I hear that from people in most countries around the world. Not so much in the UK, the US, and France, where people are more likely to voice their opinions and speak truth to power (at least a little).
Nice take. I think this is a classic case of having to know the rules first before you can break them. Never mind — one having to master the rules and process to a point where they play on behind the curtains as you get out of your own way to allow room for intuition - and less heady thinking - to do its thing.
It’s the kind of creative breakthroughs that bring meaning to client work.
Marty, it surprises me, even with the popularity of your books and others, that brand strategy seems to fly under the radar of most business leaders; big and small.
My digression: The cosmos (from the Greek, order) is the constant and unstable tension that comes from chaos.
Human life is a structure within the structure that repeats itself in nature and in physics.
Complex systems have an attractor that creates compelling trajectories (anything but orderly, never perfectly predictable), and creativity is that phenomenon which nevertheless escapes the tension between order and chaos, escapes its attractor, and creates an unprecedented path: it changes the course of things.
Is it an ordered and linear force? No.
Is it foreseeable? No.
Is it authorial? Yes.
From auctor, which comes from augere, meaning "to increase."
Creativity expands even when it brings order, even when it declutters.
But it is frightening because it rewrites our habitus (habits). Our habits only seems right because they are familiar. That's what "rational formulas makers" do not get.
Any situation constructed by humans can be improved by humans. Original design can seem disorienting—and sometimes that very disorientation is a leading indicator of success.
Marty, this is going to be a long one. A blog post in itself I think. And like all content creators keep saying, maybe I'll even "repurpose it" into a real blog post who knows lol. So brave yourself.
Thank you so much for writing this. I have never had the words to describe my process before. It's never been linear for me. In my head I just termed it "divergent design process". I couldn't ever properly explain it to people. I just knew it gave me unique insights, results, perspectives. Sometimes even intuitively and those were the hardest to explain to anyone. But it gave me results. "Socially important" results like winning an international competition when I was a design student back in 2020.
Since I never could explain my mess, I just went with the flow and told clients the glossy linear / cyclic neatly termed design process that's the industry standard. But once the process started even they would watch me go back and forth with ideas. Iterating, reiterating etc. some called it perfectionistic and would have wanted a somewhat MVP-ish idea to just move ahead. I see it as experimentation with different ideas comparing why one would be better than other and why that perspective should work. Constantly questioning what is the idea i started with and if it's the right one to go with. Execute, critique, go back to discovery answers, look for a detail that didn't seem important at first but now does, experiment, compare if it's better or worse and so on and so forth.
Yesterday i lost a business design project because of this from a mentor. Because someone ran with a single idea and developed it all the way to a rapid prototype with AI.
I was shaken, yes. But what bothered me more was what does it mean in the larger industry and cultural sense. Are sprints the only way to do a project now ? Because my Neurodivergent Autistic brain wouldn't last a second in that war. No I won't be able to sustain in a corporate set up, agency set up, job, nothing. And there are so social security or any support systems or anything for anyone.
I just sunk down thinking about what's coming ahead.
Then I read this. And yes things are still in the muck, but for some reason reading the words for the things I have never been to explain people, the process etc, it felt validated. Idk how far it will serve me or what's coming ahead still. But it gave me the courage to go up and challenge the mentor's approach to the situation in a design group. I kept probing as to what system of learning is he trying to base his "mentorship" on. What are the assumptions and why are the assumptions there ? Is the mentorship meant only for speed and linear thinking ? Or is it to add value to as many students as possible if not all? Why is a project that's been in works for 2 weeks not even worthy of a feedback now because 1 prototype (out of 75 design students, only me and this other guy were working on the challenge) came in? Is that how "sprints" are going to be designed ahead to teach business and is that open to change or already set in stone after 1 sprint ? (I wanted to add 1 unsuccessful sprint but well his ego wouldn't have handled that well). As I kept probing, his answers kept shifting, I could see it. He was improvising in real time because he was now accountable to what message he was sending and what he is trying to do really.
The situation ended with the timeline getting extended to finish my development, welcoming any other ideas if people want to contribute and a public acknowledgement that as a mentor, one at least has to let the student end the project that has been actively in the works for 2 weeks because he asked for it and that there are other things to do in day, other client projects running on the side so the traditional "sprint" as we understand it, well he kept changing it's definition to the point where he wasn't describing a sprint anymore as the correct basis or parameter for proper learning. Ofcourse he wouldn't admit that.
