As a creative, I think its easy to get caught up in the importance of something you create. You learn to pour your heart into something that you hope will be loved by others. But what happens when it’s not? When something that you love falls into the pile of average, forgettable designs never to be viewed again?
The fact is that almost everything that is created has this fate. There will always be others that come after you that will push the limits of design further than you could ever imagine. Imagine to what extent Giotto’s mind would have been blown if he were around today to see what is being done with 3D animation, hyper-realistic painting, and even photography. In his day, he and his fans got excited about paintings that had perspective. Try to imagine the state of design a hundred years from now.
Maybe I’m moving slightly away from my point. The point is, having a creative nature is a gift. It is a gift because you can, at any given point, take nothing and turn it into something. It’s a gift that comes with a price. In my experience, the way to walk away with truly inspiring work is to make as many versions as possible during the creative process. Going through this process could take hours, days, or even years. But the underlying fact is that the creative process doesn’t end when you release the work.
This lesson became abundantly clear to me during my first collegiate drawing critique. For hours the previous afternoon, I had toiled over a graphite still life in preparation for the critique. I mean hours upon hours of working out the details of this drawing. Upon completion, I had what I consider largely to be a masterpiece. I had unlocked a part of my being that had not previously existed because I had never created something this perfect.
The time for the critique came, and I proudly posted my drawing on the wall. As I sat in the room comparing my work to the work of my classmates, I noticed something. I had only created one drawing, while my classmates had each created at least 2 drawings. I defiantly ignored this fact, and decided that my drawing was on a different level of perfection, and that I didn’t need to worry about anything.
As the professor called upon me to go over my work, she gave me the opportunity to describe my work and to field questions from my fellow students. Feedback was generally pretty decent, but I certainly wasn’t receiving the praise I believed I deserved. At the time, I thought that maybe it was just because my classmates were jealous of the work I had done, and they didn’t want to praise it too much. What followed was a life lesson that I and my classmates will never forget.
The professor, who had been sitting relatively quietly throughout the discussion, stood up and walked towards my work. With a giant permanent black marker, my professor began correcting lines in my drawing explaining that the proportions were off, and the values should be like this or that, and that this doesn’t make sense, etc. etc. My masterpiece had been defaced. To make matters worse, she required a new piece of work from me in order to satisfy the curriculum requirement.
I was floored.
After picking my jaw up from the floor, I sulked and complained for a day or two. I fought through creating a new drawing. Upon completion, I was not overly thrilled with the new drawing, but I was required to hand it in anyway. Once the emotions of the situation died down, I was able to objectively look at my work and compare the iterations. The second one, was clearly better.
Work that you make can always be changed. It can always be recreated. It is not sacred. Sure there’s the argument of brand equity, and building up a brand that shows a united front, but that brand can be changed, modified or added upon. Look at brands like Apple, or Fedex. They’ve been changed and modified throughout the years, and they still rock. The exploration of change and growth leads to stronger work and stronger designs. Maybe the modifications or changes won’t be as strong as the original, but you can’t know that unless you give it a shot.
Truly great creations are the result of thorough exploration never settling for any perfect answer.
