soulsight®

Sometimes the hardest problems to solve are the ones you are most excited about. I have realized this through years of trying to design the next greatest, most groundbreaking, most original design...and usually failing miserably. I believe that, as designers, we do get something similar to "writer's block", and it can happen quite often if we put too much pressure on the process.

A few years ago, I started attending classes at the well known comedy club and school, The Second City, in Chicago. We've also done workshops in our office to teach us about improv comedy and how we can benefit from its principles in the workplace. The lessons learned from these activities have changed the way myself and others approach most projects now -- it has been invaluable. I have come to see that censorship is the worst thing I can do when sitting down to come up with initial concepts. Not because there are no bad ideas (certainly 75% of them end up being unusable) but because there is no way to get to the best ideas without allowing the bad to come as well. When sitting down to design, instead of putting enormous pressure on myself to think of the next perfect idea, I just write down whatever comes. Later, we can all pick through the ideas as a team and build further upon the ones that are working.

This process of building upon, instead of eliminating, is much more enjoyable and far more productive than what I was doing before. Something I heard in writing class once was that "writer's block is just a writer's unwillingness to fail." How true that is. If I am not willing to allow myself to relax and let my mind come up with whatever it's going to come up with, good or bad, then I am stunting creativity. Usually, that ends up with me throwing tissues of designs out as I create them, leaving the office upset because I wasn't "on" that day. There is no part of the brain that only churns out good ideas. There is an active brain that churns out good and bad ideas together, or an active brain that is being censored and comes up with nothing. That is our choice. Good and bad together, or nothing at all. I've also seen that many of the best ideas are usually the result of several designers seeing something and continuing to make it better. So I should not feel like great design is something any of us need to carry individually. It is something we all share, clients, designers and account staff.