Mark Braddock, creative director at Block Branding, wrote a piece for the “Australian Creative” titled Advertutionalisation, where he talks about how he’s been “trained” to respond to a brief:
I get pretty much a free rein to write what I like (…) And that’s the bloody problem.
I have been trained, Pavlovian dog-style, to respond to a brief. I know how to take a brief, apply a little lateral thinking and create a serviceable, if not always groundbreaking, piece of communication.
We all dream about how wonderful things would be without the constraints of a brief. Oh, how wonderful it would be to have creative freedom, real creative freedom. Well, I’m telling you there is a reason that most real artists end up destroying themselves and/or those around them. When you remove the brief, you end up in one hell of a scary place.
I’d argue that it’s a tiny minority of people the ones that can work with real freedom. They don’t create to solve a need. They just create. If that creation ends up unleashing a need, that’s a different issue. Although I’m tempted to connect this “talent” with entrepreneurship, I quickly realize that I’m way off. Like in any other profession, most entrepreneurs create only after they had recognized a pain. On the other end, there’s people in a wide range of professions that create their best work only when they aren’t answering to anyone or anything.
Although we all dream of working without a brief, working with a brief gives us something to measure ourselves against. It gives us a nice, wide set of goal posts and a nice comfortable set of crutches. Clients give us the money and time, and all the excuses we will ever need.
When you aren’t free, you can rationalize any results. Even worse: you can rationalize your intentions.
I have therefore learned to love the brief like it is my own comfy little cell. It’s more than comfy; in fact, it’s like one of those cells that drug barons get to stay in. You know, the ones where they can pretty much live the life they want to so long as they don’t walk out the front gate. It is a cell, but it’s a very nice cell.
To hell with creative freedom… what about just freedom? The one we claim to enjoy, seek, fight for, miss, or whatever relationship you may have with it. What are we doing with it?
Let’s be honest with ourselves for a moment. We don’t want pure freedom.
We just want some wiggle room.
{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
Creativity without constraints doesn’t exist. People want to be free (from a job, relationship, circumstance), but really they just want a different set of constraints.
I wouldn’t say it doesn’t exist, but it’s definitely rare. At least when it comes to creative freedom.
Damn, Carlos. You’re absolutely right – we don’t want total and absolute freedom (though I’ll claim that that in itself is a myth) because, quite frankly, it’s isolating. Claiming total freedom results in destroying any and all influence other people had on our lives, and that can result in a lot of fractured relationships in your pursuit of whatever the hell you are using your freedom for.
Point is, people want a degree of freedom, but not so much that they are isolated from their friends and family.
I’ve left everything behind to come to a new country. While I’ve never felt this kind of freedom, sometimes I do miss the previous “jail.” I think you can push the limits for a while, especially if you want to grow, but in the end we need them.
Freedom is a dangerous thing. Too much choice almost always leads to indecision, confusion and stagnation. We can do anything we want, just not everything. The hard part is choosing.
Outside constraints, like the brief in your post, are healthy because they force us to chose. It takes phenomenal amounts of discipline to focus and persist when you have infinite choices. That is why we jump from career to career, spouse to spouse, diet to diet, fad to fad. Something always comes along that looks better than the last trend we chased. Even if it is not better, new things are more interesting just because they are different.
Personally, I am working on 10 projects and all are stagnating for lack of attention. I know I need to focus, but without outside constraints I don’t want to limit myself to just one course of action.
If only I could get a sign from god about what to pursue.
That’s a good point. It’s hard to focus when the world is your oyster. Especially online, where it’s simple like that to jump into a new project.
I’m still not quite sure which side I want to connect with. I love the point that’s brought up. Helps me get closer to realizing what I really want.
Maybe it’s all in the breaking out of the continuous cells, briefs, whatevers that keep some of us going.
Whatever works for you.