind of the same idea as #43, but on the scale of #19 using the same type layout as #37″).

Fall in love with process.

This means prying open the work and designers you admire and trying to understand who they are and how they work. It means thinking about how a design starts as a germ in the mind and grows into a plague that takes over the host until she is able to produce a design that does the message and the designer justice.

Pick a piece of design you love and break it down, try to figure out where the idea might have started, what the star of the piece is, what the background noise is and why it’s important. Why was this font chosen? These colours? This photo? Why not an illustration? Would an illustration have been better? Or no imagery at all?

Sketch it out and redo it on paper. Just a minute or less per thumbnail, but try to reimagine it.

And read. Read read read read read with either eye or ear. Read as many biographies, monographs, essays as you possibly can. Listen to podcasts or audiobooks involving creatives. Study history and try to figure out where the pieces you like sit on an historical scale (it’s almost never at the ‘now’ end), figure out the movements and styles throughout history that make you feel high, figure out how they were made.

Steal.

Try to recreate the work of others that you admire. Try to figure out their process secrets, how the work is put together. Writers do this – they retell the stories they love, musicians rewrite the music they love and want to hear. It’s how we learn, it’s how we practice.

When you’re own ideas are failing you, take the ideas of others just so you’re moving. Don’t use it in client work, be careful about showing it online, but do it for yourself. Reproduce one piece a night for a month. Or figure out how you would take the same pieces and redesign the project yourself. It doesn’t need to be polished, the kerning doesn’t need to be balanced, the colours don’t need to be spot on – just make.

Get excited about ideas.

What is the idea you want to communicate? Without this nothing else matters, it’s just aesthetic fluff. When you’re sitting down, have you established the idea you want to communicate? The mood? The tone? What’s the story you want to tell?

Take all your favorite pieces and print them out, scribble the idea in three or four words next to each one. “Focus on love”, “beauty in furniture”, “generic comedy movie”.

Go back to your book of scribbled ideas and do this for each of them – none of which is allowed to move from sketchbook to digital canvas until it has an idea behind it.

Set yourself a challenge.

A piece a day. Every single day, no excuse. Or two pieces a day, or three. Make it close to impossible and then do it – you can do it. Make a million small pieces instead of a dozen big ones and you’ll grow incredibly fast. Every day.

Write lists and tick each item off every day – that’s your goal. A list of your favorite movies, now remake posters for each in a russian constructivist style, or using only one colour or one typeface or just images. Typeset your favorite songs in as an interesting way as possible, just type and some shapes or texture, but no more. Or your favorite novels? What about those? What can you do with those? Make each one into a movie poster, make a cover for each that looks like it’s for the opposite genre (make a thriller look like a love story, make a sci fi look like classical fiction).

When you have a project to do, you have a thousand places to start, so just pick one, the easiest one that’ll convey the idea behind it. The color that’ll suit, the typeface or imagery or texture or tone. How minimal or how chaotic it’ll be.

That list you wrote earlier? Find a random number generator online, punch in the 1 and the highest numbered project you have then do whichever random number in between that it spits out. Then do it. Now. Hell, do the same for styles and typefaces and colors and mediums and things you like (again, movies, books, songs, etc). Give a dozen of each a number and then pump out a heap of random numbers from your generator. This’ll give you odd combinations – do a minimalist poster design for ET using typefaces and colors reminiscent of William Morris like design)

Be Dumb.

I have to say it again – do STUPID things. Make the picture 500% in size or 5% in size, use ridiculous colors, idiotic typefaces. And try to make it look good. This forces you to think differently and explore avenues you might otherwise skip over because you think there’s nothing to be found in their shadows.

