Your Best Self: 7 Mantras for Designers & Entrepreneurs

Mantras are not just for meditating. Mantras are simply ideas and philosophies to live by. Some people call them maxims, mottos or catchphrases. They have one purpose: to keep us on track. They prevent us from going a down a rabbit hole. They act as guardrails for our thoughts and actions so we can focus our energy.

Here are seven mantras that I think are valuable for designers and entrepreneurs to keep in mind. 

#1 Be human.

When your brand is your business, you can sometimes act more like your brand than yourself. No one wants to work with a brand robot – a brandbot. Strategy is great, processes are great, brand tenets are great, but underneath it all we're people. We're original, quirky, and unpredictable. In other words, we’re human. As a businessperson, you do represent a brand, but don’t hold back on showing your humanity (it’s called the Pratfall Effect). Be personable, because people like to work with people that they like. Be humble, because people like to work with people with compassion. Be flexible, because people like to work with people who are open to new things. Most importantly, be you.

#2 Choose fun.

We got into this line of work because we didn't want to have an uninspiring, humdrum life. We became designers and entrepreneurs because we wanted excitement. We wanted to have fun. We wanted to do creative things. Design and entrepreneurship are tough fields, and you have to work really hard at it to be successful. But remember why you're doing it. You're doing it to create a fun, invigorating, extraordinary life for yourself. So try not to take yourself too seriously. Throughout the day you make thousands of choices. As much as you can, choose fun.

#3 What’s the worst that can happen?

Fear can be really debilitating. Whether it’s fear of trying something new, putting ourselves out there or going against the grain, fear can stop you dead in your tracks. Instead of letting fear guide your action - or inaction, think through the fear to the very end. “What’s the worst thing that can happen if things go wrong?” is a powerful question that can shrink  fear dramatically. Think it through; Will you get fired? Lose your apartment? Lose your girlfriend? Most of the time these imaginary disasters never happen, and once you realize that, it frees you up to be more courageous and try new things. And if something does go wrong, simply ask for forgiveness. Making a mistake is never the end of everything. Put fear in its place. Be brave.  
 

#4 Build your resources.

As designers and entrepreneurs, we often like to do everything ourselves. But ultimately, if we want to do bigger and better things, we need additional resources. Be proactive about gathering service providers, companies, printers, coders, any specialists that could help you at some point in time.

Start creating and curating a cache of professionals that allow you to do increasingly ambitious work for your clients. Keep those connections warm so they're there when you need them. Pick a day of the week, say, “Freelancer Friday” to reach out to one or two of your connections. Send a quick text or email, ask them what they’re up to, like some of their social media posts (see more suggestions here). It only takes a few minutes to reach out and if you do it faithfully for a few weeks, you’ll find yourself top-of-mind with them and ready for any project, at any time.

#5 First things first.

Procrastination is a killer for designers and entrepreneurs. Prioritizing tasks and projects can be difficult, but it’s the backbone of success. Tim Ferriss, human guinea pig and lifehacker, has some great advice, “You can spend the whole of the day busy, but fail to tackle the most important items, which in many cases are the hardest things on your plate. So isolate the one or two most important things you need to accomplish today. One or two only.” (Inc.com)

I noticed that Tim was right. Now I move the hardest things to the top of the list and do those first. It pays off. Mark Twain, commenting on doing the dreaded tasks before the easy ones, said, “Eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.” Amen.

#6 Done is better than perfect.

Designers and entrepreneurs, as a group, are perfectionists. This trait serves us well most of the time, but if you lean too heavily on it, it becomes a crutch. Perfectionism is a way of resisting the future. “Perfect lets you stall, ask more questions, do more reviews, dumb it down, safe it up and generally avoid doing anything that might fail (or anything important),” (Seth Godin).

Instead of focusing on getting things done perfectly, focusing on just getting things done.

Get them out the door. Volume trumps perfection any day of the week. Consistency beats infrequency. More is better, and frequency boosts recognition for your brand. So instead of being a perfectionist and trying to massage every fine detail, get it out the door. No one is really going to notice that level of perfection except you. It's better to just get it done, and move on to the next thing.

#7 When in doubt, communicate.

Here’s the biggest complaint I've heard in my career from designers and people I've worked with; "I don't know what's going on. No one's telling me anything."

