It seems that creative commercial work is a lot about fighting.
Designer Frank Chimero talks about fighting to maintain high standards, even when your rich multi-national clients will pay more for an ice sculpture than for a logo. Foodie blogger Molly Wizenberg of Orangette talks about fighting against your beliefs about what you should do, and allowing yourself to change directions.
Any person who gets paid for doing creative work is bound to find herself hamstrung, from time to time, in that strange no-mans land where our work lives—somewhere between art, engineering and commerce.
Do we follow self-expression at the expense of profit? Do we make money at the expense of thoughtfulness? Do we become great engineers, only to regret not pursuing a more artful path later on down the line? Arrive at these questions with grand expectations about the purity of your art, or the thoroughness of your approach, and you will be disabused.
The reality is this: Not everyone cares about the design you made. Not everyone cares how great you are. Coming to terms with this is a cornerstone of client work, and it’s only natural to experience an occasional internal struggle.
But let’s not quit our jobs and join WWOOF just yet. There may be a tootsie-roll center to our angst.
Despite what Spartans bark, I’m convinced that our existential crises serve a purpose. We complain about clients because we’re trying to learn how to better serve / deal with them. We complain about losing creativity because we want to stay creative. We complain about sitting and staring at computers because we don’t want the whole country to die of Office Ass.
The struggle is a by-product of trying to move forward. We can’t move forward, though, unless we’ve assessed the situation, identified problems and devised some solutions. Since most of us work privately and can’t see one another’s workflow, voicing our frustrations is one of the best places to begin. To see what’s working for our peers, and what doesn’t. This goes beyond ‘relatability’ and ‘transparency’—collective self-disclosure helps us get stuff done.
And so I say: Let yourself fall into despair or elation from time to time, and feel free to publicly announce it. Take it outside. Fight it out.