Get a few books

• The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles by Steven Pressfield
• It’s Not How Good You Are, Its How Good You Want to Be and Whatever You Think, Think the Opposite by Paul Arden
• Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creativeby Austin Kleon
• Paul Rand: Conversations with Students by Paul Rand
• Design As Art (Penguin Modern Classics) by Bruno Munari
• Ways of Seeing: Based on the BBC Television Series by John Berger
• How to Think Like a Great Graphic Designer by Debbie Millman
• Anything by Steven Heller
• and “designer’s sketchbook” books.

These are all books that have gotten me excited about the process of design. They make me desperately want to start making marks.

The most important thing.

Just start. All of the above is useless unless you just start.

So start. Make a mark. Now. Go make a mark and just start. Tell a story, try to make yourself cry with honesty, try to make others smile, try to make them laugh, try to make them feel anything, but just START.

You say you love design – like any relationship, it’s sometimes hard. The muse doesn’t just rock up because you want her to, she needs to be charmed and enticed to visit you, and she will only do so when you’re working.

And remember, have fun ;)

This was originally an answer I gave to the titular question on Quora.

I don’t know much about cooking.

I can poach an egg, but can’t make the hollandaise sauce that should go with it. I’ve a few friends who are fanatical about food and I enjoy their conversations, yet I can hardly keep pace with them. I know the names of a few critically acclaimed chefs, but have never sampled their food. Hell, I’m not sure I’ve even walked past any of their restaurants.

Even though I can’t taste any of the food, watching well educated men and women of the culinary world taste and cook the best food in the world makes me happy. The closing eyes, the slow chews of a savoured moment, the words quiet as they utter out a few words describing the dance performed by the buds of their tongues mades me happy.

Most often this is followed by a discussion of what they’ve just eaten. Two words you hear most often are “local” and “fresh”.

Marco Piere White recently appeared on an Australian cooking show and said, with his hardened expression as well as his words, one universal piece of advice. Don’t mess with the ingredients.

This is a thread that comes through constantly. When reviewers talk of how amazing the fresh and local food within a dish is, they do so because that’s what they’re able to taste because the produce has been given the space to do what it does best – be tasted. The quality of the ingredients of the best dishes are rarely muddied by one another – the good cooks and chefs don’t try to outdo mother nature.

And you remember those meals, don’t you? I consider myself lucky to hold a few fond memories of delights in food – the first salad I had with nothing but home grown vegetables; eating corn while watching a sun slip into its bath; enjoying fish that had been plucked from the Mediterranean sea forty minutes before it sizzled over a fire; and the cheese soufflé my wife made me to help me remember the meals my mother made before she passed away.

That’s the joy of food. When it’s good it’s not just delicious. It’s soul enriching.

It’s only once a skilled culinary craftsman knows her ingredients as if she were their mother that she will start to push them further, combining flavours in more exotic and ingenious ways.

As designers we haven’t got the ingredients the earth offers the chefs. Our ingredients are made by the nature of the soul of the creative mind – the illustrators and photographers, the type designers and copywriters.

Should we wish for the audience to enjoy the meals we prepare, and of course this is all we ever want, we must do what we can to provide for them the best possible ingredients. We mustn’t over season or undercook, we mustn’t split nor curdle.

We have to remove our egos and never think the frozen vegetables are good enough, the supermarket meat fine, the three day old fish dandy. We must simply cook with fresh ingredients, not get in their way and allow the audience a chance to have a moment worth remembering.

A few, actually, but today we’re tackling this one:

Does the thought that you are not likely to become the number one best in your field discourage you or affect you in any way?

Thanks Carolyn.

* * *

The “best” forgo sleep and food, they sacrifice so much for the sake of their art, they loose time. It falls from their pockets and sinks between the cushions of the couch, just disappearing. Hours zoom, days fly, weeks float away as they continuously push to be the best possible version of themselves that they can be. They put in effort. There’s also a little luck, but most of all, they put in effort.

Like a mother giving birth they push and and scream and swear, they go primal and fight through pain and blood to bring about the work they feels must be brought into the world.

But they do it to beat no one but themselves.