It's really hard to do your job well if you feel under-informed. Don’t wallow in victimhood about being out of the loop. It’s probably not intentional. Find the person who might know what you feel like you’re missing and ask them to brief you. On the flip-side, you have to make sure clients know what's going on in your head and you know what's going on in theirs. You need to be consistently aligned to deliver your best work. There is no other way to do this than to communicate. Over-communicate, even. Especially when the news that you're trying to communicate is bad. Always recap conversations and meetings in writing. Communication is a conflict killer.

These mantras have helped me keep my thoughts and projects focused and on track.  They’ve helped me sidestep many professional potholes. If some of these resonate with you, I hope you incorporate them into your daily life. Make them visible. Put them on a post-it, make a graphic as your home screen, or tack it on your office wall. Make up your own mantras. They will enhance your focus, energy and undoubtedly smooth your pathway to success.

The Sexy Potato

There are watershed moments in our professional lives where something happens that changes everything. Mine was during a photo shoot for Lay’s potato chips.

Lay’s is, maybe unsurprisingly to salty snack fans, the largest food brand in the world, selling in 50+ countries with revenue of $1.7 billion. With a business that big you have to be very careful what you do in a package redesign - well, for obvious reasons. 

So there we were, shooting the sliced raw potato that appears on the back of the core plain flavor of Lay’s. My marketing partner was not happy. The raw potato was unattractive. The raw potato was missing irresistible flavor appeal, that je ne sais quoi.

She said “Philip, we need a really sexy potato”. It was in that moment that I realized I was not in the right place. And that I needed to make a change.

We finished the shoot. We had successfully coaxed the requisite appeal from the potato - as reluctant a subject as she was. But something inside me had shifted. Four weeks later I resigned from Pepsico. A potato was my tipping point.

We don’t get to choose our watershed moments. The trick is to use them as a springboard for positive change when they happen. For me it was a sexy potato. A potato that launched the most exciting and fulfilling chapter of my life.

The Wipe Out

When I was in art school, I had a drawing instructor who had this one exercise that I never forgot. He would instruct you to draw a model for 90 minutes in soft charcoal. You would work slavishly, perfecting every curve and shadow. Then when time was up, he’d say “OK, take your chamois cloth and wipe it all out”.

Some students would gasp, others were incredulous. But I’ll lose all my work!

Once the drawings were erased he said, “OK, now you have three minutes to draw the entire thing again.”

Inevitably, the resulting drawings would be amazing. More full of life than the over-worked 90 minute versions. Why? Because we hadn’t really wiped out the drawing. The previous 90 minutes was visually engrained and in our muscle memory.

As entrepreneurs and creative professionals we may start a project, a product, a business that gets wiped out. Clients lost. Customers vanish. But what we have to remember is that the work we put in, the brain power we invested isn’t gone. It is in our muscle memory, ready to be released, full of life. Refined. Essential. The next one will be amazing.

photo: Shalom Jacobovitz

The Brand from the Black Lagoon

When the film The Shape of Water was released my first response was disbelief. One of my favorite films as a kid was The Creature from the Black Lagoon, a black and white classic that was terrifying and yet somehow comforting in memory. How could they remake it? 

But when I saw the new version I was stunned by its beauty and poetry and thankfully it was a lot less scary. I guess I wasn’t alone. It just received the Oscar for Best Picture. 

Last week I was contacted by a prospective client who wants me to revise their brand identity. In doing my research I checked out their website. The site was like looking at a faded postcard from 1991. Unresponsive, a clunky columned layout, low resolution photographs.

The client had no idea how dated it had become. They remembered it as classic and comfortable. 

Is there an aspect of your brand that is due for a remake? Something you might revise to reach a level of beauty, poetry and performance that you hadn’t thought possible? And maybe at the same time make a little less scary?

photo: ©Universal Pictures

Improving Design Productivity: Creatives Need Privacy

I'm a bit of an introvert. I find group activities somewhat draining. I find solitude rejuvenating and I do my best creative work when I'm alone. 

Given that, it's kind of funny that I've spent my career leading large groups of designers and artists in creative settings, Fortune 500 companies, global brand consultancies and learning institutions. 

I began weaving the web of my career as a fine artist. A solitary pursuit for the most part. When I needed to find a path to make a better living I got my MFA so I could teach. I loved teaching because I love learning and have a passion for helping others to achieve their creative potential. 

Later, I found that being a creative director was a lot like teaching except you made a tad more money. Plus, your work and the work of your teams are enjoyed by people all over the world. 

