Your Choice

When you have a brilliant idea and your client kills it, you have two choices:

1. Come back with something even better.
2. Give them what they’re expecting and just move on.

If you choose 1, and your client kills that idea, you have two choices:

1. Come back with something even better.
2. Give them what they’re expecting and just move on.

If you choose 1 again, and once more, your client kills that idea, you’re still left with two choices:

1. Come back with something even better.
2. Give them what they’re expecting and just move on.

The difference between great creatives and mediocre creatives is the ability to choose 1 again and again.

And I’d argue that more often than not, it’s also the difference between happy creatives and unhappy creatives.

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Austin Kleon’s Books

Read these. They’re full of really good advice for people working in a creative industry. It’ll take you 90 minutes to get through both of them. The first (Steal) is about how the work of others can help you find your voice. The second (Show) is about connecting with others by sharing your work (your process of work, not just the finished product).

Awesome or Awful

Check out Awesome or Awful: A Self-Critique Tool for Young Creatives. Wish I’d had this around when I was first in portfolio school.

One of the authors is Erin Eby, a super-talented art director who helps run an agency in Geneva, Switzerland. I had the pleasure of working with her when I lived there, and we collaborated on a number of projects. I kind of wish this would have been one of them.

Charlton Heston Memorial Party

I’ve worked with some tough clients. Some have acted irrationally. Others with distrust and even distain.

But none were as tough as Pope Julius II.

It wasn’t that he was demanding. It was that he kept changing his mind. He had wild, ephemeral expectations, but gave little concrete direction. He probably coined the phrase, “I don’t know what I want, but I’ll know it when I see it.”

He considered himself a great patron of the arts. He did much to beautify Rome, laid the foundation of St. Peter’s Basillica, and was a friend of Raphael and Bramante. So even though he wasn’t a craftsman, couldn’t paint, sculpt or design, he thought he knew great art better than those producing it.

To compound the problem, Pope Julius II was more concerned for his own personal fame as a member of the family of della Rovere (i.e., personal glory) than for the advancement of the influence and authority of the Roman Catholic Church (i.e., the brand).

Each of you will probably have a Pope Julius II sometime in your careers. Maybe several of them. Ridiculous. Egotistic. Impossible-to-please.

Here’s the thing. This is what Michaelangelo did for this impossible-to-please client:

This weekend, if you’re planning your Charlton Heston Memorial Bash, I suggest you skip The Ten Commandments and check out The Agony and the Ecstasy, the movie based on Irving Stone’s biography of Michaelangelo.

It will show you that if you’re not doing great work, you shouldn’t blame the client. Michaelangelo didn’t.