I’ve never worried about being at the top of my field. I’m not sure those who are at the top of my field have worried either.

* * *

I’m so tired. My wife is tired, too. It kills me to see her so exhausted and helpless. My eyes beg for darkness and my mind aches to be thrown into slumber. But I’m here. I’m here forcing my fingers to find the keys so I can do what I said I would, so I can do what makes me me. I fight through all this pain, this lump in the back of my head, this heavy horrible lump of the sandman’s doughy hand pushing against my skull all because I want to be better than me. I go through this anguish because my art requires it of me. Because I love what I do and I know it’ll look after me when I need it most. I might now be tired and sick and sore, but my art still requires I sit my ass down and get to it, earn its respect. And when I need it to be here for me, it surely will be, it’ll provide for me inspiration and joy, and if I’m lucky enough, provide food and shelter for my family.

This is all I worry about, that I am the best version of me. I’ve no interest in being the best when placed on the scales of others, let alone a collective group of people who all agree on the one person that happens to satisfy a disparate range of opinions. It could easily be said that those at the top of the music charts are the best musicians.. But.. Well, you know what I’m going to say.

* * *

I used best in the opening of this essay in a group sense. The top of the field, the most accomplished one hundred or one thousand. But they’re the best only on my scale. Yours would be different. They’re my heroes. My inspirers. Those who respond to their muses in ways I admire and appreciate.

But what if we were to talk about the best in the singular?

To be the best is to work until there is no more ‘better’ to be had when compared to others. What happens then? Once you’ve mounted the heads of your enemies on the spikes in front of your castle, then what? What do you do when there’s no more enemies to spike?

But … Oh, but if the enemy is an internal one, if the one to beat is you, you will find an endless army of dragons.

And to be honest, I have no interest in beating out those who inspire me the most. I simply wish to do their work, their ideas and effort and the flames that it inspired in my heart honor by making something in kind. Something worthy of the time they spent so that I’m able to look at their work and etch out a smile.

To do that, I have to be the best version of me I can possibly be. The people I most admire are those who are wholly themselves. They are truly honest in who they are and produce work that shows they have pushed themselves as far as they can possibly go. Not as far as anyone expects them to go, not in the direction anyone hopes they will go, but towards their own, personal, innate and unique goals and level of skill.

I’m not sure many creatives worry about rising to the top as much as they wish to rise above themselves. We can look at others whom we declare the best and how they’ve worked and mimic what we appreciate, discarding what we do not, but we cannot simply look upon the best and hope to be who or where they are.

They’re the best versions of themselves that they can be. They’re also lucky enough that the best of who they are is also what the rest of us considers to be the best of what their field can be.

* * *

While I wish to produce the best possible work so that I might entertain and inspire others, I do not do so that they might one day, hopefully, consider me the best of my field. It’s not a term I think really works. Creative works aren’t produced or rated on a scale. My best is different to yours, and thankfully, they’re both different to the person sitting next to either of us. Best, like favorite, is the language and concern of the amateur, the professional just wants to be better, though not of another, but themselves alone..

All I’m desperately trying to do is be professional. I’ll let the amateurs worry about being the best.

So many of us dream of the artist lifestyle. The laid back attitude, enjoying life, enjoying every little moment that creating our work brings to us. Lazy afternoons and quiet mornings. Opportunities to explore our craft and get to know it well, developing a strong relationship with our muse.

But then the real world hits and the buzzes start and we forget about all that. We start racing to keep up, because we think the bohemian life that someone else is having is better than the life we’re having, so as long as we follow and mimic their life, ours might be what we wish it to be.

We put so much effort into trying to find the secrets that others hold that we don’t discover our own.

We … No, let me be honest here – I should spend more time working slowly.