No artist wants to work in a total vacuum.

But with this transition came a need to be more outgoing. To be more often involved in group pursuits than individual ones. I built up that muscle. And it took a lot of trips to the gym.

Susan Cain, in her book "Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking" writes about how in the 20th century as our society moved from agrarian communities in the country to the cities, we changed. We went from working with a small group of people who we knew well to living and working in large groups of people we didn't know. Being "outgoing" became the goal. Our heros became the great salesman of the world. Our bible, Dale Carnegie's "How to win friends and influence people". 

This evolution brought with it physical changes to where and how we are working. In the corporate world and in design studios, the move to create open floor plan work spaces has reached a critical mass. In a reaction to breaking down the walls of de-personalization that the Dilbert-esque office cubicle seas wrought, we have lost something that was worth protecting. Solitude. As it turns out, designers need solitude. 

They need quiet and privacy to ruminate and play with ideas. Without distraction.

The casualties of this evolution are everywhere. You can see them in any design studio in the world hiding under their noise-cancelling headphones. They aren't just getting into their own jams. They are trying to escape the constant noise and distraction that the crumbling of the cubicle walls has brought down on them. 

One designer at Whirlpool articulates what I have heard over and over in my years as a creative leader: 

"I work in an open-plan office, and hate talking to the people near me. I just don't want to annoy everyone else. So instead, I hole up at my desk, earphones on all day. I email people who sit five feet from me. Whoever designed my office has absolutely failed.”

“Instead of making people more collaborative, it separated them. This trend needs to stop."

The results of this trend are also quantifiable it turns out. Finland's Institute of Occupational Health reports a decline of 5-10% of the performance of cognitive tasks like reading, writing and other creative work when in an open office setting. Management might be too drunk on work-pod Kool-Aide and the cost savings in office furniture. Or the shoulder-surfing-tabs-keeping and "what the hell are these people doing?". 

Open office plans just look cool. And if we look cool and modern, we are cool and modern, right? I mean, can you imagine a design firm with cubes? I didn't think so. This, it turns out, is a big part of the problem.

The facts increasingly point to this: Companies see open, collaborative spaces as an extension of their brand image. They are more interested in how it looks, than how well it actually works. Solitude is just out of fashion. Simple as that. And for creatives and designers that's a problem. 

It should be a problem for their companies, too.

All this is outweighing optimal creative productivity. And since when has business turned its back on improved productivity? Especially when in today's business world, creativity and innovation are what separates the winners from the also-rans.

The fact is people whose work is distracted make 50% more mistakes and take twice as long to finish. Maybe this has something to do with the fact that we are working longer hours than ever.

Plus, most designers don't like it. You've heard "A happy wife is a happy life"? Well, it goes triple for a happy designer.

The real question is: What does work? The answer is choice. Balance. Companies and agencies need to give designers access to both kinds of work spaces. If I were to place a bet, I would bet that the spaces that afford designers quiet, uninterrupted concentration and a reasonable amount of visual privacy will be the ones being fought over. Tooth and nail, if I know my designers. 

The pendulum of open floor plan offices needs to swing back to center.

In re-watching Susan Cain's amazing TED talk about the power of introversion, one statement jumped out at me. "There are no revelations without solitude."  

What design revelations and innovations have we already missed by removing our creatives space to think?

photo credit: Ben Mautner @flickr.com

You're Making Too Much Noise

At Orfield Labs in Minneapolis there is something called an anechoic chamber. Also known as the world’s quietest room. The sound level inside it is -9 decibels. There is literally less than zero ambient noise. When you are in it, the only signal you hear is the sound your own ears make (yes, they actually produce a little noise). That, and your own heart beating. 

The amount of noise that we have to filter today is ridiculous. The signal that we want to hear, that holds a meaningful message, is getting harder to discern. Unfortunately, sometimes we are responsible for creating this noise ourselves. Trying to be on too many social platforms at once, reflecting and bouncing too much content around. You can drown yourself out.

This is why I left Twitter last year (for the most part). My analytics revealed the promotions for my agency were mainly reaching the feeds of other marketers - who were all busy reverberating their own noise. Everyone was talking, but no one was really listening.

How quiet is the room you’ve chosen to be in? Is your customer there with you? They need to be able to hear the heartbeat of your message.

Control vs. Creativity

Driverless cars are off to a bumpy start. The newest vehicles are racking up a crash rate double that of cars driven by humans.

