Workshop
Drawing the line on creative tinkering
There’s an inbuilt need in all good creatives to strive for perfection. It’s a blessing that can help great design but it can also be a curse. Our house number plaque was always irritatingly tilted. It poked my obsessive brain every time I saw it winking at me in defiance of the existence of spirit levels. It’s fixed now… and furthermore, I moved it to line up with the surrounding brick pattern. The trouble is that fixing this imperfection simply opened up the top slot to the next irritation, holes from old, long gone doorbells… poke, poke, poke… and so the strive for perfection continues. OK, so I am a little on the obsessive side. How do you draw the line on forever creatively tinkering in the never-ending strive for perfection? After all, we all have deadlines to hit. In our studio, we have a super simple process that allows us to tinker with the worst offenders, tick them off the list and move on. We simply ask… “What’s the worst thing you can see?” * Any piece of creative could be amazing but there’s always something at the top of the “worst thing” list. This simple question forces us to spot and sort out the worst offender. That said, the fix might have knock-on effects but these simply get added to the list. Rinse and repeat and bit by bit we get closer to a fully rounded, cohesive concept with diminishing issues. * It's important to note that spotting the worst offenders is a skill that comes with training, and passion and only gets more refined with experience.
Posted by: Andy Gregory