Working slow doesn’t mean working soft. It means being surgical with your time and your career. Being very deliberate with what you let in so that you can be sure of what comes back out. It’s about giving yourself enough freedom to continue having fun and explore and be silly and stupid and dumb (the last one is especially important). It means being steps ahead so you don’t stumble at the finish line, it means reading slowly and long so you read well, it means doing the research well so you can act the frantic when the work and the muse demands it – when you’re sketching ideas out, when you’re exploring ideas.

Working slow is more about working methodically. Being a good little boyscout and always being prepared. This week my wife has been very sick and neither of us have gotten much sleep. This has meant my morning essays have been close to impossible to finish (today, especially), and it’s because I haven’t worked slowly and methodically to prepare for such an event. I haven’t done what I know I should do – I haven’t worked ahead, written in advance, working to earlier than real deadlines. I’ve skimmed instead of read, I’ve Googled instead of researched, I’ve spin through my streams in Twitter rather than take part in conversations.

This isn’t professional. This isn’t what Pressfield says I should do – this isn’t sitting down and working through my process to give you what you deserve, to give the craft I love what it deserves, to give myself what I deserve, to give my time what it deserves. It’s important to remember that we must go slow by default, we must savor our very brief meals for all the richness we can so easily skim over with full-mouth swallows of time. We must build blocks and boxes of slow time so that when inside of them we can act the frantic, joyous fool.

I know I’m not alone and I’m sorry about that. This is a topic that has been brought up so, so much of late that I feel horrible for adding to the noise. But maybe, if I’m lucky, this might be a little signal that pierces through the noise and finds you. Or me. Or both of us. Hopefully both of us.

The beautiful moments in life is all we strive for, and I have never found it in in all my frantic actions and chaotic movements. I’ve only ever found them when moving slowly when I should move slowly, and fast when fast is best.

It felt as if we were peeking under the dress of literature, seeing what only a special few should ever see. Eight words of dialogue could inspire a reaction of words numbering thousands. Passionate debates discussing the motivation and desires and lusts that characters held firmly in their grip. We were shown the souls of people who never existed, and in doing so their veins were flooded with rich blood, their skin given warmth, their movements given life, it lent them flesh and bone. We were shown how characters and settings and moments can become real, how they are given adrenalin and sorrow and love.

I was taken aback by how subtle the details could be.

I loved it.

My friend did not. He thought “it was all bullshit, total bullshit, no director or writer bothers, it’s just made up by the teacher and people who want to find it. It’s bullshit.”

* * *

Yesterday afternoon I posted this photo, with some lines I drew over it, onto Twitter.

I doubt much of this was on purpose. The rule of thirds is in play, which is a fairly standard rule for a photographer to employ, but there is so much more. Lines meeting under a shoulder, the top right/bottom left diagonal strikes almost perfectly through the body, the write and glove starting just below dead centre, the boot in the right corner sitting parallel with that diagonal blue line. The calf too.

We know this photo was taken in a moment of action. They moved, a button was clicked. But here it is. It sits so beautifully. Is this why this photo has lasted as it has? Because there’s an inherit beauty and balance to how they are captured?

Sometimes these lines exist and work because of luck. Other times it’s deliberate actions taken by the designer or artist or author. Sometimes we find them just because we’re looking and wish to find them. No matter the reason why they are drawn, when we find the lines that connect, and they do so so well, we find a little bit of order, and for creatives, a little bit order in which chaos can reign is pure bliss.

* * *

I once wrote an article title The Secret Law of Page History. It was by far my most popular article, and perhaps my proudest, and I’m grateful for it. It showed the lines used throughout history to find the perfect place for a body of text to lie. Where the margins should exist so they are in harmony with the page.

Sometime later I stumbled over Kimberly Elam’s astounding Geometry of Design, in which she shows us how intersecting lines of geometric shapes, of logic, are used to define the positioning of elements within all sorts of design. She stole my breath and the practice stole from me my heart.

It’s been many days since I first read the book and yet it still stays with me. I look at posters and works of design and all I see is the lines of their construction.