So what’s the problem?

The problem is they obey the law all the time. This may not sound like a bug, but it turns out not following the rules is sometimes the best answer. Just try following the rules while merging onto a chaotic highway at rush hour. Following the rules doesn’t work out so well when no one else is following them. 

Sometimes you have to think creatively to be successful.

So how much should the car break the rules? Answer: Just enough to do what’s right. Somewhere in the valley there are a lot of AI programmers losing sleep trying to figure out how to make that happen.

When it comes to leadership in business the problem is the same. When you empower people and give them control over decision-making, most often they will simply choose to do what’s right. Or should you issue commands to follow the rules no matter what? It’s Control vs. Creativity.

How can creativity drive your success?

Simply Genius

When I was in art school there was a mansion just across street from the printmaking studio. Looking out of the window at night I would often see a man hosting opulent parties. Waiters. Tuxedos. The house had a full-time gardening staff even though the house sat on only about a quarter of an acre of land. 

I was always curious how he got so rich. So one day I decided to ask one of the gardeners. 

The owner of the house had the patent on the twist tie. A little piece of wire covered in plastic. Whenever anyone used a twist tie, a few cents would end up in this guy’s pocket. I couldn’t be jealous because this guy was obviously a genius.

Innovation is born of necessity. He had a lot of bags. And damn it if stuff wasn’t always falling out of them. What to do? The solution was incredibly simple.

Design is a process of subtraction. Good design becomes great design when there is nothing left to take away. When it offers the solution to the problem in the simplest possible way. Has your brand’s design become overcomplicated? Is it time to simplify?

Less Is More

In the hallway that leads up to the statue of David by Michelangelo in Florence, there is a row of unfinished sculptures of people. They're called “The Prisoners” because they are half-trapped in marble - they were left in the process of being freed by the sculptor.

I spent the last week cleaning out my father-in-law’s house, as he prepares to move into a retirement community. He needed help shedding stuff. The good news is that he was ready to let go of it. It wasn’t a battle like you see on the show “Hoarders”.

In the process of drastically editing down his possessions, we could see a lightness come back into him. An excitement for new possibilities and beginnings even at this late stage of life. By getting rid of things he was rediscovering something that had been trapped in all the stuff, himself. 

Branding and design are processes of subtraction. You shed all that is unnecessary to express the kernel of the idea. You find the essence. 

By shedding things, we carve a space for new experiences. We free the prisoner. In less, we can find more.

The Hunt

All over the country people are actually walking around for once. Heads still buried in their smartphones, they are hunting for something. Pokemon. 

Deep down in our DNA we are all still hunters and gatherers.

One of my favorite things about working in fashion, branding and design is trend hunting. Exploring the retail world, stores, cities, cultures, digital environments, observing human behavior. Finding the patterns is challenging, fascinating and intoxicating. If this is happening, what will that cause? What’s next?

Successful brands are always watching. Analyzing the market and spotting where the opportunities are. They get out there and walk around. They know that nothing stands still. What are the macro societal trends? What micro consumer trends are being created from them?

Sure, you can buy a McKinsey & Co. report, but there is nothing like finding that one insight, that one Pokemon of trend hiding in the corner that can make your day. And maybe your third quarter, too.

photo credit: Chase Elliott Clark @ flickr.com

Make Your Mark

Long before I entered the design and branding arena, I was a painter. I worked on a large scale, usually about 5' x 6'. I’d sit in my studio and contemplate the expanse of white canvas in front of me. What do I do first? What if I blow it? It could be paralyzing.

Over time I discovered the key to unlock this limbo. You just make a mark. Any mark. You just have to disrupt the white of the canvas. Because after you've made that first mark, you have something to react to. To build upon.

So often we want to create something new. Something out of nothing. Like a business, or a brand, or a blog. But we are paralyzed. The answer is the one I found painting. Make a mark. It doesn't matter if it sucks. Because you're going to keep making marks and over time those first marks will be replaced with something better. Something approaching your vision. 

I can't tell you that starting isn't the hardest part. It is. But you just have to make one mark and then the journey of creation begins.

photo credit: Anders Lejczak @ Flickr

Out Of Your Comfort Zone

Yoga hurts. That’s what my wife’s t-shirt says anyway. It’s funny because if you’ve done yoga, you know it’s true. What yoga does is make you hold a pose that hurts a little, feels good a little and puts you right on the edge of your comfort zone. 

