I want to reassure you.
Sometimes, I know that talking to the artist or designer in your working life is like trying to get through to life on Mars. I know – when you are trying to make rational business decisions and drill down into the data for some marketing direction, what you want is hard evidence to pin down and act on so the numbers will keep adding up.
Sometimes, we artists and designers are really good at helping you with that, figuring out the user journey or designing a lovely layout that communicates clearly and gets a great response to your CTA.
And then sometimes, we appear to go off into orbit, and Mission Control has a problem, because radio contact might go patchy. The signal’s jammed, or the report coming back sounds broken.
Let me tell you what’s happening on Mars, though, because it may help. It is part of the job, that we must occasionally retreat to shut out the daily noise and go in pursuit of ideas way over the horizon so as to bring you something precious back.
If it’s not too grandiose to suggest, we’re going after space rocks for you.
We designers and artists—and dancers, and musicians, and filmmakers, and illustrators—are sitting, thinking, feeling, being moved, sensing how to choreograph emotion into movement or colour or shape, finding sustaining rhythms we can translate into compelling layouts, and look out across bare earth (the blank page) to watch for signs of life (ideas) emerging. We are necessarily in a self-imposed think-space, escaping from noise and distraction to pursue inspiration purely, and to seek out just the sort of fresh life that will connect with audiences and move them in inexplicable ways.
But don’t worry, because any cosmonaut worth her space suit knows that you need clear communication, and that you need these ideas to have realistic context and grounding in an effective plan. If the radio goes crackly, she’ll be working hard to get the signal back to communicate new discovery, and will be eager to help you assimilate the ideas into your plan.
At The Good Life Experience last summer, I heard Helen Sharman talk about being the first British person in space and the ongoing research she does now. She is a lightening strike of enthusiasm, and full of amazing insights as you would expect. I remember her recounting the wonderful feeling of weightlessness, which she misses most about being in space. The closest she gets to it here on Earth is when she’s swimming, floating in a pool, and then—she says momentarily slowing down in the middle of stage and closing her eyes—you can feel it just for a split second…
…can you imagine being that free?
Yes, there most definitely is life on the designer’s Mars – big, beautiful, free-range life. And sometimes, if you can hold your nerve until the radio contact returns, it could just be where your best ideas come from.