MOST OF THE TIME you don’t know what a journey is about, exactly, at the start. A life journey, for example. Or a creative one.
It’s not my original thought: it’s something I got from a chance encounter with a very well-traveled couple, who happened to share the same preference for breakfast places in Gangtok. They were already out and about for more than a year, including stints in America where they met and the UK where she is from. I have lost track of them completely, as often happens when you meet so many people in a series of movings-abouts. But that doesn’t mean I haven’t forgotten what they said:
You never know what a trip is about, not really, until much later. After it’s done, and you’re older, and you can reflect back. You don’t have to overthink it, or anything. But you’ll know with clarity. Later. For now, don’t try to overarticulate it. — Wisdom from the traveling couple in Sikkim’s Gangtok
Welcome to the journey.
Creativity only happens when you let go, take a risk
Three things are requisite if you want to find the beauty:
- Uncertainty. You really can’t know how a brand design process is going to go, exactly, at the start, either. You go ahead and get going, of course. Yet what you can’t know at the start is exactly what the thing you’re embarking on means.
- Patience. Insight will come. It definitely will. Just not, well, before you even take off. Craftspeople know that it takes years to master their trade. You can’t just hop in and do judo, and stuff.
- Inertia often blocks us.. Hardest part to doing a thing you know is good for you is getting started. I mean, look at yoga. How many times do we say, “Yeah. I should really do that.” Very few. (One such person who is, though, and consciously is Melinda Hunt.)
What the architects and artists aren’t sure about
I’m reading an essay on The Fountainhead. Ayn Rand is the book’s author, and the essayists are critiquing and at the same time lauding her for putting the practice of architecture so exquisitely and resolutely on display. Thing is, architecture is all about design. You see the results. They’re either good, bad, or stupendous.
No one wants to admit that it’s so very subjective.
Aesthetics and taste aren’t easily cultivated. You have to consume a lot of art, good and bad, to know what a thing looks like and if it resonates with you, personally, it’s good, for you. It’s not like all critics even have it sorted out. No one wants to risk sounding or looking stupid by praising something that’s not already been praised before. This is why you can get press for things if you’ve had press for them, already. Public Relations professionals know that. It’s why they pitched me stuff with clips of other coverage when I was a reporter, a career before DK.
But they won’t tell you that no one knows, for sure. If it’s good, or not. Except: the maker. They know.
In their gut, they know.
My fear for the people who are creative but don’t practice is that they’re so busy getting gear and reading maps on how to start, they can’t even get to the plateaus. The top? That’s just a goal. The views and the muscle-building are the real rewards.
Why do we make these collages when we’re talking about brand design? Why do we have tea with our clients? Why do we invite them into our homes, to see all the little scruffy edges of what used to be our toddler’s toys, and bare the whole thing, open, and honest, to view? Because people can only discover the beauty within if they’re allowed to let go of an idea of perfection.
Design Kompany and the rough-around-the-edges approach
You go around and you come back, then you find the important story to tell. And say it with the lines that aren’t extra, but remain functional, and still say a lot, with not a whole lot of pretentiousness about. Straight-up. Knows what it is. What it isn’t. This is the work of the Designer. To clarify. To reduce the clutter.
At the end of the process, the creative process, we arrive at a destination. It might not be final but it’s a plateau. Sometimes you need bits of respite when you’re climbing, always looking up, always thinking of the peak, but forgetting, despite yourself, to pay attention to the view.
So it is, too, with design processes. I’ve been saying and often doubting, as I try to walk the talk from April 2013 to now on the road in Asia without a real plan: “trust the process.” You have to get lost to find center. Here’s a video, our homage to that philosophy.
And yes, just like the rough spots with parenting and marriage, the journey is a mix of ups and downs. But yeah. I’d do it all again, without question, for the ride.
