Counting stars: Creativity over predictability

Our industry has matured into something that’s very different from the almost joyfully naive, creative designer’s playground that it was when we started. While we focus our thoughts onto processes, methods and mechanics, instead of ideas, we’re losing the creative ‘soul’ of our work.

Andrew’s hopeful that all’s not lost and that we can make work that’s memorable if we focus as much on creativity as we do on implementation.

While we focus our thoughts onto processes, methods and mechanics, instead of ideas, we’re losing the creative ‘soul’ of our work. I’m hopeful that all’s not lost and that we can make work that’s memorable if we focus as much on creativity as we do on implementation.

Learning points

• As our industry matures, we’ve made a web that is more accessible and more responsive to our users’ needs.
• We’re creating a web that is full of safe design, because we fear failure. We need to recover and make memorable work for the web.
• A good place to look for inspiration is advertising
  • Advertising creates pop-culture moments that remain memorable decades after the campaign ends.
  • Clever advertising concentrates & emphasises a truth.
• Our reliance on testing means we are abdicating our responsibility for designs. What does our work, our company stand for? Creativity can never be as predictable as manufacturing. We can’t expect to turn creativity into a process. Copy shouldn’t be an afterthought, added to pre-existing templates. Copy may trigger a design idea.
• We can improve the web by focusing on design as much as we do implementation.