The goal is to maintain a feeling of peace when you are in the middle of doing something hard. It’s a great analogy for business. Our professional work can be trying. Learning to maintain a sense of balance and calm in the storm is what we all strive for.

However, just outside our comfort zone is where we grow, where we learn, where new things happen and new opportunities appear.

To grow, you have to let go of worrying what people think of you. Let go of perfectionism. Let go of that ego a little. Don’t try so hard to fit in. Because winning in business is about standing out. 

It’s about moving out of your comfort zone.

What Makes You, You?

We are inundated with marketing speak. Jargon like “360º campaigns”, “to the next level”, “world class” and “surprise and delight”. We all use them sometimes. The danger is becoming a business ‘bot, or worse - you may be missing the opportunity to make a human connection with your audience.

I was chatting with an entrepreneur who is having trouble crafting her brand message. She is an avid horse-back rider and was wondering if she should leverage the phrase “unbridled passion” in her communications. Her friends were saying “Don’t do it, people will think you have an equestrian business!”

I encouraged her to embrace it. Her love of horses is what makes her human. It lets us into her soul a little. She approaches her consultancy with the same energy and love that she does her horses. It’s a great story, it’s her narrative and it’s authentic.

What is it that makes you human? Are you bearing your soul a little in your work and in your brand? Tell your story and embrace your narrative. It’s what makes you, you.

And it’s your customer’s way in.

The Moment Brands Dream Of

A few weeks ago, I attended the Virtual Reality Summit in NYC. I was struck, not with how advanced the technology is - but rather with how no one really knows what to do with it.

There is a saying in Silicon Valley, “It’s a technology looking for a problem.” They don’t really know how to use it, or what to use it for. They just know that when someone puts on a VR headset, they don’t want to take it off. And when they do take it off, they all say the same thing, “Wow.” 

I’m reminded of a day eons ago when I took a box-shaped Apple mouse in my hand and clicked around in Mac Paint for the first time. At that moment, I knew I was witnessing a watershed moment in art, design and communication. I knew everything was about to change. This is where we are with VR. It will be huge. For entertainment, education, medicine, design, science, communication, all of it.

This is the kind of moment brands dream of. The opportunity exists for brands to design immersive sensory worlds and architect experiences of unimaginable scope. But amazingly, brands are sitting on the sidelines. They need to get in there and start imagining, experimenting, and pushing pixels around. Because everything is about to change.

The Un-Sexy Solution

If you ever want evidence why our species has survived so long, Google Images for the phrase "There, I fixed it." You'll find thousands of pictures of hilarious solutions to some of life's challenges. And a lot of duct tape.

Those pictures always reminds me of my days at Gap. I was amazed when I realized that the $16B goliath ran entirely on Excel spreadsheets being emailed around the globe. Unsexy, but it got the job done.

The tech explosion has introduced myriad apps, sites and hardware that are really sexy - with more features than you could explore in a lifetime. You can get lost in the sea of functionality, interfaces and connectedness. Last week I saw a cutting board that has wifi. Really.

But, sometimes the best solution isn't the sexiest. Sometimes sexy can distract you from actually getting the job done. Sometimes a scuffed shoe doesn't need a rechargeable handheld oscillating brush with a touchscreen. Sometimes it just needs some spit and a rub on the back of your pant leg.

Curiosity Not Passion

I was sitting in a lime green room with a drop ceiling. My guidance counselor said, “You should follow your passion”. I thought, OK, great! The only problem was I didn’t have one. 

Passion is a word that carries the weight of certainty. Passion burns with a lot of heat. But passion can also run out of fuel before the destination is reached. 

If she had asked me instead, “What are you curious about”? That was a question I knew the answer to. I had a bunch of answers to that one. 

Curiosity is evergreen and self-perpetuating. Curiosity invites exploration and experimentation. Following fascinations can lead you into new worlds. One interest fuels another and they expand into the realm of possibility.

Even now, we are prodded from every angle to follow our passion. The media says it. The business book authors say it. They say it on Shark Tank. I am certain that there are thousands of brilliant businesses, products and careers that were never launched because someone hit the “passion” wall. 

I'll bet curiosity has launched thousands more.

Idea Muscles

It’s been a while since I worked out. Things are starting to get a little soft. I know when it's time to get back at it because it gets progressively harder to entertain the thought of actually doing anything physical. A body in motion…

I found that coming up with creative ideas works the same way. The more I don’t do it, the harder it becomes. Creative thinking is like a muscle. Just like lifting weights, there are exercises I do that make it stronger. When I don’t do them, my creativity sits on the couch and orders in pizza.

