You're Not a Creative Vending Machine

I love this time of year. I was never a big fan of schoolwork, but I loved going back to school. Maybe it was my aversion to the actual work (and the resulting shitty grades) that made me crave a clean slate every September - but everything feels crisp and new this time of year. On the first day of school everyone’s on the same level. Everyone can make honour roll.

So, in the spirit of freshness and crispness, let’s take this back to the start of every project. Let’s talk about the beginning of the creative process.

Once you start getting paid for your creative work, the how (how you create what you create) becomes more important than the what (whatever you create).

The what is going to be different every time and usually a collaborative effort with your client. It’s also not special.

In theory, a logo, a website, or even a chainsaw sculpture could be produced by anyone. With enough time and practice, I could make a chainsaw sculpture. It would probably be pretty good too. But an experienced sculptor brings an approach and style informed by years of honing their process.

Someone could hire me and pay for all the time it takes me to figure it out - or they could pay for an experienced sculptor’s process.

That process is your how. And that’s where the money is.

Over the next five issues I’m going to cover the key points in a creative process you can get paid for. 

Your experience is important but it’s not worth anything if that experience didn’t develop a process.

The Beginning: What Happens When You Get "The Ask"

Every project starts the same way: someone needs something (hopefully creative), and they ask you to make it. But what happens in those first few minutes after you hear the ask (aka the client brief) can determine whether you spend the next week in brainstorm hell or hit the ground running with confidence and direction.

Most creatives I know go through some version of the same initial panic/thrill. The feelings range from "How am I (an imposter) going to pull this off?” to “I (an expert) know exactly what I’m going to do”. Both are dangerous.

The pros have learned that this moment isn't about generating the perfect idea immediately (even if one comes on its own). It's about having a process that moves you from disorganized thoughts to productive exploration.

Don't Try to Solve It in the Room

The biggest mistake I see creatives make is trying to nail the concept while the client is still talking. You're nodding and smiling, but half your brain is already moving ahead to what the final package will look like.

No matter how good the initial idea, you need to let it go, write it down or type it out, and keep listening. A “perfect idea” can close your mind off exactly when it’s most critical that it stay open.

Focus your thinking on truly understanding what they want. Ask questions that help you get to the real brief, not just the one they think they're giving you.

The Real Brief vs. The Non-Brief

"We need a new logo" isn't a brief. It's a starting point.

"We need a logo because customers can't tell us apart from our competitors and it's hurting sales" - now we're getting somewhere.

Most clients will give you the non-brief first. They'll tell you what they think they need without explaining why they need it.

But a logo for a brand new business vs one that looks like everyone else’s are completely different challenges.

Listen. Ask. Dig. Get to the “why”.

Capture Everything, Hold Nothing Tightly

Here's what I do immediately after getting a brief: I write down everything that popped into my head during the conversation, no matter how stupid or random.

• The client mentioned their competitors use a lot of blue. Write it down.

• You thought about that restaurant logo you saw last week. Write it down.

• The word "trustworthy" made you think about NAPA Auto Parts. Write it down.

Don't edit yourself. Don't decide what's relevant yet. Just get it all out of your head.

This serves two purposes:

1. It clears your head so you can think (and listen) clearly

2. It captures those initial instincts before they get buried under research and overthinking.

How To Get To The Answers

There have been more than a few occasions where I knew exactly what I wanted to give a client before they’d finished their first sentence. I’d be ready to start on my idea with no more questions only to find out later that this was absolutely the wrong direction to take. What’s the next move after that? Starting over? That’s a bad look.

These days I do it this way:

• Initial meeting: Discuss the challenge and the process. I keep it light and answer their questions.

  • Goal: Try to get their origin story. What has led them to the moment they know they need something. (This meeting usually happens before they sign on)

• Intake questionnaire: This is usually some variation of the same thing but I customize it. Key questions include: What are some brands/peers you look up to? When was a moment you felt you represented yourself best?

  • Goal: Try to understand what they like. How they might visualize success.

