I was in the proverbial ‘zone’ last Thursday night. It felt fantastic, working late on a design concept for an upcoming project and getting completely immersed in the mechanics of the creative. This never gets old. I love taking ideas from rough ideation sketch to full-blown colour comp, then building a story around the visual elements.
What’s late you ask? I was up past 2am —probably closer to 2:30am, though who’s counting minutes. I had lots of ideas circulating my mind’s eye for well over a week, in fact many more than I could ever hope to expand upon for this particular project. I kept reminding myself that I’d promised to have something concrete to show and discuss Friday morning. Yeah, deadlines are a necessary evil. Setting a date to share something with colleagues or a client, in my case, usually serves as the catalyst for buckling-down and getting the work done.
At some point, usually the last possible moment prior to the presentation deadline, I’ll commit to a direction or idea, usually by wading through a pile of sketches, reference images, and notes scattered in the half dozen or so sketchbooks and random scrap pieces of paper littering my desk area. This process tends to feel like the last set of an intense workout. It’s a whittling down of thoughts, from many fleeting ideas down to several hooks that warrant further exploration and development. Then yet again down to one (or two) gems that are worthy of presentation to the client.
That feeling, having created something out of nothing, something I’m excited to share with a client, something that creatively aligns with the client’s business or marketing objectives, gives me goosebumps time and time again.
This never gets old.