Limitations

I’m guilty and so are many of the “creatives” I know.

“I can’t do anything with this budget…”

“They aren’t willing to X…”

All these things are said in regards to clients. You know, those evil, cheap, backwards people who sign your paycheck? The ones who need what you can do or think, but will not allow  you to do or think. But, wait; are your clients really holding you back? Why are you in that situation?

Let’s take a deep breath and a step back. Rather an demonizing our clients for imposing limitations, maybe we should be a little more grateful for the limitations they impose (or the limitations that the project/medium imposes).

Not so long ago, I had a client who have me “tabula rasa” – basically meaning I had a clean slate. I was terrified. I had a rough idea of what their startup was trying to achieve, but without and further guidance or constraints (business goals, user needs, etc.), I was absolutly lost. I didn’t know thier business as well as they did (can a desginer ever??) and I certainly didn’t understand what would really engage the people they were hoping to reach. (looking back, I am not sure they did either). My feeling is we ended up with something cliche, that ultimately only served as a yellow pages listing (which is maybe all they needed??).

The human mind seems to focus on the negative, but as creatives isn’t it our job to make do with what we have and bring forth a solution? Now, I am not implying that you can make gold from straw or that you should accept any and all work from any and all clients, but I am simply offering a challenge.

Challenge yourself to do the thing you say you can’t. Don’t allow yourself to only go about in a prescribed manner, or only do what you are comfortable with. There’s little vitality in that, and very little growth.  Some of the greatest innovations have been accomplished by those who had all the cards stacked against them.

Obviously, you need to keep your wits to keep your business, but should you find someone or something you believe in, why not give it a shot? Maybe you’ll surprise yourself. Maybe you’ll fail. But if you think you might fail  - do your best to fail early. Society wants us to view failure as purely negative. I disagree. As long as you commit yourself to learn from your failure/mistake you really haven’t lost anything. Have you?

Go forth. Do the “impossible”, and let me know how you do.

Posted on Wednesday, June 16th, 2010 at 6:05 pm and is filed under Business, Psychology . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.