Three steps (and growing) to reboot your creativity

Let's face it, for all of us the well runs dry from time to time. No matter what your field nobody wants to continue looking at things the same way. New ideas drive the world. Original ideas change it.

We all want to challenge ourselves not to walk through life like a child at Disney World, simply accepting the facades. I've written down some ideas that help me to stay unique even when I'm creatively constipated.

I've generalized them so that they could work in most vocations:

1. Go back to your roots.
Nature played a heavy part in who we are but there was also a time when we were at our creative peak. I was a jazz musician, professionally for a very short time, I loved to write and photograph almost anything. For me these caused me to look at things in a unique way, each or their own reason.
Go back to the time you felt most creative. Think about things you enjoyed do them again. If your a programmer go back and write a simple and fun game you've done 100 times. Go back and find that first love. There's a reason you are doing what you are. Try to find that reason.

2. Go old school.
I'm not the "good ole days" type of guy. I'm too young for that. But we have allowed our minds to get lazy, especially in the way we entertain our minds. Listening to someone read a story on the radio takes me creativity than watching TV. Reading a book takes more still. Stop letting the world feed you. Create your own thoughts.
There's a reason the stereotypically smart people listen to classical music. It's complex, the chords change, there is dissonance. Listen to music made in the 1950's or earlier. After that period music began to follow established, simple rhythms and structures.
Take well composed photos, write, talk, sing, pick up an instrument. Your mind is a muscle. If you want that power there when you need it you have to train for it. Mentally if you want to be a power lifter you have to mentally train like one.

3. Get simple.
Go back to the basic concept that are fundamental to your field. For me its just got basic composition and layout. Too often we look at something so much that we begin to accept compromise on the basics. Go back and remember the things you did that landed you the job or the first time you did something that made a friend say, "You should be a..."

4. Pray.
You want to be creative? God is the creator. He invented creation. He is the root of all creativity. Realizing that you have never had an original idea is the beginning to finding your unique voice.

If you've got something that works for you that can be generalized to any field drop me a comment. I'll update the post with more.

Bottom line is find your own unique voice. Don't walk through life accepting the structures put there by people less intelligent than you. Question everything. Create something.

The calm after the vent

So if you read last week you know I was kind of going through an internal crisis about how do I/we unify 242 screaming voices into a coherent choir.

Thanks to everyone who left feedback.

Question though- Should I try to make those messages the same? If so, to what extent.

Trust me I know this flies in the face of all traditional marketing and communications thinking but I'm mentally going down a path here.

Also don't go to the other extreme, absolutely I think that an organization as a whole should have one key message (or maybe a couple) to its audience.

What if all of the message are trying to achieve the same goal but with different messages. Is that noise?

I played football and ran track in high school. I remember running, focusing hard on the goal and all around me people were yelling. Sometimes I could focus in on one person saying GO! GO! GO! but not most of the time.

Most of the time I heard yelling. But immediately I know if they were yelling for me or against me.

Think of it, 1,000 voices yelling different messages all with the same goal. It worked. I knew if I had messed up or succeeded by the tone.

Is that how corporate messaging should be? Different voices yelling at the same time different messages pushing on to the same goal.

As I've mentioned we are in the middle of a rebrand. I was surprised to find out during the focus groups that people get us. Is that because we are doing it right despite my thoughts otherwise? Everyone cheering, everyone saying press on to the goal.

ingenious?

Sounds errogant huh? I like the definition I found on google the best.

• imaginative: marked by independence and creativity in thought or action
  
• adroit: skillful (or showing skill) in adapting means to ends
• clever: showing inventiveness and skill

What I covet the most

My boss, Randy Renbarger, is truly one of the greatest communicators I know. This is a guy who has a broad perspective on almost every topic, patience with our clients, and a servant heart that just can't be muted. Yesterday he and I were talking about a discussion he was having with other communications professionals in the church world. All of them are giants in their own right, and I look up to them.

During the conversation, as I understand it, the topic of communications noise was brought up. Too many messages, too little space and difficulty unifying that message. This is the core of branding, and it seems everyone is struggling with it. At our church we have about 250 ministries, all competing for "air play."

The complication is there just isn't that much space available. So obviously you start trying to unify messages so that you can speak once but include 10 groups. But, does that do any good? Aren't you still watering down their message and yours.

Another obvious answer is reduce the number of messages that you have, i.e. the number of ministries. Wow, is that tough. How do you tell a ministry seeking to reach out to battered wives that there just isn't enough interest, or a divorce support group that there isn't any more space. Out of all of the professionals on Randy's conference call only one said they could reduce the number of ministries.