I even wrote an article, going back years now, that I never published, finding the lines in classic pieces of design, just as Kimberly showed me how. Here’s a sample from it:

I really should allow it to see some sunshine and publish it, shouldn’t I? What do you think?

* * *

It’s a legitimate argument that this kind of work is done so we can show others that what we genuinely strive for a level of detail akin to architecture or engineering. That it’s more than just moving elements around until they look pretty. There’s structure here, reason and logic, orders that we can offer to our colleagues and clients, to ourselves, as to why we made the decisions we made.

I always thought this is why we do such things, why we espouse the worthiness of grids and the principles and theories into which we place so much hope.

Thinking about this more I realise that these are surface reasons. These are the ‘only buy it for the articles’ kind of reasons. The dirty secret, the one we hide under our bed, is a lot more intimate than that. We hide these little rules of ours in our work because we love what we do. Because it’s a way to show our love, to express it and experience the passion we hold for our craft.

We may show others and be prideful of what we do, but we put these little details in because it just damn well feels good. Because we respect our craft so much, because we want to do something different and special and unique, because we want better for our actions than “yeah, it looks good”. Not for them, not for their campaign or launch or message, but for us.

I love all the little details. I love the geometry and the kerning, the grids and the colors. I don’t lust for these details because it’s the right thing to do. No one would notice if I didn’t. In fact no one notices when I do. I hide these little moments in my work and ferret them out in the work of others for one reason. One selfish, quiet and powerful reason.

I love my craft.

It’s one of the traits that I wish I could banish, and I’m slowly working on it, but I often find it hard to just be quiet when someone asks a question or raises a point. If I’m in the room, I always like to try and provide an answer. It’s not because I think I’m smarter than anyone else (I never am), nor is it because I want to try to impress them (though maybe it is).

Whether it’s an actor who kind of looks a little bit familiar (I’ll not only find out who they are but look up every movie they’ve been in for the last ten years), or a piece of design theory that tickles me, I work hard to find every dot in the answer that I can.

So I started to stop. I sit a little quieter, look at people in the eye a little more and ask for their opinion on something rather than offering my own. It’s worked well so far, even if I haven’t been able to fully commit to it all of the time. I’ve found people open up, it’s easier to make a connection with them and I tend to learn something (either that my opinion was right or wrong, the latter being more valuable).

As tends to be the case when in love and every song makes sense, or when you’re on a diet and every bit of food looks delicious, trying to not know everything heightened my appreciation of other people who simply admit to not knowing.

It also made me notice the signs when someone scrambles for an answer or changes what they’re saying while you’re talking so that they end up agreeing with you.

It started to scare me.

It started to scare me because so few people (outside of close friends who aren’t afraid to admit they don’t know something) would actually say “I don’t know.” And, in the rare case they are willing to do so, they do it with a reddened face.

Perhaps it’s tribal. A part of us fears being seen as the weak link, the one from which danger will be thrust upon the rest of the group. Or even worse, we’ll be excommunicated and find ourselves with no peers and no one to answer our questions. So we hide. We hide behind arrogance and pride and big words, smirking when others don’t know an answer we might, hoping it’ll suggest they know more than we do.

To be creative is to do this every single day.

But in a far worse way. To do something genuinely creative and unique, we need to do things that we are not only unsure of their legitimacy of being an answer to the question before us, but we can’t say for sure that it’s an answer of any kind.

Not only does a genuinely creative response to a question involve saying “I don’t know”, but it also comes with “I don’t know how”. I don’t know how people will respond to it, I don’t know how well it will work, I don’t know who will identify.

The enemy of creative thought and effort is an unwillingness to simply submit to “I don’t know.” But it’s from being willing to not only look in unfamiliar territories for answers, but also admit that you need help in doing so, that the most brilliant of works comes about.

It’s far better to default to saying “I’m not sure,” “I don’t know,” or “can you please help me with this one?” and get an answer you were already mostly sure about yourself then to feign intelligence and miss out on opportunities to learn and grow.