I also got him to agree for a lecture next week about Double and Triple Empathy problems in relation to Neurodivergent - Neurotypical - Institutional communication systems and how normal isn't neutral. I will be giving the lecture. He has a lot of experience being a designer but I have more experience being a Neurodivergent one. 😅
And then we brainstorm ideas for experimentation with real students to start teaching them about designing them for inclusivity. Design systems for all neurotypes and not just one. There is no normal.
So thank you. I did no work today because I was depressed from yesterday, but it was still a win and a productive day for me. Thank you for writing this. And for your LinkedIn response. It's given me quite a bit to think about.
Thanks for your comment, Gargi. What I can say is that you're grappling with the real stuff of design and creativity. A lot of the work of professional creatives is building a bridge between different sorts of people. Everyone has a different view of a shared challenge, so if you want to have a significant effect you have to gain the trust of those working on and directing the project. Naturally, there's a lifetime of trial and error in learning how to do this. But rest assured, this is a major part of the job.
Not at all. What you need to do, I think, is to respect the people you work with while making a case for a different point of view. If your mentor doesn't respect YOU as a person, that could be an intractable problem in your relationship. I once wrote an article about mentorship in CRITIQUE magazine that contains my extended thoughts on mentors and mentees. At some point these articles will be republished on the Level C substack.
yes so that's exactly the problem i have been facing. i congratulated the guy who shipped the prototype. it's efficient, scalable, i tried it out myself and i publicly acknowledged that, congratulated him and personally reached out too. but my mentor simply stopped responding once that came in. i was very confused. should i stop working on it? should i continue? is there any feedback? are we still on for the lecture next week irrespective of the project progress? not a word. i have been eating his head up for the past 1.5 months for business mentorship (and you know by now how good i am at it hahah) and wanting to brainstorm ideas so we can start training students to build neutral systems. he wasn't responsive. i finally got this opportunity to show him live what i mean by all my blabbing. the stakes were really high for me. and i got him interested too and then he just stopped. if i get the chance to pitch my solution to the actual business founder, for whom we are solving the problem, and it gets accepted, it will be a real life proof of concept for my advocacy. and impact could start immediately, one business system at a time and with students trained maybe more than one business system even! and not necessarily within my geographical borders! BUT THE GUY JUST DOESN'T LISTEN. how is this a mentorship then? what are the rules? what assumptions are they based on and why?
thank you for understanding this. and for writing this. thank you for everything XD
will wait for the article you wrote on this on Level C's forum
This is an experiential form of workflow where the heart leads and the mind follows. And interestingly, it is reflected in the reason why people also buy something, anything - an exchange of emotion. And also exactly what I still don't have the courage to show a client and often cover up the process through an inorganic diagram.
I like the concept of an "emotional exchange" as part of commerce. It's why I say that people don't buy brands, they join brands. I wonder if an emotional exchange isn't every bit as important as a transactional exchange.
Refreshing to hear this opinion from an old timer like me. This is the real deal, thanks Marty.
When I first tried my hand in graphic design, I had a mentor 10 years older than me. He was 24…but he was a great mentor who gave me a good foundation. As my career developed, I worked for some mighty ad agencies who obviously developed their own process, only to be challenged by other mighty agencies who presented their own process (copyright reserved of course) It was the same process, different name…
Thank goodness I don’t have to answer to any clients these days, because many of them have another process: the acceptance process of creative work.
Every time I sit in front of a canvas I go through the unconscious process of confusion, hesitation, clarity and a moment of spark. That’s when I start working.
This is the best thing I read today. And I needed to read it - because we as an agency are currently in that confusion - catharsis wheel that not many of us like to admit. Thanks for reinforcing our beliefs in the messy process of design & creativity.
In my business thriller SCRAMBLE, the CEO and his team learn how to wrangle confusion and creativity with the help of a small team of brand consultants. The no-process process lies at the heart of their epiphany. Sometimes you can learn more from a story than you can from a normal business book.
I did read your book Scramble - terrific read. Interesting how the political situation you described in your book is not too far off from what the US is experiencing right now.
Rather than "flying under the radar," Dustin, I would say that brand strategy has been seen by many leaders more as "a fly under the radar"—an annoying insect that can be easily swatted away, or better yet, adopted cynically for PR purposes. My partner and I call if "brandwashing."
It's fair to say that brand thinking has been routinely suppressed in favor of catering to the investor class, while customers and employees get the sticky end of the lollipop. Some things gotta change round here.
I hear that from people in most countries around the world. Not so much in the UK, the US, and France, where people are more likely to voice their opinions and speak truth to power (at least a little).
