Timeline of a typical creative project
I once saw a timeline hanging on the wall in an artist’s studio. The timeline was written in chalkboard fashion yet neatly framed as if to betray the importance of its message to the artist.
The title read, “The Timeline of a Typical Project”.
I stopped to read it and thought it was the best illustration of the creative process I’ve ever seen.
Thus, it could just as appropriately have been entitled “Timeline of a Typical Creative Project”.
I created my own version of the timeline to remind myself of an important fact about working on any project (especially a creative one).
In almost any creative process, there is a point early on where what you’ve done just looks plain ugly. It’s the ugly stage when the voice in your head says to throw it out and restart.
However, if you can push through the early, ugly stage and continue the process, you’ll often find ways to refine your work later in the process to be better. Often, you’ll find that it’s not as bad as you first thought.
Timeline of a typical creative project
The typical creative project goes something like this:
At the beginning, we’re excited to get our ideas out of our head. We start to put ideas to pixels (or paper, or whatever) and discover that this is going to be harder to accomplish than what we originally thought.
It quickly moves from “Hmmm, this is going to be a lot of work”, to doubting what we’ve already done and possibly getting bored with the process thus far.
Finally, frustration can creep in, and we feel like giving up. Either restarting again or totally throwing out the idea altogether.
Then we think to ourselves, “On second thought, it would be good to finish this because I’ll learn something for next time.” So, we continue and make the best of our work, finding ways to improve it or hide any blemishes from earlier in the process.
In the end, we look at our completed work and realize it’s not that bad after all.
One time I was working on a live design session in-person with a client.
Seeing the ideas I was coming up with early in the process, the client seemed a bit concerned that they weren’t going to match the brief. I reassured them that making “ideations” to explore design concepts was a necessary part of the process.
As the process progressed and the designs became refined, they understood that an “ugly” stage was necessary to get to the final design. In the end, they loved the design and were appreciative of my work because they saw the process to get to the final result.
You need to realize that it is just part of the creative process to have lows, especially in the early stages, where everything inside screams to restart because your work isn’t matching your expectations.
This is what people mean when they say to “trust the process”.
At the really low part of a project, you can feel as though if you just “restart clean, anew”, everything will be better. However, I haven’t found that to be the case the majority of the time.
Until you develop the experience to know when it’s actually best to restart, its good to “trust the process”, get your work past those early stages, and see where that leads you.
Even if the creative idea doesn’t end up being great, at least you’ve allowed it to go through the process, and you’ve completed something.
Mindlessly going in a loop of restarting during the ugly stage is not fun and is one of the fastest ways to get frustrated and get nowhere at the same time.
The picture of an artist or writer repeatedly restarting their work only to crinkle the paper and toss it into the overflowing trash bin is not something to aspire to for your work.
While it does illustrate the reality of sorting through many ideas to find the good one, don’t expect that mindlessly restarting every time your work doesn’t meet your expectations is going to yield something useful.
There is a balance. You could fill pages in a sketchbook with sketches of logo ideas and do so quickly to not get too attached to an idea. However, it wouldn’t be a good idea to quit on a potentially good design concept before you’ve explored the possibilities.
At least for me, once I try to transfer what looks so good in my head down to pixels on the screen or lines on paper, I have to resist the urge to nitpick it too early in the process.
The key is ultimately to be patient and not stress out, especially early in the process.
Remembering the timeline of a typical project might help…
Originally published at noahrahm.com/posts/timeline-of-creative-project/