The Creative Pep Talk podcast is one of my favourite design/illustration listens. I was a bit late in coming to it – despite having followed Andy J. Miller for a long while. It’s absolutely brilliant “through ridiculous analogies, personal stories and artist interviews, Andy [helps] you break free from confusion and make a plan for your creative career success!”
I was listening to 229 – the 6 step process to unlock powerful creative business momentum in which Andy asks and answers the big question “if it’s not about practice, passion, talent or skill, what’s the real foundation of great creative work?”
It was an episode that really came to me at the right moment. I’m currently in a personal place of re-evaluating and evolving what creative work it is I want to do. To use the language of the episode, I’m cleansing my palate.
Without giving too much away about the episode, because you really should go and listen to it, the first steps Andy suggests for unlocking what will make you great in your own right are to forget what you think you know, to identify your super sense (not what you’re good at but what you notice) and to develop a taste profile of what it is you like. For this third step, he described a task of gathering up art from 3 contemporary and 3 historical sources and drawing out what it is about them that makes your spidey senses tingle.
It sounded like a lot of fun, and like something I could really benefit from. So that’s exactly what I’ve done, or at least I’ve made my own attempt at it and I wanted to share it out in the open with you because I think it probably says more about who I want to be as a maker than anything else.
So here’s a collection of pieces of creative work, both timely and timeless, which really speak to me. I’ve gone beyond just illustration and I’ve delved into books and film and design because I wanted to see if I could draw out any super macro themes and because I don’t just want my creative work to be still standalone visuals.
I’ve made moodboards before, but I’m usually concerned with creating something with a clear focus that answers a question or creates a coherent visual output. But here I just pulled what I liked and added a few words.
Seeing such a range of pieces together really made me take a step back and re-evaluate what it is I love.
Here are a few of the key values I found myself being drawn to:
- Line – I feel like it comes as no surprise that strong line work is something that I look for in a piece
- People – in general I gravitate towards works with a human focus, or that look at a human impact. Even in images with animals, I’m looking for anthropomorphisation
- Organic forms – there’s something that’s difficult to put my finger on but that’s definitely rooted in nature in a lot of the images I’ve been drawn to
- Texture – pieces that come across as tactile or show their human makers in their texture
- Light and tone – colour on its own doesn’t catch my eye, but the use of tone to create a narrative or to indicate light is something I always love.
- Stylised realism – while the use of colour doesn’t have to be realistic, I do generally prefer works that are representative of life
- Clear voice – strong personality and message is key in both written and visual works
- Personal but well researched – I have a huge amount of respect for people and pieces that seem to have a wealth of emergencies at their fingertips but manage to keep their work from feeling too academic and lacking in a human focus
- Endings – I like a clean close, which probably links into the below point about purpose. A narrative shouldn’t just fade out.
- Cultural purpose – works that draw on the world around them and offer new insights are my favourites
This is just the beginning, I’m only half way through the steps Andy suggests in his podcast and I’m barely taking the first steps on my own creative journey. But now, at least, I have a compass to give me some direction for what good would look like for me.
If you’ve got some time and a desire to collage (or a keen pinterest trigger finger) I’d definitely recommend giving this task a try.