Nice take. I think this is a classic case of having to know the rules first before you can break them. Never mind — one having to master the rules and process to a point where they play on behind the curtains as you get out of your own way to allow room for intuition - and less heady thinking - to do its thing.
It's advanced creativity. Not for the faint of heart.
It’s the kind of creative breakthroughs that bring meaning to client work.
Marty, it surprises me, even with the popularity of your books and others, that brand strategy seems to fly under the radar of most business leaders; big and small.
My digression: The cosmos (from the Greek, order) is the constant and unstable tension that comes from chaos.
Human life is a structure within the structure that repeats itself in nature and in physics.
Complex systems have an attractor that creates compelling trajectories (anything but orderly, never perfectly predictable), and creativity is that phenomenon which nevertheless escapes the tension between order and chaos, escapes its attractor, and creates an unprecedented path: it changes the course of things.
Is it an ordered and linear force? No.
Is it foreseeable? No.
Is it authorial? Yes.
From auctor, which comes from augere, meaning "to increase."
Creativity expands even when it brings order, even when it declutters.
But it is frightening because it rewrites our habitus (habits). Our habits only seems right because they are familiar. That's what "rational formulas makers" do not get.
Any situation constructed by humans can be improved by humans. Original design can seem disorienting—and sometimes that very disorientation is a leading indicator of success.
Marty, this is going to be a long one. A blog post in itself I think. And like all content creators keep saying, maybe I'll even "repurpose it" into a real blog post who knows lol. So brave yourself.
Thank you so much for writing this. I have never had the words to describe my process before. It's never been linear for me. In my head I just termed it "divergent design process". I couldn't ever properly explain it to people. I just knew it gave me unique insights, results, perspectives. Sometimes even intuitively and those were the hardest to explain to anyone. But it gave me results. "Socially important" results like winning an international competition when I was a design student back in 2020.
Since I never could explain my mess, I just went with the flow and told clients the glossy linear / cyclic neatly termed design process that's the industry standard. But once the process started even they would watch me go back and forth with ideas. Iterating, reiterating etc. some called it perfectionistic and would have wanted a somewhat MVP-ish idea to just move ahead. I see it as experimentation with different ideas comparing why one would be better than other and why that perspective should work. Constantly questioning what is the idea i started with and if it's the right one to go with. Execute, critique, go back to discovery answers, look for a detail that didn't seem important at first but now does, experiment, compare if it's better or worse and so on and so forth.
Yesterday i lost a business design project because of this from a mentor. Because someone ran with a single idea and developed it all the way to a rapid prototype with AI.
I was shaken, yes. But what bothered me more was what does it mean in the larger industry and cultural sense. Are sprints the only way to do a project now ? Because my Neurodivergent Autistic brain wouldn't last a second in that war. No I won't be able to sustain in a corporate set up, agency set up, job, nothing. And there are so social security or any support systems or anything for anyone.
I just sunk down thinking about what's coming ahead.
Then I read this. And yes things are still in the muck, but for some reason reading the words for the things I have never been to explain people, the process etc, it felt validated. Idk how far it will serve me or what's coming ahead still. But it gave me the courage to go up and challenge the mentor's approach to the situation in a design group. I kept probing as to what system of learning is he trying to base his "mentorship" on. What are the assumptions and why are the assumptions there ? Is the mentorship meant only for speed and linear thinking ? Or is it to add value to as many students as possible if not all? Why is a project that's been in works for 2 weeks not even worthy of a feedback now because 1 prototype (out of 75 design students, only me and this other guy were working on the challenge) came in? Is that how "sprints" are going to be designed ahead to teach business and is that open to change or already set in stone after 1 sprint ? (I wanted to add 1 unsuccessful sprint but well his ego wouldn't have handled that well). As I kept probing, his answers kept shifting, I could see it. He was improvising in real time because he was now accountable to what message he was sending and what he is trying to do really.
The situation ended with the timeline getting extended to finish my development, welcoming any other ideas if people want to contribute and a public acknowledgement that as a mentor, one at least has to let the student end the project that has been actively in the works for 2 weeks because he asked for it and that there are other things to do in day, other client projects running on the side so the traditional "sprint" as we understand it, well he kept changing it's definition to the point where he wasn't describing a sprint anymore as the correct basis or parameter for proper learning. Ofcourse he wouldn't admit that.
I also got him to agree for a lecture next week about Double and Triple Empathy problems in relation to Neurodivergent - Neurotypical - Institutional communication systems and how normal isn't neutral. I will be giving the lecture. He has a lot of experience being a designer but I have more experience being a Neurodivergent one. 😅
And then we brainstorm ideas for experimentation with real students to start teaching them about designing them for inclusivity. Design systems for all neurotypes and not just one. There is no normal.