So I'm back to my question how can I support and communicate the message of all of those groups. I truly don't have an answer on this. I'm looking. If you have a map let me know.

The Big Vent

I've been banging my head against a wall for months now, literally. I mean I have a headache and my stress hacky sack is starting to leak all over my desk. I can't get this frustration out about how some churches seem to communicate so clearly and flawlessly (and in a fun, cool way) and I feel like we are at an impasse of uncoolness.

On the surface I would identify it as better design or more money but that's not it. They have something that seems like a constantly moving target- a unified message. Somehow these guys have figured out how to reduce the clutter and increase the impact.

I mean this is the most obvious communication principle in existence, concentrate the message to increase the impact. It's just like a water hose, turn the nozzle to jet and a single, concentrated stream of water comes and moves stuff, it has impact. Turn it to mist and millions of tiny droplets come out that have no impact on anything and barely get your feet wet.

I don't covet my neighbors car, house, wife, donkey, anything like that, I covet his unified message.

I'm sitting here swooning over the idea of designing for a concentrated brand message. It would be so easy. I would know exactly what it was about, who it was for, oh it would be so swell.

There's more to come on this topic. I want to explore it and I beg for input. It's a given that my organization isn't going to start doing fewer things so I want to discover how to continually unify those things into a cohesive message that makes sense.

P.S.- As I've mentioned in my other posts we are in the middle of a brand audit with Aspire!One. Our hope is the product of that audit will illuminate how to do some of this. Despite my feelings of no unified messaging during their focus groups they discovered that people actually know exactly who we are and can identify with all of our key messages. Maybe our frustration is just the byproduct of the filtering we do everyday.

I quit... the WORLD

In the past few weeks I've been threatened by my neighbor, flicked off and been given a dirty look. My wife being in the car for all of the incidents confirmed I wasn't the offender.

Stuff like that makes me want to give up, on humanity. I want to quit the world. We have to remember the impact that something so flippant has on the receiver.

I would like to encourage everyone to remember we are all pretty close neighbors on this planet.

If you are a Christian you are commanded in multiple places to love your brother. In the last few days I've been reading through Hebrews and found it twice. Hebrews 12 specifically says,"Make every effort to live in peace with all men and to be holy; without holiness no one will see the Lord."

Just a reminder- Be nice.

Quality v. Value

I started reading a book yesterday by Leslie Cabarga called the Logo, Font and Lettering Bible. Not sure about the term bible but it's a great book so far, mainly focusing on the holistic creation of logos.

In the first chapter the author quickly jumps on soap box about the art of hand lettering. She makes a statement (my paraphrase) that today the contribution that many designers bring to the table amounts to nothing more than font selection.

I thought about that a while. On the surface it appeared to be a royal smack down to me. However, I went on to read that custom fonts for new logos often go for around $20,000. Boy, am I in the wrong field.

As I thought I began to consider should I be creating custom fonts and lettering for my clients. Am I cheating them by not? But most of my clients couldn't afford a fraction of that for a complete identity package, and in some cases my work is pro bono.

Does the use of existing fonts cheat my clients out of a truly unique mark or am I providing them value that they couldn't otherwise afford.

At first glance it seems to be a question of quality or value.

I would love to get some input from anyone passing through, designer or not. Actually, even better if not a designer. That gives the designers that read a client's perspective.

~sl

Make Clients Want What You Give

"A good thing about being an in-house designer is that once I built up a reputation, upper management began to trust my judgement. But there are still times when communication breaks down. I find that if I visually show them what they want and they can see that it doesn't work, then they tend to rely on and trust my opinion more. Unfortunately, that means more 'wasted' work on my end up front, but payoff later."
--Kimberly Conger

My new favorite thing...

Anyone who is around me at all has heard me raving about this site but for those that haven't heard yet, I love Lynda.com.

Lynda is a training site. It offers a huge library of training videos on almost any piece of software imaginable. Each video based training is about 3-10 minutes long allowing me to take a quick class during moments of downtime. Memberships are only $25 a month and include unlimited classes.

I can't tell you how this has empowered me. For instance I'm extremely comfortable in Photoshop but not Illustrator. I can get around but I wouldn't say proficient. I find myself running back to Photoshop well before I need to. So now I get to take the time to learn more and have a resource feeding it to me. How great!

Illustrator down, next Flash.