Of course we can. Whatever that is. Barriers and creativity are mutually exclusive terms.
What are they gonna do….call the creative police on you? The reason we see so much bland and vanilla-lite advertising is not because clients put the handcuffs on us, it’s because we second-guess ourselves. We hold back. We play it safe. Star Wars probably wouldn’t have worked if they tried to stage it in Oklahoma or Duluth, as opposed to a Galaxy far far away. We know about pushing the envelope. I say…take it outside the zip code. Heck, blow up the post office.
Average is inhaling, greatness is exhaling. There is no reason to edit yourself. When you see a piece of work that you love or call brilliant, the only difference between you and the person who did it is that they didn’t hold back. I promise you that within my body of work, there were hundreds of efforts that were shot down. But shot down doesn’t mean slowed down.
The creative process, as I see it really isn’t a process at all. It should be spontaneous with more passion than process. I’m reminded once again about the Crayola crayon commercial depicting Picasso as a young child. He is drawing a portrait in crayon. His mother looks at it and says “Pablo, two noses?” He just kept on going. I submit you should do the same, give or take a nose.
–Richie
