Hassig

Why do I feel that my full time “cre­ative posi­tion” is slowly killing all of my cre­ativ­ity? Prob­a­bly because it is. In almost two months only one project comes to mind that I spend hardly any time on, and even that design was rushed out the door at the end.

It’s such a chal­lenge, because good design nor­mally takes time. Sure every so often myself or another design will have some spark of an idea and have it out and fin­ished in record time, but gen­er­ally speak­ing there’s a process. There’s brain­storm­ing, sketch­ing, ini­tial ideas, tweak­ing it, adding to it, revi­sions, and so on… a good ser­mon series design ranges around 6–13 hours for me. The catch is there are large peri­ods of time between those hours. I may sketch for an hour or two, then leave it alone for a day or two and come back with fresh eyes and fresh ideas. Sadly how­ever, so many things are done last minute that there is sim­ply no time for this process. Which sad­dens me at times because it in turn reflects on me. When I have to fin­ish a new bul­letin cover from scratch to print in 2–3 hours it forces me to pull out generic things I’ve done before, mak­ing it look like it was designed by some high-school kid with pho­to­shop (though, I’m more than pos­i­tive that there are a ton of high-school kids who would far out­shine me, but you get my point).

I do think that being rushed forces you to come up with things quickly, and it has me design­ing more stuff. So it has its ben­e­fits, but there’s no time for reflec­tion, for tweak­ing, for tak­ing a decent idea and turn­ing it into a great design. See­ing how this is a per­sonal blog, it’s no sur­prise that this was a bit of a ram­bling, and not really a whole lot of prac­ti­cal­ity either, but I don’t doubt that most design­ers and relate, and any designer in a church prob­a­bly even more-so.

A cou­ple prac­ti­cal things come to mind to com­bat this.

First, be slightly more proac­tive. When you hear some­one loosely men­tion that we should prob­a­bly thing about a new generic bul­letin cover, go ahead and take lit­er­ally and start work­ing on one, because three days later that loose com­ment may become a real­ity, only you’ll need to get it approved and go to print in about 3 hours. Now what if by chance you go to all that work and then it never comes up again? No wor­ries, you designed some­thing, you grew, and I can almost guar­an­tee you that you can use at least some part of it down the road on another rush job. So just tuck that file away for later.

Sec­ond, keep go-to fonts, stock pho­tos and illus­tra­tions and tex­tures on hand. If you already have a library of design ele­ments you know and trust then throw­ing together last minute designs becomes sig­nif­i­cantly easier.

Third, and lastly, take on per­sonal projects. Even if it’s only 10–20 min a day, start work­ing on per­sonal projects, some­thing that you have full con­trol over. It could be some­thing small that you design some­thing com­pletely new every day or maybe a big project that you just work on a lit­tle bit at a time. This will allow you the time and con­trol that you don’t have with all your other projects, it will allow you to exper­i­ment and grow, and not to men­tion the joy of fin­ish­ing and know­ing you invested plenty of time into it.

What are your thoughts or per­sonal experiences?

A recent Christ­mas design for LFA.

Emmanuel Christ­mas Graphic (click to view)

Why must Christ­mas be so focused on giv­ing? Don’t get me wrong, I do like receiv­ing gifts. But this year even I find myself say­ing, “Don’t worry about it, I really don’t want any­thing.” Why? I’m not even com­pletely sure. Pos­si­bly a mix­ture of things, there really is noth­ing this year that makes me say or feel, “I want/need that.” Now would I mind hav­ing a new 55″ Sam­sung LED? Well of course not! But I don’t need it, I’m lucky to have a 37″ Vizio that is hon­estly far more than I need. I sup­pose that’s what it all comes down to any­way, con­tent­ment. There will always be a new prod­uct or toy com­ing out, always big­ger (or smaller), always new fea­tures, mixed with an adver­tise­ment sat­u­rated media designed to cre­ate need.

This really isn’t really a pro­posal to aban­don gifts, because they’re a great way to show love and appre­ci­a­tion. Nor is it in any way an attempt at some sort of guilt trip. I sup­pose it’s sim­ply a reflec­tion on where I have been, am cur­rently, and am going. And pos­si­bly a bit of a reflec­tion of our soci­ety as a whole, which sadly, I model quite well.

I think the top­ics of gifts is ele­vated in my mind, because (/sigh) on that whole love lan­guage thing the gift aspect is pretty much a 0 all around for me. I don’t nat­u­rally express love or appre­ci­a­tion through gifts and I don’t really feel it receiv­ing them either. Then again, plenty of other peo­ple do, which I try to keep in mind for their sake. That being said, I’m really look­ing for­ward to Christmas.

What are your thoughts?