A Creative Perspective on Travelling Light
One of the dangers we face as creative professionals is a tendency to assume that we already know how to solve a particular problem because we've worked with similar clients, projects or products before. It's an easy trap to fall into, particularly in an environment where efficiency and streamlined production are the darlings of every business blog.
One of the mostly invisible components of creative work—and more challenging than you might imagine—is to jettison the past and wrestle with our own preconceived notions (and sometimes those of our clients) in order to create an open and fertile environment for the new possibilities that will best fulfill the mandate we have been given. Creative problem-solving requires a new and thorough consideration from all angles, inside and out, starting from ground zero.
Travelling light includes getting rid of our emotional baggage. Good solutions are designed to elicit both intellectual and emotional responses from their end-users in order to achieve the goals set forth by our clients. This doesn't meant that we ourselves should get too emotionally attached to our concepts... in fact, although our passion for creativity may fuel our daily calling, emotional attachment to our own ideas can be an obstacle to truly creative solutions, while intellectual clarity about the true purpose of our work allows us to serve our clients best... and to explain how and why a concept will work in all the ways that matter to our clients.
Of course, as we work through each of the possible angles to solving the current issue at hand, we don't throw away everything we know. Our past experience provides valuable insight and guidance, but an open-minded examination of each decision will keep us from falling into the trap of taking particular choices for granted or letting the wagon wheels roll us down the ruts most travelled.
After all, didn't you become a creative professional in order to be an explorer and adventurer, discovering a new world every day?