• Research: There’s never been less excuses to not go deep on a client and their industry. A mix of Google, Reddit and Perplexity can give anyone a deeper understanding of even the densest subcultures.

  • Goal: Try to get to the point where you understand the feelings of their target audience.

• Findings presentation: I throw everything into a Miro board and we review it together on a call.

  • Goal: Blindspots. What did I miss? Even if there aren’t any this step is critical to getting in your client’s head.

The beginning of a project is an exciting time. It feels like that first day of school. “This time it’s gonna be perfect!” And at the beginning it will be - but just as quick it won’t be. So use this hallowed time of perfection to absorb as much as you can.

Got the gold ribbon idea right away? Sure. Write it down. And let’s come up with a couple more, Don Draper. Maybe perfect is a few questions away.

Further Reading

I touched on some of my own process here and in particular those first few meetings with a client that establish trust. Outside of gathering the info you’ll need to hit a home-run, these meetings can also set up the whole relationship and make the overall process more efficient. Read about the benefits of getting in deep with a client early in What I Learned Working For An NHL Hockey Team.

The One-Question Interview

Working Creative: What is the most important thing you learned about your creative instincts?

Daniel Berzen: When I was a kid I realized that what I want to do is make things millions of people might love. And advertising was an amazing way to do that. But the hardest creative instincts to break were all about my actual insecurities. I had to work on getting rid of the external pressures and opinions that didn't matter - like how to make the creative director really happy or the person sitting next to me happy. While you have to do that, those insecurities stopped me from going all the way into my creative instincts and what I thought was right.

What I'm getting at is your creative instincts and your instincts of self-preservation come in conflict. You know what I mean? You have instincts toward both - your creative instincts and your survival instinct.

And it’s dangerous to just say "trust your instincts" because it's not about just trusting them and it's not about breaking your sense of self-preservation. You have to separate out what are your survival instincts and focus on the rest - and then go do the work.

To be creative is to be self-actualized. So you need to be able to balance the preservation instincts with the creative inspiration. Once you figure out that balance or how to overcome it, that's when you can really live your creative instinct.

You have to master one to master both and turn your creative instincts into creative muscles.

I have two sayings in life and you have to hold them both together. Otherwise they're each meaningless. One: worry is the interest for a debt you may never owe. Two: if you fail to prepare, prepare to fail.

You need to remember both every single time because like mastering the instincts, you can't have one without the other.

Bonus Question:

Working Creative: What do you imagine/picture/visualize when you hear the words “Working Creative”?

Daniel Berzen: I'm very much about being aligned with what you do, so calling myself a "creative" kind of makes me cringe. And then to associate "having to work" as the way I want to label living that life - it just sounds like a fucking nightmare.

I'm a big "what does language mean?" kind of guy. I took symbolic logic when I was a philosophy undergrad, and "working creative" just sounds way less dope than "having fun making shit." I know they're basically the same thing in practice, but the label of "working" to me sounds like a fucking nightmare.

If I picture Daniel Berzen in an interview with "Working Creative" as my title underneath - wow, that sounds like hell. Just a perpetual cycle of work. It sounds like Sisyphus pushing his boulder up the mountain, or like I'm sitting in hell next to Hitler getting pineapples up his ass ¹ - just this endless, punishing loop.

The way it's phrased just feels wrong to me, personally. I'd much rather be someone who has fun making shit than someone whose identity is tied to the grind of working.

_{¹ Reference to the cinematic work "Little Nicky" (Dir. Steven Brill, 2000), specifically the scene depicting Adolf Hitler's eternal punishment in Hell, wherein the character is subjected to the repeated insertion of pineapples. Happy Madison Productions.}

Parting Thought

A lot of what I write is about working against your harmful instincts and it may seem that my point is always that the only thing between you and your success is your own bad decisions. That is my point, but choosing the wrong way to deal with something can be more useful to developing your process than nailing it the first time. So get out there and make mistakes. But learn from them. And stop making so many mistakes. Because you’re better than that. You’re great.