So thank you. I did no work today because I was depressed from yesterday, but it was still a win and a productive day for me. Thank you for writing this. And for your LinkedIn response. It's given me quite a bit to think about.
Thanks for your comment, Gargi. What I can say is that you're grappling with the real stuff of design and creativity. A lot of the work of professional creatives is building a bridge between different sorts of people. Everyone has a different view of a shared challenge, so if you want to have a significant effect you have to gain the trust of those working on and directing the project. Naturally, there's a lifetime of trial and error in learning how to do this. But rest assured, this is a major part of the job.
Did I understand you correctly here? 🤔 Did you mean to say I needed to trust his instincts ?
Not at all. What you need to do, I think, is to respect the people you work with while making a case for a different point of view. If your mentor doesn't respect YOU as a person, that could be an intractable problem in your relationship. I once wrote an article about mentorship in CRITIQUE magazine that contains my extended thoughts on mentors and mentees. At some point these articles will be republished on the Level C substack.
yes so that's exactly the problem i have been facing. i congratulated the guy who shipped the prototype. it's efficient, scalable, i tried it out myself and i publicly acknowledged that, congratulated him and personally reached out too. but my mentor simply stopped responding once that came in. i was very confused. should i stop working on it? should i continue? is there any feedback? are we still on for the lecture next week irrespective of the project progress? not a word. i have been eating his head up for the past 1.5 months for business mentorship (and you know by now how good i am at it hahah) and wanting to brainstorm ideas so we can start training students to build neutral systems. he wasn't responsive. i finally got this opportunity to show him live what i mean by all my blabbing. the stakes were really high for me. and i got him interested too and then he just stopped. if i get the chance to pitch my solution to the actual business founder, for whom we are solving the problem, and it gets accepted, it will be a real life proof of concept for my advocacy. and impact could start immediately, one business system at a time and with students trained maybe more than one business system even! and not necessarily within my geographical borders! BUT THE GUY JUST DOESN'T LISTEN. how is this a mentorship then? what are the rules? what assumptions are they based on and why?
thank you for understanding this. and for writing this. thank you for everything XD
will wait for the article you wrote on this on Level C's forum
This is an experiential form of workflow where the heart leads and the mind follows. And interestingly, it is reflected in the reason why people also buy something, anything - an exchange of emotion. And also exactly what I still don't have the courage to show a client and often cover up the process through an inorganic diagram.
Thanks Marty. I thought I was the only one.
I like the concept of an "emotional exchange" as part of commerce. It's why I say that people don't buy brands, they join brands. I wonder if an emotional exchange isn't every bit as important as a transactional exchange.
Refreshing to hear this opinion from an old timer like me. This is the real deal, thanks Marty.
When I first tried my hand in graphic design, I had a mentor 10 years older than me. He was 24…but he was a great mentor who gave me a good foundation. As my career developed, I worked for some mighty ad agencies who obviously developed their own process, only to be challenged by other mighty agencies who presented their own process (copyright reserved of course) It was the same process, different name…
Thank goodness I don’t have to answer to any clients these days, because many of them have another process: the acceptance process of creative work.
Every time I sit in front of a canvas I go through the unconscious process of confusion, hesitation, clarity and a moment of spark. That’s when I start working.
Yes, and I'd rather experience that spark than be paid a million dollars to extinguish it.
This is the best thing I read today. And I needed to read it - because we as an agency are currently in that confusion - catharsis wheel that not many of us like to admit. Thanks for reinforcing our beliefs in the messy process of design & creativity.
In my business thriller SCRAMBLE, the CEO and his team learn how to wrangle confusion and creativity with the help of a small team of brand consultants. The no-process process lies at the heart of their epiphany. Sometimes you can learn more from a story than you can from a normal business book.
I did read your book Scramble - terrific read. Interesting how the political situation you described in your book is not too far off from what the US is experiencing right now.
I'm nothing if not prescient. I really enjoyed having a huge gold letter on the hotel's signage fall to the street below.
Rather than "flying under the radar," Dustin, I would say that brand strategy has been seen by many leaders more as "a fly under the radar"—an annoying insect that can be easily swatted away, or better yet, adopted cynically for PR purposes. My partner and I call if "brandwashing."
It's fair to say that brand thinking has been routinely suppressed in favor of catering to the investor class, while customers and employees get the sticky end of the lollipop. Some things gotta change round here.
Happy to discuss this with your mentor or anyone else. If you really want to challenge someone, give them a copy of the whole book.