Inspiration doesn’t pop in your head like a lightbulb. You have to go out and hunt it down. I feed myself with graphic design on Pinterest, branding trend on Medium, hit my retail go-tos in Manhattan. Whenever I get a thought, any thought, I click to my Google Sheets tab and write that sucker down. I brain dump. I have to get 5 ideas down before I can take a breather. 

If you’re stuck, if you are feeling a little vacant, get that idea muscle to the gym. Lift some. Inspiration isn’t magic, you have to put in the work.

"Brand" is Tired

The word “brand” is tired. It is no longer inspiring to the savvy client. It used to be you could get clients jazzed and hungry for change by merely uttering the word in association with their products. They desperately desired to be a real “brand”. 

But “brand” has become a hackneyed term, part of pop culture where every teen on Facebook is nurturing their own personal brand. But I would argue that because of this, having a clearly communicated brand is even more important. The expectations of the consumer have been raised. But “brand” is too small a word to describe what the world expects from a product or service company anymore.

What I see time again, even with Fortune 100 clients, is a brand ecosystem or brand experience that is fractured. Considering the totality of a brands equities and representing them consistently at every consumer touchpoint has gotten harder to achieve as the range of touchpoints has grown exponentially over the last couple decades. Even the biggest brands are often confusing their customers. 

What we are really being tasked to do for our clients is “experience design”. This encompasses the whole of a brand, all equities and all consumer interactions. It is our job to come in with fresh eyes and tell them what is broken and what we need to do to fix it. To perform beyond the brief. Show them what could be.

In the world of consumer goods, packaging is the big gun. Experience with a capital “E”. Packaging is a touchpoint that triggers all of the senses. Sight, touch, smell, sound and (in some cases) taste. More than any other, packaging is the equity that keeps on giving. It lives on the consumers home, in their cupboard, on their desk, visible on their shelf long after the purchase decision was made. It is the one equity that can, if well executed, drive trial when a consumer encounters the brand for the first time at a store. We must remember that up to 65% of purchase decisions are made when the consumer is standing in front of the shelf, in that final 3 seconds. 

If consumers are overwhelmed and are not choosing our clients offering that is our fault. It is because of an inconsistent brand strategy and an articulation that is not differentiated from its competition. You have to throw a big rock to make a splash these days. 

When brands develop, execute and guard focused equities and a clear strategy is when they win. It is our job in design to be bold, be different and create a remarkable “experience”.  

Because creating a “brand” is no longer enough.

Credits: Image Source: Flickr.com: Adam Goode

Measuring Up: Quantifying Designers Performance

One question that’s plagued many a creative director is this: How you measure a creatives performance? You can measure an account person by how much business and revenue they generate. How about designers?

Designers in the commercial design industry are tasked with creating work that works. Work that pleases the client, delights the consumer and drives sales of goods or services. Sometime that includes the work pleasing the creative director, sometimes not. It’s commercial work, not fine art. Fine art has the luxury of being subjective and can be purely conceptual. Commercial work has to sell stuff.

The clearest metric to evaluate design work and by extension, the worker, is "adoption rate". Did the client choose the work? Did it make it to shelf, or on-air? Could the client quantify a sales bump? Or were all your designs left in the "outs" bin.

A slightly more subjective metric is whether the design delivered on the strategy of the project. Does the designer consistently hit the target - doing work that actually makes it to a client presentation (that is, past the CD and the account director whether the client chooses it or not).

The final criteria is the WOW factor. Is it gorgeous? Did it make the CD's eyes tear up just a little bit? Pure aesthetics are important, too, and a seasoned creative leader knows beautiful work when they see it. We were trained to recognize it and we have years of experience judging it. It also has a tendency to win awards if you’re lucky on top of being good.

I generally take notes as the year passes and capture who did what work in my designers goals folders, so at annual review time there are clear examples to reference in your conversations. 

Other factors also influence a designers success in the studio. Do they show up to work on time? Is the work ready at critique time? Is it visually presented well? How well do they speak strategically to the work? What do they bring to the table in brainstorming sessions? What do they contribute when it comes to studio-wide inspiration? What creative energy two they bring to the workplace? How are their client relationships? All important factors.

