The bias of ignorance.
The idea of ‘bringing light’ to a subject requires a certain amount of ignorance. It requires that, if for only a brief moment, we look away or ignore what appears to be the story. This is challenging if your livelihood is making visual content for stories—be it as an illustrator or graphic designer or writer. The truth is that there are two options in taking on that job. One option is to fall in line and stay within the lanes of the subject and its vocabulary. This often includes being privy to client politics and personal preferences that tend to distract from the actual meat of the assignment. The second option is to get the gist of the story and quickly exit the island in pursuit of a new geography and vocabulary. Since the goal is to transport the reader to a new and improved place, this option is the only real effective route to take.
In choosing to operate in the realm of partial ignorance, we are making a conscious decision to avoid a plunge into the vortex of familiarity. This takes practice. This takes discipline. Our brains tend to seek paths that promote learning and don’t necessarily tell us when we know enough. Curiosity is necessary and fundamental to the job of problem-solving. That is, until we become indoctrinated into thinking more like the clients we are trying to help. This takes practiced objectivity in recognizing when we are too deep in the forest to fulfill our job to be irreverent. It’s the real definition of operating on a ‘need-to-know’ basis.
We have to think of ourselves as amphibious creatures—but primarily land dwellers, capable of being in water but only for short periods of time. We have to return to our native habitat in order to survive and thrive. We have to know what feeds us.
Many of the best creatives stake their reputations on staying out of the mainstream vocabulary of their clients—not to be contrarian, but to improve the perception of their client’s messaging and wares. This approach has been tested and proven by many of the best companies on the planet. The Nikes, Apples, Herman Millers, Coca-Colas, and Swatches all know one thing in common—if you control your creatives to do what you know, they will never create anything new in the eyes of the company or the company’s customers.
The job of most creatives is to show our clients exactly what they don’t see or imagine. We are, in effect, tour guides to unchartered places and experiences that cause us to feel new feelings and think differently than we are accustomed. Clients that demand their creatives give them just what they expect are sabotaging the mission—stunting progress and ultimately a business’s effect on their audience. Conversely, if we make work with the primary goal of making our clients happy (without any surprises), we are really only tending to our own business and not our client’s business with their customers. It’s an easy trap to fall into and the challenge is to arrest it before it becomes habit and a principal business mission. Client approval does not always mean good work.
If we look at the purpose of our work as a vehicle to move an audience to a better, more preferred place, then we have to remember to trade in our own commodity, not our client’s. That is, ideas and propositions that are only unearthed by our insistent prodding and poking. We have to bring our own malcontent and strife to make things that feel uncomfortable, a bit unfamiliar and often far afield. This isn’t different for sake of being different, it is for sake of shuffling the slides in viewer’s carousel, to move them around the object to see it from yet another angle. The benefit is that over time that unfamiliar idea, (think iPhone) becomes familiar. Sometimes behaviors, and even paradigms, begin to shift. While we practice ignoring the obvious we pay great attention to the hidden.
Sometimes changing how we get there helps us get there.