Freedom

Im sitting here on a Thursday evening surfing the internet, ahem, ‘researching’ and eating fairy bread, yes you read correctly, fairy bread. For the uninitiated I’m talking about sliced bread, spread with butter and drowning in rainbow coloured hundreds and thousands. And when I am done I will lick the left over sprinkles from the plate... oh yes indeed I will. Why do I do this? Well, because I live in my own house, I am an adult, and I am home alone (and therefore cannot be scolded by my partner!). I am also endowed with the freedom to do as I please.

Freedom is a wonderful thing, and a precious commodity in the design world. Without freedom, we go insane, bending to the will of others. Freedom invites innovation to the table. There is a common misconception that designers have full creative liberty, when in fact we are merely vessels than translate ideas/notions into life, and to do this, we must be able to predict what our client, the user, or the consumer; wants. More often than not, before they even know it themselves. I give the Ipod as a classic, albeit well-used, example. Apple did not identify a gap in the market and fill it... they created the market, and therefore the demand. But for the men and women who designed it, Apple was the client. Apple had a brief for a product and its parameters that needed to be fulfilled.

Unbridled creative freedom is rare, unless you’re one of the very lucky few whose name surpasses most others in your industry. If I could access an architect like Frank Lloyd Wright, and know that he could create something that rivalled Falling Water in Pennsylvania, I would walk away and give the man his creative freedom. If you could secure Helmut Newton for your fashion spread, you’d give him a model and some clothes and ask him to go nuts. In most instances, our freedom to ‘be a designer’ is in constant battle with client (realistic or otherwise) objectives, marketability, budgets, and environmental and social accountability. A client once said to me, “Go ahead and pick whatever you want, anything really... As long as I like it”. A good designer meets or even exceeds client expectation, and what does the client expect? For you to meet the brief successfully, on time, and on budget, and with beauty (and I don’t just mean aesthetics, I’m talking about a refined, well thought out, quality product).

So how do you push on as a designer and a creative soul if you are constantly having to create within these limitations? How do you keep your sanity, and be proud of your work? How can you fight for your freedom? Well you can start by no longer perceiving these client imposed boundaries as limiting. Be thankful in fact, that you have them. These guides make your job easier, and NO design job should start without a well documented and mutually agreeable brief. A good design brief sets the pace, cuts free any misconceptions, saves you time and money and is a valuable reference point. It allows you to narrow your field of vision to a few concepts, concepts which can be explored in depth with all the creative juices you can muster.

Select design jobs that align with your morals. The ability to express your creative freedom can be cut off at the knees if you disagree with the morality of the design job. The architectural firm I work for is currently in bid phase for a new refugee detention centre, some of the team members refused to work on such a project, and it was such a hotly contested topic. If youre recovering from cancer and are a packaging designer, chances are you will unconsciously sabotage your own work if its a cigarette packet you’ve been asked to design. If you find there are negative implications of doing your job well (and lets face it, you should be doing your best) the parameters will feel so stifling that even if youve done an amazing job, you’ve still failed. And it is that knowledge alone which crushes your freedom. You have the power to choose your client as much as they can choose you.

The customer is not always right. And I should know, I spent too many years in retail. As a designer, you do not work alone – believe it or not. Your business is a partnership with your clientele; you both have a vested interest in the result. I’ve heard stories of web designers or illustrators working for hours on a fantastic theme, only to present it to the client and a response of ‘No, I don’t like it, No, thats not what I meant’. And they walk out of the presentation at risk of blowing their resource budget, and perhaps their temper, mumbling under their breath about how little the client knows about good design. But where did it go wrong? Sure it may be an amazing concept, but did you respond to the brief properly? Did you communicate effectively in the first instance, did you have a kick off meeting, and did you keep all lines of communication open with the client? When things like this happen, we often here the lament about the lack of creative freedom. But I have been surprised by clients who had been completely taken by an unusual concept because the designer ‘sold’ it to them. And why were they able to sell it? Because the client trusted his/her opinion, and why again? Because the lines of communication were wide open, the client was able to trust the designer, knowing that every move, intent, and objective had been communicated. I’m not talking about an obligatory email every time you want to change a font colour, but a genuine interest in treating the client like a collaborative partner, to facilitate your freedom of creativity.

Have you ever had free reign in a design job? Did it work out as you planned? Or have you ever had what you considered to be the world’s most difficult client!?