These are the moments that hurt. The ones that make us feel bad about who we are and what we choose to spend our time doing. The muse asks so very much of us and sometimes gives back pittance.

These are the moments when burn out can happen, or even worse, when we give up and fall back on formulaic solutions to problems that hardly exist. I think most designers do this. They fall back on the tired and true, whatever it is that will always work for them. Not all of us, but most. It takes time, but I think everyone defaults on their creative mortgage and forever lives off handouts their creative vault offers up – recycled ideas from the pages of history, their own or ours shared.

What a shame.

These empty, nothingness moments can sometimes hold our secrets for us. It feels as if every surface our our minds are covered in an ocean of flies, but if we look long enough we’ll eventually find the beautiful reds of a ladybug in amongst the buzzing blackness.

I’ve found that more often than not, when I’m lucky enough to brush away the flies and allow the little dot of red dance around, it tells me what I already know but was too stupid to trust myself with.

He would annoy them by asking questions, important questions, that would cause them to examine their lives. What is truth? What is happiness? What makes a good action good and a bad one bad? What is virtue?

He did so for a lifetime. He walked up to strangers on the street and asked them these questions. Ones which most everybody never asks, but would probably agree are important. He wanted to know the truth of people, of why they were who they were and their reasons for doing whatever it is they did.

This can be confronting. The questions themselves mean nothing, but when one realises they can’t answer them, it’s easy to feel as if a foundation of the self has been shattered. It throws into question who you are and what you think.

“What is good?” “Something that isn’t bad.” “What is bad?” “Something that isn’t good.” What a pain.

Eventually, asking all these questions brought an end to the life of Socrates. But let’s pretend he’s still roaming streets and asking questions, going into offices and standing by desks and asking for answers.

* * *

I’m working on a design that is almost finished. My best work! I’m proud of it, the client is proud of it and I know it’s going to resonate well with the audience.

Then in strolls Socrates, robe and all. He trots to my desk and looks down at the work I’ve done. Proudly I puff my chest. Let him ask his questions. I know my design has worked. I know it’s worked because I like it, it’s passed my taste tests! It’s done well with my colleagues and boss, with the client and the client’s daughter’s friend’s dog walker. I’ve done my research and development, this is wrapped up, ready to go.

“So, what is this?” He asks.
I explain, showing off the research I’ve done, spouting how this wondrous piece of communication before him is the answer to a grand problem set to me by the client. “I’ve solved it and solved it well!” I declare.

“Mmmm, congratulations, good for you, good, good,” he offers back in a thick accent, considering his next question.

“Is it pleasing to the eye?”

“Oh ho ho! Is it pleasing to the eye?!” I show how the balance of type and image is well considered and executed, how the colors are in harmony, and, a little too smugly, show the golden ratio of the main content area.

“So it is what you mean it to be and it is pleasing to the eye. It’s been crafted with skill and learned hands, has it not? How wonderful. What is the idea?”

“Well…” Words stumbling past my lips, I try again. “Well, it’s about…” I can’t go much further.

“Sir, the idea? What is the idea? It is beautiful and it speaks clearly, but what is the reason it speaks? What is the meaning behind the words it spouts?”

Woah, wait, no. It’s pretty, so that’s enough, right? It communicates clearly, that’s a bonus, the message is spot on, and I’ve made sure it’ll be noticed. I know the history of the company and reference it, making sure the product sits nicely with their message, their audience, their … it can be navigated well and the right call to action is in the right place, it will work, I’ve …

“The idea, sir, what is it?”

I … Design theory is in play, it’s worked well, the type choices are beautiful and perfect, the imagery stunning, the words quirky and interesting and smart, the audience isn’t looked down on, is respected and even admired. I’ve done everything right.

He looks at me, his mind wonders while eyes wander, searching my face, trying to find some truth.

“Please,” he asks almost whispering, “the idea? What is the idea?”