An anecdote for my fellow creatives regarding the time I almost screwed up

An anecdote for my fellow creative people about a time I almost really screwed up:

After my interview with Adrian and Jasmine two days ago, I needed some photos. Inside the SVRC Marketplace on the second floor is a yellow brick wall that can be fun to play with, so we headed upstairs. I took Jasmine’s photos first, and then moved on to Adrian.

“Dude! Adrian! I’ve got this idea I think could be super cool…”

Here was the super cool idea: Adrian would stand at the corner of the wall in a way that would create these two, massive, bright yellow rectangular guiding lines zooming in from the background, focusing the viewer’s attention directly onto Adrian.

REALLY.

SUPER.

COOL.

So, I told Adrian to stand next to the wall. I was excited, and asked him what he thought.

Smiling, but with a little bit of nervousness, he says, “No, man, I don’t think so.”

I’m not offended, but ask him why.

“It feels like my jail photo,” he says.

Here’s the thing, my fellow creative people: as soon as we involve others in our pursuits, creativity becomes a team sport. This is true whether they’re paying you or not, whether they’re “qualified to have an opinion” or not, or whether you think they have good taste or not.

If they say something like, “I’m cool with whatever you come up with”, chances are they don’t really mean that, even if they think they do. If they DO actually mean that, the chances of them being disappointed with the product are considerably slim and you just won the lottery.

But in either case, collaboration will create something better. Ask questions, poke, prod, have conversations, show samples, experiment, get feedback, collect information: we need to do whatever we need to do that will get our brain and their brain to throw a dance party. A brain-to-brain coupling. A mind meld.

Pulling that off is how the good stuff happens.

But if we don’t make the effort to collaborate, either because we don’t think about it or don’t care what they think, what might happen is what almost happened to me: we make something we think is great, but the person we’re making it for thinks it’s crappy, embarrassing or worse.

Had I not asked Adrian what he thought, and had he not been honest with me, I would have blasted a photo across the internet that made him feel like an inmate instead of rock star.

HUGE FAIL, PHILIP.

We need to be willing to admit that it’s possible for us to be SUPER PUMPED about an idea that is actually really terrible. Terrible not because the idea itself is bad, but terrible because it doesn’t work for the other person involved.

I think this means a couple things:

1) Creatives: we need to be humble. Pursuing a craft inherently means that will will make things that aren’t good. As much as you might be invested in the emotional gravity that serif gives the letter “R” in the client’s logo, if the client thinks it’s dumb, you need to either A) convince them, or what is more likely, figure out how to make something better.

2) Clients/people receiving the creative thing: Creatives aren’t mind readers, so don’t be afraid to contribute some thoughts. We want you to be happy, mostly because we tend to be emotionally fragile folks who will sob, wail, and want to give up if you’re not. So help us out a little. But also understand that, hopefully, the creative you’re working with knows what they’re doing. You might REALLY REALLY ULTRA LOVE something, but if they say, “It’s going to look extremely unflattering” or “It won’t work with printing” or “It’s important that the logo be clear and easily readable, and this isn’t that”, you need to be prepared to defer to their expertise. If something is a non-negotiable, stand your ground. But if everything is a non-negotiable, you might as well do it yourself.

There might be times where “Let’s give it a shot in case it works”, but this moment with Adrian was not one of those times. So instead of using the entire wall, we just focused on the wall’s bright yellow bricks.

My original plan was a big, complicated idea concocted to fill my Photographer’s Ego Bucket, but we went with a simple—and considerably better idea.

Ready for this brilliance?

“Stand there and I’ll make you laugh.”

And considering his story, I got one of my favorite photos of all the photos I’ve taken.

It’s not super unique visually. It won’t make fellow photographers swoon with envy and it won’t snag 10,000 likes on Instagram.

But the picture is 10,000 times better because of Adrian.

Because *it’s* Adrian.

Formerly an angry and homeless 15-year-old resigned to ending up dead or in jail, now standing as a man mentoring the kind of kids he used to be.

And he’s absolutely beaming.

Feeling comfortable.

Looking cool.

Being happy.

The opposite of jail.