But the crucial metric of a designers success is certainly “adoption”. Do they do strategic design work that makes it through the gauntlet? Is that work of high aesthetic quality? If the answers there are yes, you’ve got a winner on your hands and many other sins can be forgiven.

Credits: Image Source: Flickr.com: University of Salford Press, Techhub Manchester Murals Project

In Praise of the Cube: Creatives Need Privacy

I'm a bit of an introvert. Maybe more than a bit. I find group activities somewhat draining. I find solitude rejuvenating and I do my best creative work when I'm alone. 

Given that, it's kind of funny that I've spent my career leading large groups of designers and artists in creative settings, Fortune 500 companies, global brand consultancies and learning institutions. 

I began weaving the web of my career as a painter, a fine artist. A solitary pursuit for the most part. When I needed to find a path to make a better living I got my MFA so I could teach. I loved teaching because I love learning. I love sharing how to travel a path of learning with others. 

Later, I found that being a creative director was a lot like teaching except you made more money. Also, your work and the work of your teams are enjoyed by people all over the world. No artist wants to work in a total vacuum.

But with this transition came a need to be more outgoing. To be more often involved in group pursuits than individual ones. I built up that muscle. And it took a lot of trips to the gym.

Susan Cain, in her book "Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking" writes about how in the 20th century as our society moved from agrarian communities in the country to the cities, we changed. We went from working with a small group of people who we knew well to living and working in large groups of people we didn't know. Being "outgoing" became the goal. Our hero's became the great salesman of the world. Our bible, Dale Carnegie's "How to win friends and influence people". 

This evolution brought with it physical changes to where and how we are working. In the corporate world and particularly design studios, the move to create open floor plan work spaces has reached a critical mass. In a knee-jerk reaction to breaking down the walls of de-personalization that the Dilbert-esque office cubicle seas wrought, we have lost something that was worth protecting. Solitude. Designers need solitude. They need quiet and privacy to ruminate and ideate and play with ideas. Without distraction.

The casualties of this evolution are everywhere. You can see them in any design studio in the world hiding under their noise-cancelling headphones. They aren't just getting into their own jams. They are trying to escape the constant noise and distraction the crumbling of the cubicle walls has brought down on them. 

One designer on Whirlpool articulates what I have heard over and over in my years as a creative leader: 

"I work in an open-plan office, and hate talking to the people near me. I just don't want to annoy everyone else. So instead, I hole up at my desk, earphones on all day. I email people who sit five feet from me. Whoever designed my office has absolutely failed: Instead of making people more collaborative, it separated them. This trend needs to stop."

The results of this trend are also quantifiable it turns out. Finland's Institute of Occupational Health reports a decline of 5-10% of the performance of cognitive tasks like reading, writing and other creative work when in an open office setting. Management might be too drunk on the work-pod Kool-Aide and the cost savings in office furniture. Or the shoulder-surfing tabs-keeping on "what the hell are these people doing?". 

Or that open office plans just look cool. And I have to say they do look cool. Because if we look cool and modern, we are cool and modern, right? I mean, can you imagine a design firm with cubes? I didn't think so. This, it turns out, is a big part of the problem.

The facts increasingly point to this: Companies see open, collaborative spaces as an extension of their brand image. They are more interested in how it looks, than how well it actually works. Solitude is just out of fashion. Simple as that. And for creatives and designers that's a problem. 

It should be a problem for their companies, too.

All this is outweighing optimal creative productivity. And since when has business turned it's back on improved productivity? Especially when in today's business world, creativity and innovation are what separates the winners from the also-rans.

The fact is people whose work is distracted make 50% more mistakes and take twice as long to finish. Maybe that has something to do with the complaint that we are working longer hours than ever.

Plus, most designers don't like it. You've heard "A happy wife is a happy life"? Well it goes triple for designers.

The real question is: What does work? The answer is choice. Balance. Companies and agencies need to give designers access to both kinds of work spaces. If I were to place a bet, I would bet that the spaces that afford designers quiet, uninterrupted concentration and a reasonable amount of visual privacy will be the ones being fought over. Tooth and nail, if I know my designers. 

The pendulum of open floor plan offices needs to swing back to center.

In re-watching Susan Cain's amazing TED talk about the power of introversion, one statement jumped out at me. "There are no revelations without solitude."  

What design revelations and innovations have we already missed by removing our creatives space to think?

photo credit: Ben Mautner, @flickr